Thursday, November 7, 2024 (Court Day #737)

It didn’t feel chilly today, however, is definitely chilly as I drove to Scotts Valley. The temperature had dropped down to 55°F.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be driving to the Bay Area and picking up my son Nicholas in Santa Clara on my way to San Carlos. It’ll be the night of blacklight pickleball. Tonight, however, would just be black night, not black light!

Skypark

I was walking into the courts at exactly 6:40 p.m.

First Game

My first game was with the young fellow named Sam—who I played with before—against Mo and Jax. I went into the game with no warm-up and I definitely was not dialed in, however, my play did improve over the course of the game. We did have some pretty good rallies. There weren’t any dink battles—there were crazy firefights, with overhead slams, drives some midcourt, a lot of hard hits. It was a fun unusual game. Sam and I didn’t win, but we did make a game of it.

Jay strikes a pose!

Mauricio and I played against Jay and Dr. David. It was a closer game than I was expecting until I started playing really well and Mauricio and I broke the game open and ran away with it.

Jay, Manda, Mauricio

The next three games were Jay and myself against Manda and Mauricio. In my estimation, I would say Jay and I were both the strongest players. And while we did win all three games against Mauricio and Amanda, they kept the game pretty close. Jay and I were making similar errors. For instance, on one rally, I hit the ball wide of the court to the left and a couple rallies later, Jay hit the ball wide to the right. And in another, off a drop shot, Jay dinked the ball into the net. A few rallies later, off of a drop shot, I dinked the ball into the net.

My last game finished up with not enough time for another before the lights clicked off at 8:30 p.m. I started breaking down a nets and Jay joined in.  We took down another and we called it a night. 

Number of days on a court: 737
Number of total hours: 3,007.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 90.5

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