Friday, November 8, 2024 (Court Day #738)
Tonight was the night that my sister-in-law Liz had invited my son Nicholas and me to join her and her husband Steve at a blacklight pickleball event in the Bay Area.
I left work early at 4:15 p.m. then stopped in Scotts Valley to get badly-needed gasoline. I arrived in Santa Clara to pick up Nicholas a few minutes after 5:30 p.m. From there, we headed together to San Carlos and had dinner with Liz and Steve right after we arrived at 6:15 p.m. (They were ready for us!) Traffic has been heavy in spots as expected for rush-hour. I changed into my pickleball attire. After chili and cornbread, we hopped into their car and drove over to the San Carlos Youth Center and arrived 5 or 10 minutes before the 7 p.m.start time.
The gym had about half a dozen LED blacklights on the floor around the perimeter of the gym and the organizers had battery operated Christmas lights hung over the nets. They were a little bit too frugal with regard to marking out the court lines—from one end of the court to the other, you couldn’t really tell where the baseline was other than from where your opponent was standing.
Originally, based on the instructions that Liz had shared in advance, they had planned for games to go to 8, win by 2. However, at the last minute, they decided to simply limit the games to seven minutes instead using the two large timers mounted high at each end of the gym. And that’s how it went. Seven minutes on, seven minutes off, seven minutes on, etc. over the course of the two hours that we were there.
Each ball had a tiny battery-operated LED light which was mounted into one of the holes. I was expecting the ball to wobble and bound oddly as a result, but the effect was insignificant.
To keep the games the most balanced, I played with Liz against Steve and Nicholas. At one point, Liz suggested that we mix up with other people which I think would have been fun, though Steve wanted to stick together, so we did.
I pointed out to the young staff that the San Carlos Youth Center there has the same initials as the Santa Cruz Yacht Club—SCYC. They were amused. They told me they keep their boats in the attic. They also had some cupcakes out, I helped myself to one!
Nicholas has developed a pretty good reliable deep fast serve. That’s nice to see. He also had a speedup from the kitchen that hit me in the chest. Boy, how to make a dad proud! I did not expect that! Ha ha!
From what I could gather, I didn’t see any players over a 3.0 skill level. That said, I wasn’t watching all the games and playing in the dark does change the equation fair amount. I don’t know if I would have looked like a 4.0 to an observer!
Once done, we headed back to Liz’s for some brownies and milk, then I dropped Nicholas back at his apartment. I was home by 10:45 p.m. 6 1/2 hours start to finish.
It was a fun experience, mostly due to the novelty and the fact that it was with family.
(Given the extra time waiting, I’m going to count the court time as 1 1/2 hours instead of the 2 hours we were there.)
Number of days on a court: 738
Number of total hours: 3,009
Number of paid coaching hours: 90.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
Leave a Reply