2026 Holiday Parade, USAP/DUPR, A Pickleball Christmas

Tuesday, December 2, 2025 (Court Day #877)

I was hoping to leave right at 6 p.m. from work as I had told my staff that I would, but it turned into 20 minutes after that.

Jackie, one of our SCPC board members, said that somebody told her that the newly resurfaced courts at Skypark were already bubbling and cracking in spots. Given how poor the communication was between the City of Scotts Valley and the contractor, and how long it took for the contractor to complete the work, I won’t say that I’m shocked that there is some issue. Although, I am slightly surprised that it happened this quickly. It hasn’t even been three months since the courts reopened.

Skypark

When I got to Skypark, it was dark and a chilly 54°F evening. I asked someone about the bubbles and he pointed to the first court, nearest the gate. Though I couldn’t see anything from my advantage point off the court and I didn’t get the opportunity to inspect it closer later.

First Game

Jens and I played against Alex and Manda. I played quite well, I missed no more than three of my shots that whole game. We lost 11-6. Jens apologized to me afterward for his errors. No need, of course.

David, Alex, Mike

David L. showed up and I convinced him to join us for a game. Alex and I played against David and big Mike. It was David’s first game so he wasn’t completely warmed up. Alex and I won 11–6.

We played a rematch, but this time we lost 8–11.

We played a rubber match and, this time, I was no longer playing as well and Alex and I lost 3–11. There is no question that I shoulder most of the blame for errors in this game. It was not a good performance on my part.

Frabrizio and Me

Frabrizio arrived and he and I teamed up against David and Alex. I knew this would be the toughest combination for me to play against. Sure enough, Fabrizio and I lost the first game by a significant margin.

We had a rematch and we lost 0–11. It was painful.

We played again and lost again. I was continuing to not play well.

David and Me

I wanted to play again with this combination, but David wanted to mix it up. David and I played against Frabrizio and Alex. David started out a little rough, making mistakes. I suspect that he was trying too hard. We found ourselves down 0–3. But then we came back and went on to win.

Alex and Me

We mixed it up. I played with Alex against David and Frabrizio. We were playing well and found ourselves up 6–3. But they went on a run and took the lead at 7–6. During this game we had an incredibly long rally. It was one of the longest ones of my life. They had to have been at least 20 shots between the dink battle, Alex’s lob over Frabrizio‘s head, their battle to get back to the net, another dink battle—it was great! We just scored two points and tied up the game 8–8 with Alex continuing his first server, with the lights clicked out at 8:30 p.m. Such a bummer. That was a fun game, I was finally starting to get really warmed up!

As I drove home, my thermometer read 50°F. It’s December now and it’s starting to get noticeably cooler in the evenings. It’s also not heating up as much during the days, generally staying in the low 60s.

Overall, I was not happy with my play tonight. I hit at least three or four outballs. There are a few shots where the lights affected me and I had trouble judging the distance of the ball.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025 (No Play)

The Lifetime Network has jumped on the bandwagon and has a TV movie coming out called “A Pickleball Christmas“. Here’s a trailer that’s been posted on social media:
https://youtube.com/shorts/u13RHAkHQoo

What’s amusing to me about the trailer is the fact that for the event that they are covering, they have three reporters, including two sideline commentators, but the court looks like it’s in some small neighborhood park with a mere handful of fans. It doesn’t make any sense.

Playing Against Kyle Yates

Someone posted a comical video about what it’s like to play against Kyle Yates, former #1 doubles player in the world:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRUx2ebjrhf

Carmel Ban

There’s been a lot in the news, at least in the pickleball world, about Carmel banning pickleball in their city. Carmel is a little bit over one hour south of me. I’ve never played down there, but I can sympathize with the local players. The city didn’t even give the players as a chance to police themselves to use quiet paddles and quiet balls to play and keep the neighbors happy. Instead, they voted to simply ban the sport altogether:
https://www.ksbw.com/article/carmel-pickleball-misdemeanor-offense-california/69596554

Rohnert Park Again

Here’s another video providing more insight into the new pickleball complex in a former movie theater a couple hours north:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR2O6bYCUIK

Friday, December 5, 2025 (No Play)

DUPR announced today that they are now the official rating system for USA pickleball.

DUPR and USA Pickleball Announce Landmark Agreement to Adopt DUPR as Official Exclusive Rating System

I think this is a great thing. UTR-P was announced as the rating system for USAP in April last year. It was a new thing and it always seemed to be kind of forced and cumbersome. Now, we have a system that is in common use, DUPR.

Ben Johns

Here’s a good breakdown of a game where Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio lose to Hayden Patriquin and Federico Staksrud in upset at PPA Worlds, 11-8, 11-5.

Saturday, December 6, 2025 (No Play)

Today was the day of the annual Santa Cruz Downtown Holiday Parade. I got the pickleball club involved for the first time a few years ago. As the USA Pickleball Ambassador for Santa Cruz County, it’s my role to increase the profile of pickleball and the parade seems a really good way to do that.

I told club members to show up by 9:45 a.m., some came earlier, some came a bit later. We used to be in the last third of the parade, but this year, we were in the middle. With the parade starting at 10 a.m., I figured we wouldn’t start any sooner than about 10:15 a.m.

There was a bit of an adventure Sean M. was supposed to bring the mini parade net and the banner, but his girlfriend needed to be taken to the ER after a slip and so Jeff H. had to race over and picked them up. Fortunately, Jeff made it with a comfortable margin but for a bit of time, we were worried we’d have no banner and nothing to hit a ball over!

We got a bystander to take a photo shortly before we were to head onto the parade route.

As the SCPC organizer, I was disappointed to see over 100 roller derby kids, but out of about 500 pickleball club members, we had just 11 show up… 2.2%. I heard that Skypark was busy with players in games but not supporting the club. Just how impressive would it be to get 50 pickleball players out showing the need for more courts?