Thursday, August 28, 2025 (Court Day #845)

Today was one of the three days for club member training hosted by Santa Cruz Pickleball Club. I had offered to help Larry Yien teach his class today, which was intended for 3.0 to 3.5 level players.

Helpers were planning to arrive at 4 p.m. and I arrived early with 10 minutes to spare. Shawnte and his mom Carol were already there and they were warming up with Mark Dettle on the other side of the net. I joined on Mark’s side and warmed up against Shawnte.

We drilled about 10 minutes then played a quick game—Mark and I teamed up—before we started gathering in preparation for the clinic start.

Training Session

About a year and a half ago, Larry decided to start going by “Lars” instead. I am strong creature of habit and still call him Larry.

Larry called the group together and explained his first drill, which was a game that is played normally until one of the balls ends up in the kitchen. From then on, balls can only land in the kitchen otherwise it is a fault. (This is actually a drill I have used in my own intermediate classes.)

The second drill was playing a game, but each time a player hit the ball into the net, not only did they lose the rally, their team’s score reset to zero. So it was a pretty hefty penalty for hitting the ball into the net. This provides a strong incentive to respect the net. (This was also a drill I have previously used in my intermediate classes.)

The next drill was that the receiving team could not let the ball land in their kitchen, otherwise they would lose the rally. But I found with my group that the serving team did not take advantage of this modification and merely tended to drive every shot instead of dinking or dropping into the kitchen. Opportunity lost. I don’t know if this was the case on the other courts.

Then there was one last game drill, which escapes my memory.

Games

We finished up at 6 p.m. Nearly 20 people, who are waiting to play outside the courts, came in.

I got into a game with Mark Dettle against Matt, my former employee, and James. Mark was making a lot of errors but I was able to make up for it and we won regardless. 

We had a rematch but this time Mark stepped out and Jackie was my partner. It was a similar scenario where we won by a good margin.

Larry was not interested in playing a game so I got James to join me in playing against Conner McNicholas and his dad Jim. It would be a good challenge. James and I played two games against them and lost both.  I could tell that Connor was making an effort and hit balls to me and keep the rallies going. 

James needed to go so I convinced one of the two young guys who was there to join me as a partner. That turned out to be Xander with the encouragement of his friend, Gunner. Zander actually turned out to be a decent 3.5 level player.

By 7:30 p.m., it was time to go. 

Friday, August 29, 2025 (No Play)

Senior pickleball pro and pickleball historian, Jennifer Lucore, posted on Instagram about a documentary premiere tonight. They say it was a 2-year project.

Here’s a link to “The Power of Pickleball” at the Internet Movie Database:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38047580

The Pickleball Channel did a little video about the premiere:

Apparently, it’s not available for the public to watch yet aside from planned very select theaters. I think the filmmaker is trying to find a deal with an outlet to stream it… Netflix, Apple, Amazon Prime, etc.

Number of days on a court: 845
Number of total hours: 3,264.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 161.5

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