Month: June 2024 (Page 3 of 4)

Tuesday, June 13, 2024 (Court Day #673)

In the afternoon, as I was walking to my car parked across the street from work and back, my knee was providing a little bit of pain with each step. It’s not what a player wants to be experiencing.

I arrived at Skypark shortly before 7 p.m. It was is busy but not that busy.

My first game was with Danny—Sean‘s brother—he was paired with Marco and I had Jax as my partner. That was challenging and enjoyable game.

Krista

The next game was Tim Handley and myself against Sean and a woman named Krista. I never seen Krista before. She’s a lefty and a good 4.0 player. She also tends to be a bit on the serious side. That was a close, great game.

Jane

Jane Prince was there. I hadn’t seen her since the Riley and Lindsey Newman clinic at Cabrillo College back in October last year. I didn’t get to play any games with her. I asked if she was still coaching tennis and she said that she’d given that up a year or two into playing pickleball. She said that she’s coaching with Karen at Karen’s new “Quail Valley” courts at her home in Scotts Valley.

Uh, Oh. Lights?

Around 8:15 p.m., as I walked across the courts after a game ended, Wendy stopped me and asked if I could go take a look at the lights. Apparently, Mark, the retired chef, tried to turn on the lights, but they didn’t work. When I looked, they were already in the “ON” position. I switched them off and then switched them back on, but the lights over the courts did not illuminate. Poop. Apparently, the new policy with the lights going out by 8:30 p.m. has finally taken affect. Everyone was quite disappointed. Being that it is summer, we had just enough light to continue playing until about 8:50 p.m. though it got harder and harder to see the ball.

A new sign was posted this week announcing the court hours and various rules.

My Play

It was mostly all challenging games tonight. I was happy . . . even with the early departure.

I felt that I was playing extremely well tonight. I had my moments of badness, such as I hit a couple of drives off dinks past the baseline (barely), and during some fire fights at the net I hit two or three shots off of pop ups into the net which would’ve otherwise likely been winners.

We have our monthly SCPC board meeting tomorrow at Brommer, so I’ll be playing there tomorrow morning. I won’t miss not playing really late tonight.

Paddle Wars: Joola Sues

Soooo, it’s official. After threatening, Joola has filed a lawsuit against USA Pickleball, which they announced today:

Here’s an article about it:
https://pickleball.com/news/joola-sues-usa-pickleball-over-gen-3-paddle-ban

It’s unfortunate. I’m hoping USA Pickleball did everything correctly.

Number of days on a court: 673
Number of total hours: 2,855
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, June 11, 2024 (Court Day #672)

After leaving work, I got to the courts in Scotts Valley just about 7 p.m. It was very crowded and people were complaining about the waits. I didn’t count, but there were about 50 players.

Yes, the waits were long, but most of my games were pretty good.

Great Game

Sean Lynch and I played against Matt Babb and Oscar. It was a great game with dink rallies, speedups, and resets. Sean and I pulled ahead, then they got within a few points, but then Sean and I closed out the game. There was some redemption in that. The last time was in a game with Sean, he was on the other side of the net and I was making series of dumb mistakes like dinking shots wide of the court.

Later, I was teamed up with lefty “linebacker” Aaron against Tim Handley and Matt Babb. We got clobbered. Matt Babb was performing exceptionally well with his serves tonight. He’d hook his serve off the short side of the court out of the reach of my forehand or driving serves down the center of the court to my backhand. I know my serves sometimes don’t pop back up but Matt had a few that I’d swear that the ball was broken or it hit debris by how low the ball stayed. Tim Handley was also whipping some serves angled off the court and impossible to return. Matt got two aces on me and Tim got another. Aces are rare.

I was playing pretty well tonight outside of that one game against Matt and Tim.

My last game wrapped up about 9:20 p.m. and I helped take temporary nets down. Mark Dettle had asked me earlier to be responsible to make sure they got stowed properly and locked up.

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Thursday, June 12, 2024 (No Play)

A funny article by a woman named Celia Rivenbark appeared on AOL this week—is AOL even a thing anymore?—about pickleball. After reading it, it’s obvious that either she did a lot of research or actually knows something about pickleball. For instance, this is the first time that I’ve seen “swing weight” appear in an article meant for consumption by the general public!

Beware! Pickleball addiction may affect you or loved ones
https://www.aol.com/beware-pickleball-addiction-may-affect-090315084.html

Number of days on a court: 672
Number of total hours: 2,853.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Sunday, June 9, 2024 (Court Day #671)

In my ongoing battle with those who say to never switch hands, here is elite pro Riley Newman doing exactly that, switching to his left hand to make a shot:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7-W1JRga5U

Derby

Somehow, today I was just moving slowly and got a late start and ended up walking into the courts just before 9 a.m. Fortunately, when I arrived, the bins are already open the dry erase board was up and the one net that needs to be set up was already up. Later, I learned Barb Gerry had opened up the bins for me and I thanked her. It’s embarrassing to be late to set up as the site coordinator. It wouldn’t be the last embarrassing moment for me today, unfortunately.

It was extremely busy today—51 players at one count—with long waits. With so many people, there was no question that I had to make the games to 9 and win by 1, instead of playing 11 win by 2.

It had started at 61° and overcast. At about 11 a.m., the clouds burned off. It was much cooler today than a few days ago when it got up into low 80s.

There was one game where J.J. and I played against Brandon and Glenn. I’ve been playing really well, but this game everything seem to be going wrong. I returned at least two or three serves passed the baseline. That was miserable. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. After waiting probably 20 minutes to get into the game, it was a lopsided quick one where J.J. and I lost 1-9 or 3–9. It was bad.

All the rest of the games, I played just fine.

I only got into one game that would be considered a truly advanced game. All the rest of them had at least one intermediate player.

My last game ran until 12:14 p.m., and Rick A.—who I asked to close for me—wanted me to take the donation money with me and that took another bit of time so I didn’t get home from the courts until 12:30. Then I had to immediately turn around after a very quick lunch to get to teach classes at Skypark in Scotts Valley.

Skypark Classes

Today was my first day teaching in Scotts valley instead of in Aptos at Willowbrook Park. I left my house shortly before 1 p.m., later than I wanted but my wife had moved my coaching clipboard and I couldn’t find it without a hunt. (It has been slid into a cubby under the computer desk.) Still, I was at the courts about 10 minutes before my class was to start.

After the Advanced Beginner class, Katie told me that my class went really well and she couldn’t be happier. That’s very nice to hear. I did tell that that while I’ve subbed for more advanced classes, this was the first time teaching this exact class.

Everything did go really well, though it was noticeably warmer than Aptos. At least there was no traffic getting home. Though I did have 43 text messages when I was done teaching! Boy.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 (No Play)

I found out that a week and a half ago, Harvard Medical School released an article regarding eye protection in pickleball:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/protect-your-eyes-when-playing-pickleball
A key paragraph:
“Researchers cited numerous types of pickleball-related eye damage, such as corneal abrasions (scratching of the eye surface), retinal tears or detachment, Berlin’s edema (damage to the retina’s outer layers, causing decreased vision for several hours), and hyphema (bleeding in the front chamber of the eye that can lead to glaucoma).”

Another sense of vindication that I always wear eye protection while playing!

Number of days on a court: 671
Number of total hours: 2,851
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.