Thursday, April 10, 2025 (Court Day #788)

It was an absolutely beautiful day today in here in Santa Cruz County. Sunny and warm. Today would be my first day back at it after playing on Bainbridge Island a week ago. In the meantime, was a lot of work at a trade show.

Classes

I was sending out some informational messages to my students for the first meeting of my classes, which will be this coming Sunday. In the process, I discovered that one of my Advanced Beginner students had dropped out this week. Somehow, I wasn’t notified. That only gives me three days to try and fill that spot. Yes, sure, it is better than finding out on the day of the class! Also annoying, my beginner class still has three spots open. Usually my classes fill up. Some work to do!

After Work

The sun was still up, although it was getting low enough in the sky to get blocked by the tree line up on the hillside. I left the pair of sunglasses I typically wear for pickleball at my house. I do keep a pair of sunglasses in my car, but since they aren’t designed for athletics, they’re a bit more likely to fall off.

I arrived at Skypark at  6:45 p.m. It was a very warm evening. Even with me just wearing a T-shirt and shorts, I was sweating by the time that I left. Driving home later, it was 63°F. That’s downright toasty!

Tonight was the light crowd, but parking was very full. It was very difficult to get into strong games. I spent the entire evening with either one other strong player or two strong players but no game where all four players could get the ball back over the net consistently. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. But just that they were 3.0 level players and the rallies were short.

My last game was with a 2.5/3.0 young woman, whom I’d never seen before tonight, against David and Minori. I noticed that they were hitting a lot of balls to me… they wanted to keep the rallies going! 

We finished that last game a few minutes before the lights clicked off at 8:30 p.m. Then it was time to head home. Nothing really of note tonight.

Blowing On Balls?

A video popped up. This is the first time that I’ve seen this strategically. The player on the far right side, taps the ball up then imparts a strong push with his breath to throw his opponent’s timing off… not that it was an winner, but still unique…
https://www.instagram.com/p/DH_PVXPxKpR

Pro Split

The big news in the pickleball landscape is the surprising split of the very successful pro team of Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau. The story goes that ALW will be pairing with Anna Bright the rest of this year. ALW and Parenteau won a whole lot of tournaments but they did lose a few. It sounds like ALW wasn’t satisfied and wants to try with another partner.

Comedic Pickleball

I missed this earlier, but there’s this comedian, Chelsea Handler, who has a Netflix special that came out last month. She makes fun of pickleball. I guess some people find this funny… heck, I can appreciate a good pickleball joke, but this is just crude and lame:
https://www.instagram.com/netflixisajoke/reel/DGL4WHjC_Mz/?hl=en

Then there’s this guy:
https://www.facebook.com/ZaneLamprey/videos/dont-mess-with-the-pickleballers-/1183431303364898/
The first line about breweries was funny, not so much the rest.

I’m waiting for some truly funny pickleball comedy.

Number of days on a court: 788
Number of total hours: 3,118.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 126.5

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