Tuesday, August 12, 2025 (Court Day #839)

As of right now, one of my full-time staff is in the middle of a month long vacation. As a result, there hasn’t been a lot of margin for error for staffing at work. So—for example—yesterday, we had our monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. Normally, I would take the morning off from work and play, then sometimes stick around after the board meeting ends around 2 p.m. and play some more. But that was not the case yesterday. I had way too much to do, so I arrived in street clothes for our board meeting yesterday then left immediately after to return to work.

I haven’t played for a week and a half. My right knee has been bothering me, plus I’ve just been overloaded with things demanding my time.

Skypark Unpleasant Surprise

During the pickleball club board meeting yesterday, I received disruptive news via an email message from Allison, the head of Scotts Valley Parks & Rec. She was telling me that I needed to reschedule my two pickleball classes that were supposed to start this coming Sunday. The long-anticipated court resurfacing would be starting on Monday, August 18. In and of itself, that’s a good thing.

The surprising part of her email, was her explaining that the contractor had told her that the repair to the courts might take as long as a month! So this didn’t mean just delaying my August classes by a week… this meant completely rescheduling them for the middle of September! And it also means rescheduling the following series of October classes, which would now overlap with the last week of these newly rescheduled September classes. It’s a royal pain.

It’s now been over 24 hours and I’ve yet to hear anything from the Rec.us people about rescheduling my classes. I did email all my registered students today to tell them about the resurfacing and the conflict with our class. This conflict would affect almost 20 students.

Leaving Work

As I was about to leave work and I was still in the parking lot, leaning into my car and changing my shoes, I heard this voice tell me, “Do you know where I can find a bagpiper?” I turned around and found one of my customers along with her husband—we’ve become friends. We ended up talking for about 20 minutes.

Skypark

I arrived at Skypark at 7:08 p.m. Earlier today, just before noon, I sent out an email blast on behalf of the club, letting all our members know that the courts would be closed for a month. I was expecting it to be busy tonight… and it was.

After not playing for nine days, expected tonight to be a little rough. Plus, I never play as well in gloom or darkness than during daylight.

My first game was against David L. and Matt Babb with me up against a novice player named Charles. Between “rusty me” and Charles inexperience, we got clobbered. It is expected and not a surprise in the slightest. Even if I’d played really well, it’d be unlikely I could have carried our team.

Savannah

Tonight, I got to meet my wife Kristen‘s tennis coach from La Madrona Athletic Club, Savannah. She dabbles in pickleball and is very nice.

I played against Gabe in a couple of games. Gabe is getting more consistent and he’s developing more power—if that is even possible! Gabe has always been a hard hitter. He won a number of rallies by simply overpowering myself and my partner. Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to play against him more. It requires developing some different skills to counter what he’s doing.

Wednesday, August 13, 2025 (No Play)

So, hilarious. “When they ask me about my pickleball partners”:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNTPypGt6nP/

DUPR

Here’s an hour-and-a-half discussion about DUPR and ratings. I haven’t watched it yet, but plan to:

Thursday, August 14, 2025 (No Play)

A funny video short: “When I ask Google how to recover from a pickleball injury and it says…”
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHleU43RCoO/

Number of days on a court: 839
Number of total hours: 3,250
Number of paid coaching hours: 161.5

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