Friday, September 13, 2024 (Court Day #716)
I spent part of my morning prepping for the SCPC board meeting which took place this afternoon. On the days of our board meetings, I take most of the day off and don’t get to work until after 3:30 p.m.
By 8:58 a.m., I was halfway between my house and Brommer Park. It was a club day, so I was expecting it to be somewhat busy, which it was. It was sunny and 63°F.
As I drove, I was hoping I’d get into better games than I did last night. As a club day, after 10 a.m., we’d all be signing up by skill level. My fingers were crossed.
Brommer Park
My first hour was games with 2.5 and 3.0 players. Merely social and lazy games.
After 10 a.m., I started a box in blue (4.0+). But I had 3.5 players in my group. Two guys said that they “just played with some 3.5 players” and they told them to “move up into blue.” The funny thing is, it’s never that the losing team should move down, it’s always the winning team needs to move up. That’s why the upper skill levels get overloaded and the lower levels are pretty vacant. It wasn’t a horrible game, but the rallies were short and my partner hit more than his share of balls into the net.
I got two good games with Pauly against Dieter and Rick. We won the first one and they lost the second one. In the second—and last—one, I weakly retuned a backhand into the net. Jackie, who was sitting on the wall watching, called over to me, “You are better than that!” She was right, of course, that was a horrible service return!
Board Meeting
At 12:16 p.m., I was sitting down at the park benches for the monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. A big chunk of the discussion was trying to decide how to solve the problem of getting players broken up into proper skill level so the games would be better and so better players don’t abandon club play. The meeting was adjourned to 2:07 p.m.
More Games
I walked by the courts toward the parking lot but called down to Pauly, Gary, and Sean McElaney, who were sitting along the wall, if they wanted to play. They agreed. Gary and I lost that game. I hadn’t played for two hours so my play wasn’t ideal. But then Gary wasn’t playing fantastic either.
Pauly decided to sit out the next one, so Sean and Gary played against me and a fellow that I never met named Tony. Tony is an intermediate player. Our opponents were winning early but then my partner and I turned it around and won 11–6. (I was also starting to warm back up.)
When I asked on the time, Sean said it was 2:45 p.m. I told him that I had to go. Work is calling… well, not literally, but you know what I mean!
Tennis Pros
American tennis pro Tyler Fritz was quoted recently as saying, “I think there are some people in the tennis world that are just absolute pickleball haters, and that’s fine. But for me, like, I don’t really have an issue with pickleball. I like playing sometimes. It’s fine. I don’t see any reason why both of them can’t exist.”
American Ben Shelton laughed when asked about a similar question. “No, man, I got no comment about that.”
https://www.utrsports.net/blogs/news/2024-us-open-pickleball-tennis
Saturday, September 14, 2024 (No Play)
It was strangely cooler today… like fall is saying, “I’ll be here soon.” Then this afternoon, my sister texted our family group saying that there is a 40% chance of rain on Wednesday. Well, then. Summer is on its way out!
Bagpiper Pickleball
The USA Pickleball Ambassadors have a private Facebook group. An ambassador named Jeff Poff shared a couple photos of a parade in Kettering, Ohio, a few miles out of Dayton. His local pickleball group marched, but he also mentioned that they “had two bagpipe players marching” with them. Being a bagpiper myself, I was intrigued and tracked down their Facebook group and the additional photos he had mentioned in his post.
Now, I have no idea who the bagpiper is. When I asked if the piper played pickleball, Mr. Poff said no. Too bad. It would have be fun to find another pickleball-playing bagpiper.
Number of days on a court: 716
Number of total hours: 2,960
Number of paid coaching hours: 72.5
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