Saturday, October 5, 2024 (Court Day #723)
Today was the day of the Rotary Club Tournament fundraiser to benefit veterans, held at Cabrillo College on their new pickleball courts. Rotary held this tournament last year as well, though I didn’t participate.
Last night, my partner for the day, René texted and said we should carpool from Rick’s house said 7:45 a.m. I agreed.
I was in my car but realized that I had forgotten to grab a snack for later so went back into my house and grabbed an apple. (We were out of bananas.) I texted René my ETA of 7:51. (Yeah, 6 minutes late.) René called me concerned that maybe I should head directly to Cabrillo instead. I was a bit confused, since registration started at 8 a.m. and would run at least 30 minutes… but in the end, she said to stick with the original plan. I assumed that René had crashed at Rick’s overnight, but when I got to Rick’s, I found out that we’d be carpooling with Jason and Rick. Ah, that explained things! We piled into Rick’s BMW sedan and headed to the Cabrillo College courts and we arrived a few minutes after 8 a.m. with a lots of time to spare.
Cabrillo College
We checked in at the registration table, figured out where we were to play then got about settling in and finding a spot to warm up.
Warmup
René and I found a half a court and started drilling. After about 10 minutes we got into an abbreviated game with a former employee of mine, Matt Z., and his sister whom I’d see at Derby when I was still a regular on Sundays there. Games are always best to include in a warmup, if possible. Partway through the game, René decided she was ready enough and ended the game.
Shuffling Pools
René and I were initially in a round-robin pool of four teams, however, one of the teams in a pool of three didn’t show up, leaving only two. René excitedly volunteered us to move, which we did. That balanced all the pools in the Advanced-Intermediate category. (There were also Intermediate and Beginner categories.)
Each pool would play all of their games on one court. Our court would be Court #1 in the corner near the benches… about as far as you can get from the registration tables.
Each team in a given pool of three would have one game to 15 (win by 2) against one team, then a game against the other remaining team, then repeat. There would be some form of playoffs once the “pool play” was complete.
René and I would kick things off with two games then a bye as the two teams we faced would play against each other.
GAME #1
We played first against Gene and Mauricio. I’d never met Gene. We were up 8-0 but then they started to come back. They were on the winning side of a few net balls and I hit a few of my drop shots into the net. René also made a few errors. And I left the middle of the court a little too open. They made it 8-4. Then we added a point to make it 9-4. Then it was 10-5.
After I hit Gene in the chest with a ball, he kidded, “Do you want to autograph that?” I chuckled. A few rallies later, at 10-7, Mauricio got me in the chest and I kidded with him, “Do you want to autograph that?” I got a smile. René wasn’t pleased, she felt that I wasn’t taking the game seriously. “The score is too close for that.” Ok, no more fraternizing with the opponents. It wasn’t that I wasn’t taking the game seriously. It was that I was confident that their run would end. And it did. We won 15-10.
GAME #2
My fellow Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board member Kristin Long and her teammate Mark Girotti would be our next opponents. I felt bad for Mark. I’ve seen him play far better. René and I went up 8-0. Soon it was 12-2. Then 14-4. We added one more point and the game was done. This was a fairly quick game, but there were some battles.
BYE
René and I had a break before our next two games. It was time to sit in what shade we could find, make a run to the bathrooms, chat with players, and watch a bit of the matches going on. I ate my apple.
GAME #3
We played Mauricio and Gene again. This time, it was a quicker game and the result was never in doubt. We won 15-3. (Kristin came up to me afterward and shared that she enjoyed watching how we play—she had parked her chair on the ofter side of the chainlink fence and observed the game.)
GAME #4
We were back for our second round with Kristin and Mark. There were only a small handful of sideouts on our way to a 15-0 win.
BREAK
Having completed our round-robin, we had to wait for our pool to finish, the other pools to finish, then for the organizers to determine who needed to play who in the quarterfinals.
And…
QUARTERFINALS
We’d be facing locals Manda Samir and Mike Savage, a lefty. They went up 4-2. Mike has gotten better since the last time I played him. We dialed things in and from there on out, we scored about two points to every one they scored. We won 15-7.
SEMIFINALS
This would be a tougher game. We’d be facing Dieter Rothmeier and Tony Sloss. Both are really good guys and strong players, though I’d give the playing edge to Dieter.
We’d be playing a match of best of three games to 11, win by 2.
René was playing distracted. Midway through the first game, René came to me and said that she was considering forfeiting. I told her that I would support her with whatever she decided, but shared that I would prefer to continue playing. René walked up to the net and I followed her. She explained her feelings to Dieter and Tony, but ultimately she decided to continue playing.
We lost that first game 11-6.
We switched sides for the second game. We were down but went on a run and came back, 8-9, down by one point. They scored another point, taking the score 8-10. Their match-winning shot came on Dieter’s forehand power drive that went high… right at my face. I was in “full self defense mode.” I just had time to start to duck and bring my paddle to my face. The ball ricocheted off my paddle and flew wildly out of bounds. Dieter apologized and was concerned, but I just laughed it off. “It’s just part of the game.” And with that, our day was done. 8-11 was the final score.
BRONZE MEDAL MATCH
Well, our day wasn’t done after all. René and I thought we were done but it turned out we needed to play one more match to determine the bronze medal. Rather than playing two out of three games we all agreed to Rick’s suggestion that we play one game to 15. René was all ready to simply call it a day, but we played the game anyway. It was a pretty lopsided game that under normal conditions would have been a very competitive game. I think it was 15-5 or something not too different.
AFTER
We got the “winningest” local teams in Advanced-Intermediate together for a photo.
What was fun was that two of my students took a bronze medal in the Beginners category! Congrats to Abby and Flannery! Nice work! (It seems that they learned something in my Beginner class and my Advanced Beginner class!)
Lunch
Once the tournament was over, Rick and René wanted to grab something to eat so we all went the Margaritaville restaurant in Capitola. They split a full order of nachos with some custom tweaks, Jason got fish tacos, and I ordered a half serving of nachos. We had a good time chatting and afterwards we went to Polar Bear Ice Cream and got ice cream cones. The height of decadence!
Rick is drove us back to his house and then from there I gave Jason a ride home. Then I headed home myself and was parking at 4:28 p.m. That was a big chunk of my day, but fun.
Analysis
There were times when I was not coming to the middle enough and leaving enough of a gap to be exploited by opponents. This is something I need to work on so it’s always covered, not just most of the time.
Later, in the playoffs, I was hitting some drop shots into the net or hitting my drops too high. Too high is always better, but the result is the same if the ball is simply knocked off the court at an angle for a winner. “The hardest shot in pickleball.” Right?
Number of days on a court: 723
Number of total hours: 2,977
Number of paid coaching hours: 81.5
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