Tuesday, August 19, 2025 (Court Day #842)

With Skypark being resurfaced, any pickleball activities required in an alternate location and that time would be limited since Skypark is still the only public courts in the county with lights for playing at night.

Conner and I had drilled at Derby Park together in the past so I reached out to him to see if he wanted to drill after I was done with work. I figured 6:50 p.m. would be the earliest that I’d be comfortable committing to.

Derby Park

As it turned out, I was there at 6:45 p.m.

There is a full game going on one court and on another court, a couple of women were knocking a ball back-and-forth over the net. Being that I hadn’t put on my knee brace, I walked over to the metal bench where a woman was sitting and slipped on my brace. She asked me if I wanted to hit a ball back-and-forth. I told her they given that my drilling partner wasn’t there yet I’d be happy to. It turned out to the blonde woman’s name was Linda and she was signed up for one of my postponed classes at Skypark. Then after about five minutes, Conner arrived, and I excused myself.

Drilling

Connor and I started with us dinking at the net followed by some transition zone work with one player at the net attacking. Then we did some crosscourt dinking. (Or “crossword thinking” if you believe voice to text!) 

Next Conner and I played two games of 7–11. I was the first baseline player with Conner at the net. With some errant shots on my part, Conner won the first game. Then we switched spots with me at the net and name of the baseline. I was still at 9 points when he got to 7 so he won that one as well. I gave him two easy points in that game by “serving“ too long from the net to get the rally started.

Next, we played three games of skinny singles, I got him with 2-3 body bags. “You’ve definitely got me in the hands battles.”

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 (No Play)

The work on resurfacing the Skypark courts was scheduled to start a couple of days ago and, indeed, they’ve started. Here’s a photo that Matt Babb took.

I’m glad to see progress. It looks like they’ve already started patching cracks. Though I still don’t understand why it would take a month to complete the resurfacing. I suspect that the contractor will not be working on the courts in a dedicated regular fashion.

Pickleball Movie

With pickleball continuing to get more and more popular, it has gotten to be mainstream and now there’s a pickleball-themed comedy called The Dink featuring Bell Stiller coming to—not the big screen, but as is more and more typical these days—the small screen in the form of Apple’s streaming service:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ben-stiller-pickleball-comedy-movie-the-dink-apple-1236346940/

Speaking of funny stuff…

When pickleball opponents realize that you are the weaker player:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNjKt1nSiqK/
(You’ll want the sound on for this one!)

Number of days on a court: 842
Number of total hours: 3,256.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 161.5

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