Saturday, February 8, 2025 (Court Day #770)

I woke up a little stiff and with the Chamisal event south of Salinas today, I took two ibuprofen.

I arrived at Dave Cox’s house at 11:09 a.m. At his invitation, I would be his teammate for the day. Dave had offered to drive, so after moving my gear to his car, we headed to Live Oak to drop off his dog, Brewster, then we were on our way to the south end of the Monterey Bay.

About 45 minutes later, now in relatively-rural Corral de Terra, California, a parking attendant in a fluorescent vest directed us to a spot. It was a touch chilly but with the sun out, I decided to leave my sweatshirt in the car.

Parked nearby was a car which I pointed out to Dave. It sported a “Pickleball Hoe” license-plate holder. Funny!

As we walked into the Chamisal Tennis & Fitness Club, I checked the time. 12:07 p.m. We’d have plenty of time to warm up.

Dave called out to a few people, including Vi, the tennis/pickleball instructor from Monterey County whom I played against in a gold medal match about six years ago. Dave is a former member of the Chamisal club, so it was not a surprise to me that he knows people there.

Registration

Dave and I got in line at the registration table and we checked in. I also forked over my $25 payment. Pretty cheap for a tournament these days.

Warm Up

To warm up, Dave and I split a court down the middle with Vi and his female partner, a woman Dave knew.

After Dave and I had a volley firefight at the net, Vi blurted out: “I’m glad you guys aren’t playing in 4.5!” Though I suspect Vi could have easily handled whatever we were showing!

We warmed up for about half an hour and after Vi and his partner had left, we drilled crosscourt dinks.

Announcements

About 1:10 pm, they started announcements. They pushed repeatedly—and comically—that “Love Dinks” was a social event. No medals, no tracking scores. Well, that changes things a bit. I didn’t know that, I was expecting a more formal tournament. Of course, I’d keep track anyway. I’m big into numbers. And teams will still be wanting to win.

Speaking of, Mike said there were 210 players participating and 268 signed up, meaning some were on the waiting list.

We’d be playing to 15, win by 1, switching sides mid-game. The grouping sheets were taped up on the window of the main building. Dave and I would be in 4.0, Bracket C. We’d be on Court #6, which was broken up into pickleball courts 6A, 6B, 6C, and 6D. (Later, it got changed so we’d on play on 6D, and also on 7A and 7B.)

Round 1

We’d be playing against Brian and Michelle Ford. I recognized Brian. I was pretty sure I’d played against him before.

It was looking good, we were ahead 12-9. Not to throw my partner under the bus, since I wasn’t perfect myself, Dave made a few mistakes in a row. We lost 13-15. It was a close and fun match.

Round 2

For our next game, we were over in the Court 7 side. We played against Vern and Michelle Russell. (Two Michelles in a row!) Vern is a big, stocky guy whom you’d be afraid of if he wasn’t such a nice guy. Vern was unquestionably a stronger player than Michelle. Mid-game, I started making an effort to intentionally hit to him rather than treating them equally. Even then, we won 15-8.

Round 3

This was a case of never judging your opponent by appearances. We played against Sue Brown and Kaustabh “KD” Duorah. Neither of them are tall and neither appeared to be overly athletic. But both were solid players. We lost 13-15. I felt we should have won that one.

Round 4

This was a the game of the day. We played against Jackie Signor and Geogiana “George” Foletta. (Jackie is on the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board with me.) As the game went on and others ended, we collected more and more observers lining the fence. Dave and I built a hard-earned big lead. After I won a hands battle against George, Dave complimented me, “She has fast hands, but you have the hands to handle it.” We were ahead something like 8-3, though I don’t recall the exact score.

Once we switched sides and we were now facing the sun, aside from targeting Dave, they started lobbing us over and over. Lobbing and using the environment is part of the game, but I will admit that I was starting to get annoyed when we had to repeatedly look up into the sun to deal with them. Jackie and George probably won half a dozen rallies when Dave or I couldn’t see a particular lob. (I understand why Anna Leigh Waters’ mom lost her temper a year or two ago when her opponents lobbed them over and over and she had to look into the sun every time.) I remember one that I reached up and ended up hitting the ball into our side of the net. It was frustrating. It was a strategy that we could’ve employed ourselves when the sun was at our backs, but we had chosen not to.

In the end, I’m glad we still managed to close out that game and win, 15-13. It was a super fun and challenging game… and not just the lobs and sun!

Round 5

Our next opponents were quite different, Debbie and Brett Stocksick. They had watched our last match and explained to us that we were on a different level than them. (I’m not sure why they ended up in a 4.0 bracket.) Nonetheless, Dave and I found ourselves down 0-2. We were a bit fried from that last game and had no downtime before rolling into this match. But their lead didn’t last. We quickly scored a series of points then started taking it easier on them. Even with that, we won 15-3.

Round 6

For this round, we had a bye. Being that the matches were staggered and we didn’t have to wait for a specific time to start, we merely had to wait for our opponents to be ready to play us and it wasn’t too long. We just had to deal with getting stiff and cold.

Round 7

Next up were McKayla and Matt Deal. We were up 8-4 and we appeared to be cruising to an easy win.

After I knocked a speedup at the net from McKayla back with an off-angle passing shot down the sideline for a winner, Matt asked me, “Pingpong?” I responded, “No, just eight years of pickleball.” I had gotten very low and hit a scorpion-style shot.

Something that I had not expected, they came back and tied up the game 14-14. Dave then asked them if they wanted to play win by 2, instead of 1. They agreed. Smart, since it gave them an extra point to try and win, but we finished it off with a 16-14 win.

It was just before 4 p.m. when we wrapped up that last game.

Results

Not everyone was filling out the master sheet with the scores, so it was hard to tell how we did overall. We’d have either likely ended up with silver or maybe bronze out of the seven teams. But again, “social event”.

Food

Dave and I ordered a burger and french fries in the restaurant to split. While standing in line, a random woman asked if I could show her the paddle I’d been using. I turned around and looked in my backpack. Bizarre. That paddle was gone! I racked my brain. No, I’m sure I put it in my backpack. It made no sense. After what seemed like an eternity, I got a tap on the shoulder. My paddle. Manda had helped himself to yank my chain! Stinker! He’d come down from Santa Cruz and played with Christine, a regular at Brommer Park back home. They played in the 3.0 bracket. I figured they would have been in the 3.5. *shrug*

Dave and I headed out at 4:42. I needed to get back to Santa Cruz for a family dinner at 6 p.m. (The crazy thing was I didn’t get over to my parents’ house until 6:41 p.m. And they were already opening birthday presents. My family, which is notoriously late to start dinner, ate at 5 p.m.! Ah, well, I still got to see my brother Mike and his daughters—they all live out of state.)

Overall, a fun day.

Number of days on a court: 770
Number of total hours: 3,086.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 111.5

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