Sunday, May 26, 2024 (Court Day #665)

Last night, Dan Dewey texted a small group of people asking if anyone wanted to come early to Derby to drill. I replied quickly saying “yes”. Heck, I was going to be there early anyway opening up the courts as the site coordinator.

New Backpack

Today was my first day using my new Gearbox backpack. I’ve had it a couple weeks but I hadn’t made the move of taking everything out of my old backpack and putting it into my new one. The new backpack is definitely more spacious. I like that. And I’m still deciding where I want to put certain things.

Chilly

Later this week, it’ll be June. You wouldn’t know it from this morning. As I left my house it was 52°F and overcast. I don’t mind the clouds for pickleball although I wouldn’t mind it being a little bit closer to 60° instead of closer to 50°.

Brace

I brought my knee brace although I wasn’t wearing it this morning. I’ll admit vanity is part of the equation. I don’t want to have one leg tan and the other one white. We’ll see how my knee holds up.

Tomorrow, my son Nicholas and I are heading up to San Carlos to play with my sister-in-law Liz and some of her friends, I think. I’ve been meaning to get up there and play for at least a year, but now it’s actually going to happen.

Horses?

I saw something that I’d never seen this morning, there was a couple of young women riding horses down Swift Street. Aside from parades, I can’t remember ever seeing horses randomly on our city streets.

Derby Park

I parked at 8:38 a.m. and walked in. Mark G. and his wife Maree helped me set up. I was very grateful for their assistance.

Today was a really good day for play at Derby. There’s a tall guy named Aaron who came from tennis and plays really well. Dan Dewey continues to improve and was playing quite well too. There’s a younger blond guy named Jordan who played a number of games with me, Dan, and Aaron. Fun and challenging games.

Allen Goldberg came and I got into some games with him too.

Youngsters Kirby and his friend Juliette were back again. I haven’t been able to play with him since I first met him a few weeks ago. His skills have developed very quickly and I’m sure he’ll continue to improve.

A nice surprise, David L. and Minori came today. They live over by Emeline Street and David said that since it was a nice day, they rode over on bikes to Derby to get in some games. I didn’t get to play with them today, that would’ve been fun.

Brothers

Dan Dewey and I played a game against Jeff and his brother Scott. We beat them 11-1. Scott is working on getting his game up to the level of his brother.

My last game was with the young guy named Joshua against Jeff and Dan Dewey. Joshua is thin and sports a mustache and glasses. It was a back-and-forth game. I was starting to make more errors, I think I was getting tired. I think Joshua may been trying too hard. But Joshua also has a long reach and is very athletic. He made some good shots, he’s just inconsistent. 

As I was about to leave, Joshua asked about where he should be signing up in terms of colors. I appreciate him asking. He said that someone had told him that he should not be signing up in red (advanced) and should be signing up in blue (4.0+). I told him that the person that told him who told him that probably should be signing up in green instead. I told Joshua there’s a lot of “skill creep” going on. I added that if he wants to sign up in blue to ask first and “read the room”. When I mentioned that there’s no way he should sign up in blue when he’s at Brommer, he heartily agreed.

If every day was like today playing at Derby, I’d be happy staying at Derby indefinitely as a site coordinator.

Rec Teaching

As of today, both of my June 4-week Rec classes are sold out. That’s good. That means I get my full pay for the sessions. Rec sent out an email this past week stating that they will no longer compensate instructors a minimum amount regardless of the number of students, but instead will cancel classes that don’t meet their threshold of registrations.

Today was the last day of class for my current group of beginners that includes my wife.

Pickleheads

A couple of weeks ago, Connie Thrasher, the USAP Western Section Leader, sent out an email the USA Pickleball ambassadors in her area, including me:
“On April 16th an announcement was made by USAP regarding our selection of Pickleheads as our official Court and Game Finder tool.“

Pickleheads will be replacing Places2Play.org.

It went on to explain more then ask us to download the app and make sure our courts appear and have the correct information. As ambassadors, we get more weight to our recommended edits.

I downloaded the app, registered, and our local courts were already entered. It looks like I can do a little tidying up, but what is there is very workable. I will say that the capabilities of Pickleheads is far more than that of Places2Play. It has a means of organizing play in a group and other coordination features.

Number of days on a court: 665
Number of total hours: 2,832.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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