Monday, October 13, 2025 (Court Day #861)
It was time once again for our monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. Being that it was due to rain this afternoon, my wife asked me to take our dog pepper out on a very long walk. Me, being a good husband, did just that. Happy wife, happy life! I wouldn’t be at club play when it started at 9 a.m., that’s for sure.
Brommer Park
I arrived at Brommer at 10:50 a.m. and as I was expecting, but hoping against, the lot was completely full. I did find a parking spot on the street out in front of the park, and just as I got out of my car, a car that was in the lot left. Figures! I shouldn’t complain, he probably only took a few minutes of of my pickleball play away.
I got into a game with Dave Ryan versus Kim and Mike Leffler. (I’ve only played with Mike once, maybe twice, before. He’s a good player.) Dave and I won 11-8. I made a lot of mistakes. It was my first game. And that was a loooong one too. We had at least four other games end and walk through our court to the gate.
As we walked back to the waiting area, Dave asked to see my paddle. He put his thumbs on the middle and pressed… *crackle*. It had delaminated. I hadn’t noticed. Oops. Time for a new one!
Next up, John Pacholski and I took on Mike Leffler and Trevor. It was a bit of a battle. We ended up losing 7-11.
At 11:57 a.m., I was done. I needed to get to our board meeting.
Board Meeting
With the rain coming in club president March Dettle move the meeting location from the park to his house about five minutes away. The meeting started a little bit after 12:30 p.m. and ran for a couple of hours.
City P&R Commission Meeting
After the board meeting, I went home, ate lunch, showered, went and got gas for my car, and then headed to the City of Santa Cruz Parks & Recreation Commission meeting held in the city council chambers downtown.
I parked then walked a block through the rain to the council chambers.
Once inside, I spotted John Pacholski and took a seat in the last row behind him and Carol Hagen—Shawnté’s mom.
The first topic of discussion for the commission was the removal of what is referred to as a heritage tree, that is, a tree with a trunk over a specified diameter. Removing such a tree requires approval by the city. One never knows, but sometimes these discussions tend to be contentious and take a long time. With the meeting beginning at 4 p.m., by me arriving 20 minutes later, I was fully expecting to catch the tail end of the tree discussion, but instead they had already begun the presentation of the suggested redesign for Harvey West Park.
The presentation continued for another 30 minutes or so, then the commissioners asked questions of the city staff.
One positive thing was that the pickleball courts were listed on the second line, just after “Sports Field Improvements”, near the top in terms of priority of phases.
Public comments weren’t opened up until about 5:10 p.m. when people lined up to speak.
The first to speaker was the president of the swimming group for seniors, who was there to advocate for the swimming pool.
The first pickleball player to speak was John. He said that he’s been coming to speak before the commission for nine years, originally with Dave Allenbaugh, but yet Santa Cruz still does not have any permanent courts.
A couple of other people spoke then club president Mark Dettle went up to the podium and spoke about the need for more pickleball courts.
Not long after, Carol got up and spoke about how pickleball provides exercise and socializing for older community members.
A couple of women got up to speak about installing artificial turf on the Little League fields so they could be used more a year around.
Once they were done, I went up to speak. I gave my name, then I shared that I was a fourth-generation city resident and then my great uncle was mayor at one point. I mentioned that I recently played pickleball in the City of Montague, and with a population of 900, they have four permanent courts and there are lights. I mentioned that Santa Cruz is considered progressive, but we are far behind on the pickleball trend. I told them that the average age in the USA of a pickleball player is 35 and dropping. I finished off my various points. On my way back to my seat, John held up his palm to give me an approving “high five”.
The commission talked a bit more, agreed about the exact verbiage of the motion, then voted to approve the motion, sending the plan to the City Council for approval of the draft. This is only a waypoint and funding is needed and a final plan approved months or even years from now, but things are looking good so far.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025 (No Play)
This popped up on my social media, talking about A.I. analysis of pickleball games and rating a player’s skill level via A.I.:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPwxIQ6kRWt
Now, PBVision is not brand new, in fact, here’s a video from a game I played in at Brommer taken by Conner last year that I’ve shared here before:
https://pb.vision/video/arx5akv0cctn/0/overview
Here’s the article alluded to in the Instagram post:
https://www.speakpickleball.com/reviews/pbvision-review
It seems that the new aspect of this is the rating ability. If it works, it would be pretty nifty. PBVision said they are planning to license video of pro matches and use that to teach the algorithm.
Rain
With rain today, no pickleball play tonight at Skypark.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025 (No Play)
The Pickleball Slam shared a post on Instagram today quoting tennis pro convert to pickleball Genie Bouchard:
“People think there’s an automatic transition from tennis and pickleball and there’s not.
It’s a completely different sport requiring different skills.”
So, for all those tennis players who have never played pickleball yet claim it’s so easy, take it from someone who played the pro tennis tour.
Number of days on a court: 861
Number of total hours: 3,301.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 175
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