Tuesday, April 15, 2025 (Court Day #790)

I changed and left work as quickly as I could. It was 59°F when I arrived in Scotts Valley and the entire sky was shrouded in clouds from horizon to horizon.

Skypark

Arrived at Skypark at 6:40 p.m. I walked in alongside a shorter guy I’d seen once or twice before named Eric. The signup board was not hung and there was one vacant court with no net set up on it yet. I retrieved a net bag from the bin then after we set up a net, we started warming up. A few minutes later, we were joined by a couple of other players who had just come out of a game. A taller young fellow named John—whom I don’t believe that I’ve seen before—and Jens who is somewhat of a regular. I was paired with a weaker Jens and for every mistake I would make, he would make four. As expected with that ratio, we lost that first game. Jens is a really nice guy, just not a strong player. I really wanted to get out of that combination to play with some stronger players, but when they asked for a rematch my nice guy gene kicked in and I played with them for one more game.

In the next game, my third of the night, I played with Matt against Paul and another player who is almost as good. I was not playing my best in that game. I think Matt and I lost, but we did make a game of it. That loss was mostly on me. Sometimes it’s hard to adjust from a lax game to a strong game.

Better Games

In a nice turn of events, we had four strong players. I’ll take it every time! I teamed up with Marco against Paul and Matt.

First game was close but Marco and I won. I was making even more errors in that game, but as the game went on, I adjusted and tightened up my game.

We had a rematch and this time Marco and I won by a wider margin. I was playing better in that one.

We played one last game as a group and Marco and I won that game as well.

By this time it was 8:20 p.m and the lights should be clicking off soon. Aaron and I played against little Scott and Paul. Aaron and I took a good lead but then Scott and Paul went on a run and Aaron and I were down 4-8. But it was our turn for a run and we were ahead and serving 9-4 when the lights clicked off a few minutes after 8:30 p.m.

And?

I started out a little sloppy tonight, but then I started to tighten my game up. While it was only in the high 50s, I was still sweating, and overall it felt comfortable.

College Championships

This year’s pickleball college national championship had 64 schools involved. The first such championship was in 2022 which had only about 150 players, but this year it’s closer to 600. It’s nice to see.

Number of days on a court: 790
Number of total hours: 3,123.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 129.5

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