Saturday, September 6, 2025 (Court Day #848)
This weekend, my dad wanted me to drive him, my mom, and my younger brother Matt, up to my dad’s 65th high school reunion up in Yreka, near the California-Oregon border.
Yesterday, on the long drive, I reached out to a couple of players local to the Yreka area, Snow and also Ken. I had interacted with them a few years ago when my dad opted to go to a previous reunion. Snow got back to me pretty quickly and said there’d be play in Montague—about 10 minutes east of Yreka—at 9 a.m. I asked if anyone shows up at earlier and she said sometimes people are there half an hour earlier.
When we got to the motel last night, there were contract firefighters hanging out all over the place… the parking lot, the stairs, outside of open doors, near their rigs parked in the lot. You could smell the smoke in the air. It wasn’t clear how close the wildfire was, but it was far enough away to not be dangerous.
Today
This morning, as I drove to Montague from the motel, I was wondering if the hazy smoke would be a problem playing, but that turned out to be a non-issue.
I arrived at the courts behind the Montague city hall at 8:30am. I took a stab at where to park, then navigated my way through a gate and into the courts.
I walked up and introduced myself to a group who were sitting in portable chairs. They said Snow wasn’t there but her partner John was, playing in a game.
Pretty soon, I was into a game myself with Jeff as my partner against Larry and Judy.
Larry stepped out after that game and he was replaced by Jerry. Jerry was the strongest player that I faced today. I’d place him as a high 3.0 level player.
Snow arrived about half an hour later.
I cycled through a few games, including meeting another guy named Jeff, and then people started leaving.
With only three of us left, I played a few games against Snow and John with me covering the entirety of one side of the net by myself. I won. Then won again.
After we finished at 11 a.m., we sat and chatted for another 15 minutes or so. Snow said there is a really good player in Montague who was not there today, unfortunately.
Snow wanted to get on with her day, so the three of us when our separate ways.
Reunion
I got back to the motel and got my parents to my dad’s reunion luncheon at noon.
When I picked up my first parents a little after 4pm, they were talking to “Sis” and “Mimi”. It turns out Mimi plays tennis twice a week and also plays “pickle for fun”. She says she gets mad if she loses at tennis, but not if she loses in pickleball. I rattled off a bunch of names of players from this morning, and Mimi was familiar with them.
Pickleball Strategy
One question that many—including me—wonder about is when winning the toss at the beginning of a tournament match, is “serve or side?”. Here is a good article—backed with data—discussing this topic:
https://pickleballunion.com/pickleball-serve-order-strategy/
Sunday, September 7, 2025 (No Play)
Today was the 6+ hour drive back to Santa Cruz from Yreka. I won’t miss the smoke permeating the air. And while the Montague people were very friendly, it’ll be nice to be back to stronger competition.
Someone shared a photo of continuing resurfacing work on the Skypark courts. The contractor has been working on it for nearly three weeks now.
I spent part of the evening watching the Raiders beat the Patriots in the first game of the regular NFL season.
Number of days on a court: 848
Number of total hours: 3,273
Number of paid coaching hours: 161.5
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