Tuesday, August 13, 2024 (Court Day #701)
My right forearm is feeling a little sore, as is the inside of my right knee. Mild ailments, but ailments nonetheless.
It was sunny and 72°F when I arrived at the courts in Scotts Valley. As I drove from work, my internal debate was parking near the courts or trying to park in the remote lot by the field. With kids’ soccer events going on, the remote lot has been pretty busy the last couple times that I parked there. I figured I’d instead try my luck near the courts today.
Drew, who got himself in with the local elite players group, was leaving just as I arrived and I took his spot on the street after he left with his truck. That was relatively convenient. He opened his window, “Good timing!”
Games
A very first game was with the mixture of weaker players and made for a leisurely warm-up game.
Crap
For the second game, Marco and Nicole were signed up in a box and I walked up and was about to sign my name when Nicole said that she wanted to play a mixed game. Laura (moved from Visalia) was standing nearby, so I asked if she wanted to play with me in that game. She agreed and we teamed up.
OMG. I was not playing well in that second game. Sure, there are some good rallies, but I made a lot of mistakes. For instance, in one rally, I was slamming drives at Nicole who is near the baseline and she returned all of them and then I hit one long, which ended the rally. So dumb.
I felt like I played horribly in that game. I felt bad for Laura. Granted, it was only my second game, but sheesh.
Just Off
It’s seemed like my play was all just a little bit off tonight. I was warming up over the tennis net with Gabe and I could feel the ball contacting my paddle off center. It was odd.
The game I felt the best about was Fabrizio and myself against a guy named Mike, I don’t know very well but I’ve seen before, and Alex, the 30-ish redhead with a trim beard. Fabrizio made a series of errors and we found ourselves down quite a bit, but then we went on a run and came back to nearly tied the score for down 7–8. We did end up losing that game, but the least we made it respectable. Alex has pretty quick hands.
Newbies & The Ninja
In a match with a couple of newbies, Jeff and Ryan, who know each other and live in Scotts Valley, I played with Ryan and Gabe played with Jeff. Ryan was pretty funny after one particular rally which we won… Ryan just had to watch that rally as I was taking a lot of shots. After I hit the winner, he said I was “like a ninja” and demonstrated by whipping his paddle around in a martial arts fashion. It is quite amusing!
We didn’t to get to finish that game since the lights clicked out with the score at 8–4. That was the last game of the night. I took one of the nets down, then hung out for a few minutes. It turned out that someone had locked up the bin , but had forgotten to put in the weight tray race board. Fortunately, I have the code so I was able to unlock the bin of the board and lock the bin back up.
Wildlife
Rachel was sharing some trail mix and some sour beer, and I took her up on the trail mix but passed on the beer.
Aaron Hicks mentioned he had seen a scorpion recently right outside the gate to the courts on the sidewalk. He went on with a the story of a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains which had been abandoned for 10 years and when the owners went to clean it out, they found the house full of scorpions! I guess we need to be a little bit more careful around the courts!
In response, Rachel pulled out her phone and shared some pictures of a beetle. She explained that in the middle of a game last Friday, the ball came over the net in the midst of a rally and it just died when it bounced on the ground. They were really confused until they looked and figured out a very large beetle on the court was to blame! The beetle didn’t seem too worse for wear after getting smacked with the ball. Sturdy bug!
Overall
There are up days and down days, and tonight felt like a slight down day. I guess the good news is, that the floor of my bad days seems to be gradually getting better. These days, a bad day for me is probably 3.5 level play instead of 3.0 as it has been in the past.
Number of days on a court: 701
Number of total hours: 2,924
Number of paid coaching hours: 63.5
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