Tuesday, March 18, 2025 (Court Day #782)

An ad popped up on Facebook for the new Joola Agassi pickleball paddle. One of the selling points was that this paddle is “NFC Chip Enabled”. Really? What’s crazy is Joola introduced this NFC thing nearly a year ago and I’m only now hearing about it!

The NFC chip allows you to register the paddle with your mobile phone. I suspect that this is done as an attempt to prevent—or at least raise awareness about—counterfeit paddles. This was the only video about counterfeit Joola paddles that I could find after searching Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Google served up this:
https://www.tiktok.com/@hdsport838838883/video/7482681457173875988

Work

With one of the two national art materials wholesale distributors/importers teetering on bankruptcy, there’s massive upheaval going on in my work universe. I spent more time on the phone at work in the last two days than I did the entirety of the week before. One phone call yesterday was even an hour and a half talking to another retailer. The international trade show will be in a few weeks in Seattle. If you’d guess that the primary discussion in the aisles there will be the failing distributor, you’d be right.

Tonight, after work, I was talking to the owners of a manufacturer for about half an hour. The phone call ended a few minutes after 7 p.m. I then made a very quick change into my pickleball attire. As I was driving to Scotts Valley I realized that my car was almost out of gas, so I made a stop and filled up. Yet more delays.

Skypark

By the time that I got to the Skypark courts, it was already 7:30 p.m., leaving me only about an hour before the lights would go off.

The signup board was out for use. But if it had been really busy earlier, it wasn’t any longer.

Games

There is one court open when I arrived, and I quickly got into a game with Manda as my partner against Mark Dettle and Christine. I had four or five shots with Mark at the net in a very brief warm-up, then the game started. I made some mistakes and Manda made one or two and we found ourselves down 0–4. However, that wouldn’t stand long. Manda and I dialed things in and took the win.

My next game was with the young fellow with a beard named Shane. With unknown players, their skill level is a mystery until you get them on the court. Most of the time they are nothing to write home about. But Shane, he’s a pretty good player. I put him at a 3.5. In any case, thinking that Shane was a relatively new player, I teamed up with him against Mark and Christine. That was probably the worst possible combination. Shane and I obliterated Mark and Christine. They may have scored three points in that game… maybe.

With Shane proving to be a worthy adversary, I teamed up with lefty Adam against Shane and Paul Winn. We lost that one. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but on some crosscourt dinks, I’ve been speeding up shots from far too low, with the ball ending up in the net. I guess the good news is I only hit the white tape of the net once tonight. Adam and I lost the first game 11–6.

We had a rematch and this time Adam and I won 12–10.

All Done

And that was a wrap.

I took down the two rolling net fundraising signs I had posted on Thursday last week. The GoFundMe effort was wildly successful, with us raising nearly $3,500 in 2-3 days for new heavy-duty rolling nets for Skypark.

With that, I headed home.

Number of days on a court: 782
Number of total hours: 3,107
Number of paid coaching hours: 123.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.