Friday, July 12, 2024. (Court Day #686)

I arrived at Brommer Park shortly after 9:30 a.m. I planned to be there earlier but I had some last-minute preparations to do for the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club Board meeting today.

We were only somewhat busy today so the waits weren’t horrible.

I only got one really good game today and that was with Ethan as my partner against Josh—Bruce’s son—and another fellow that I don’t really know. It was a close back-and-forth game and honestly, I can’t remember if we won or not. That was the only truly challenging game I had. Sure, there were some good rallies, but balls coming back and longer rallies are more fun.

Shaye asked Ethan if we’d join her and one of her friends. In that game, he and I were both trying to keep the ball going by hitting soft shots and avoiding winners. It was entertaining just because it was so ridiculous . . . like dinking back high pop-ups instead of smashing them.

SCPC Board Meeting

Once Mark Dettle finished up his game at about 12:15 p.m., we started our monthly club board meeting at a table in the picnic area.

At that our 2-hour meeting, we spent about 15 or 20 minutes talking about how to properly sort players by skill appropriately so that at club sessions people have games that are challenging. All it takes is for one weaker player to sign up above their skill level and that messes up the game for three other players. This has been ongoing problem. The question is how to solve it. There was a discussion about having challenge courts, forcing players to use DUPR with their games, having a board/club ranking committee, having peer-rating system of some kind. We didn’t come up with a firm solution. I suggested maybe polling the membership to select one of several options to try. Who knows. It’s been a problem for years. I just seems that it’s getting worse.

Number of days on a court: 686
Number of total hours: 2,889.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 49.5

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