Sunday, February 9, 2025 (Court Day #771)
We had my nieces and brother in town from out of state to celebrate my dad’s birthday, my nephew’s birthday, and my niece’s birthday. My son Nicholas also drove down from Santa Clara for the party last night.
This morning, at the last minute, I figured I’d ask Nicholas to join me. He responded, “Where are you going to play?” When I told him Brommer, he said he was going to stay home. So I offered we go to Derby Park instead. I hadn’t been to club play at Derby since last August when I relinquished my role as a volunteer club site coordinator after nearly 7 years.
Derby Park
Nicholas and I arrived just before 10:30 a.m. The neighborhood was full of cars, so we found a spot a block away.
Once in the park and at the courts, we could see that things were hopping.
Stan Rathbone had started a box in red on the court board and I added Nicholas and myself. Ted Benhari jumped on later. I figured Nicholas is probably approaching their skill level and I could take up the rest of the slack.
First Game
Nicholas and I teamed up and found ourselves down quickly to Stan and Ted. We had some warming up to do! It was already 4-8 and so we had to score at least 7 before they scored another 3 points or we’d be off the court with a loss and back into the queue. But we were starting to get dialed in. We went on an unanswered 7 point run and closed out the game 11-8.
It was busy, so there’d be a little time for our next game. Nicholas and I volleyed a ball back and forth near the grass while we waited.
Next
We stuck together and played Brian and Manda. Manda was targeting Nicholas and Nicholas was getting himself into trouble by running through his drop shots and hitting them into the net. We lost that one 6-11.
Our next game was also against Manda, but he was partnered with a tall, middle-aged guy named Marin. This was a better combination for us and we won on 11-4.
There was a tall guy named Aaron who teamed up with Manda against myself and Nicholas. We lost by a 2:1 margin.
Frabrizio
Frabrizio teamed up with Aaron and played against Nicholas and myself. The two of us got clobbered.
Improvement
I played with Nicholas about a month or so ago, but he is much improved from the last time I played with him at Derby Park. Nicholas was better than half the players there. He only had trouble when he faced the strongest players. I’d put Nicholas as a strong 3.0 at this point. (I’m talking DUPR or the old UTPR, not the new UTR-P system.)
We left Derby Park at about 1:10 p.m.
The conclusion we came to was the Nicholas needs to work on getting set before making his drop shots. He was hitting a number of them into the net but he started doing better after I pointed it out to him.
Faces
It was nice seeing some of the familiar faces at Derby whom I had not seen for half a year. I had a few people make the effort to come up and say hello. Ted, Karl, and others.
Colleen and Sycha were there although I didn’t get a chance to play with either of them. Those two, I occasionally see at Brommer Park.
Nantucket Ban?
Last month, there was talk about Nantucket banning pickleball due to noise complaints. Nantucket is an island off the mainland portion of Massachusetts. Apparently, it’s not intended as a complete ban, though it’s written that way… here’s an article about it:
https://www.masslive.com/capecod/2025/01/nantucket-official-clarifies-pickleball-isnt-banned-on-the-island.html
Number of days on a court: 771
Number of total hours: 3,089
Number of paid coaching hours: 111.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
Leave a Reply