Saturday, December 7, 2024 (Court Day #746)
An orthopedic surgeon, Nick Pappas MD, posted a tongue-in-cheek pickleball-related video yesterday about what not to get your parents for Christmas:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDKE-vCp8FV
And to nip negative comments in the bud, he included this:
“…this post is meant to be humorous. Some of you will take this way too seriously in the comments. If you like pickleball and already play it, don’t let me get in your way!”
If your parents are 80-90 years old, I’d probably agree with him in most cases. Even then, I’ve played against players over 80. And I’ve heard of players in their 90s, but I have yet to see one in person.
Holiday Parade
We—and by “we”, I mean the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club—participated for the third year in a row in the Santa Cruz Downtown Holiday Parade. Like the previous two years, I spearheaded our involvement.
Unlike the last two years—when it was overcast and either raining or threatening—today, it was sunny and eventually warm enough to wear just a T-shirt and shorts. I was overdressed later on in the morning.
I signed in our group at the organizers tent shortly before the deadline of 9:30 a.m. The parade would start at 10:00 a.m. but we were group #41, meaning we had 40 groups that would need to mobilize before we entered the parade route ourselves.
We had fewer participants this year—merely 9—but we had good dedicated core. (There was an invitation extended to the local players to join a private pickleball party at the same time as the parade, so we lost some players to that, unfortunately.)
We chatted about various pickleball-related things. Sean McElhaney was talking about how maybe the abandoned tennis courts in the Pogonip could be good for pickleball, though parking would be an issue. Players would have to walk about half a mile uphill to get to courts. Plus a portable toilet would need to be installed. The tough thing about the Pogonip is that making any changes would require battling a portion of local residents who want it used as little as possible. The ironic thing, is that currently, the open space is a haven for homeless people who set up camps, set fires, leave trash, and otherwise disturb the wildlife. Having players keeping an eye on things might be a good thing in the long run and reduce the number of sweeps that the police have to do to clean the area up.
Once the Second Harvest Food Bank truck started moving, we slipped in behind, in front of the loud chanting Girl Scouts. Fortunately, once we added the larger proscribed space between groups, I didn’t notice any chanting after that.
Karin and Mark Maggipinto carried the banner for us. We offered to swap with them, but they decided to take it the whole way. (I didn’t find out until a few days later that Karin is Larry “Lars” Yien’s sister!)
I’d be lying if I said we didn’t temporarily lose some balls into the crowd.
At one point, two of us gave our paddles to two boys from the sidewalk who asked to jump in. They hit a few shots before we had to shuffle off again. That was a new thing. Fun!
When we finished the parade, I checked the time. 11:24 a.m. Almost exactly two hours after I arrived. Not bad.
Parade Video
The Downtown Association live-streamed the parade on Facebook (we are at 1 hours and 5 minutes in the timeline), it also appeared on a local cable station, and is now immortalized on Youtube as well at 1 hour, 7 seconds. (You are welcome to figure out why there is a 5 minute difference!)
Number of days on a court: 746
Number of total hours: 3,029
Number of paid coaching hours: 99.5
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