Indoor!

Wednesday, February 7, 2018 (Court Day #122)

I left work early at 5 p.m. to be ready when Eric picked me up at my house at 5:30. We headed over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Silicon Valley and the Camden Community Center. Traffic was relatively light and it didn’t take too much trouble to find the entrance to the gym after we pulled into the complex at 6:05.

The center. Though it was dark when we got there.
[Image from the City of San Jose website.]

We signed in at the front desk, I paid for the two of us—a whopping $5.50 total—and we waited about 10 minutes for the crew to get the gym ready.

We were one of the first ones there. There were three nets set up initially but soon, there were five. With five nets, there were never more than 1 or 2 people waiting to play.

First Time Indoor

Eric had a little prior indoor experience—from somewhere in Scotts Valley during winter last year—and we both played that funky racquetball court “pickleball” tournament about 4 months in Los Gatos, but this was my first time playing real honest-to-God pickleball indoors.

The gym interior without nets.
[Image from the City of San Jose website.]

The biggest difference of indoor play, noticeable immediately, was the spaghetti of colored lines all over the wood floor. We were playing to the mostly to the outside set of double yellow lines, but to the blue swath of color for the baseline at one end of the court. Throughout the entire evening, it was a real challenge for me to determine the edges of the court. I guess the benefit of this is I only missed one or two of my serves. I wasn’t pushing the edges . . . because I couldn’t see where they were! Once, Eric served about a foot inside the baseline by mistake! Fault!

It was warm in the gym. I was sticky by the end. And my SCPC cap resulted in sweaty hair. Cap? No cap? That will have to be decided by the tournament later this month.

Another thing was the baselines were close together. We’d often have to wait on serving because the court behind us was also serving and we ended up in each other’s space.

I’m used to balls rolling onto laterally adjacent courts, but with nothing between two courts’ baselines, balls would travel into those courts as well. It made for about twice as many interruptions to games.

Players

There was a big disparity in skill levels there. From rank beginners (I didn’t play with them) to marginal players (I played with them) to some decent players (I played with them) to some very strong advanced players who mostly kept to themselves off on one court. Eric and I were unquestionably in the top half of the players who were there. We represented Santa Cruz well. Especially since I was wearing my Santa Cruz Pickleball Club shirt.

I played a couple of games as the partner to a petite friendly woman with long gray hair named Barbara. Between games, I asked her, “How long have you been playing?” She smiled and said, “Even though I play like a beginner, I’ve been playing for three years.” (While she wasn’t a strong player, I was not implying that she was bad, I just was curious!) She went on to say that in that time period, she’d only played outside on two occasions. I told her this was my first time indoors after a year of playing. We were basically opposites in terms of indoor/outdoor play.

Somewhere in the evening, I tweaked my ankle a little. Yes, even with the brace on. Not super painful and it was only instant, but unpleasant. It’s an ongoing battle. It’s slow, but trending to improvement. I should have known that when it went “crunch” when I rolled it that it would take a long time to get fully recovered. I think it’s been four weeks now.

The Young Guys

Our last five games were with two youngsters, Carl and Brandon. Eric and I clobbered them 11-1 and 11-2, then we switched things up with Brandon and me taking on Eric and Carl, they won fairly handily. In the fourth game, we swapped again, this time, Eric taking Brandon. They won handily.

Doing the math, it seemed that either I was playing worse than Eric (likely) or my aura was negatively impacting whichever partner I happened to have (unlikely). Hopefully, I can regain my mojo soon. That’s two sub-par outings in a row. And, hopefully, I can get past this sinus bug that’s been dragging on 11 days so far.

At their suggestion, the last game was back to the youngsters against us. The game was 6-4 our advantage when the center’s crew announced, “One more minute!” We agreed to play one more point and it ended 7-4 at 8:30 p.m. They were fun to play with and improved even over our five games. We offered that they should come down to Santa Cruz. Carl said they’ve been “making the rounds, trying to improve.” Maybe we’ll see them again. And maybe they’ll kick out butts at someday!

Me, Carl, Brandon, and Eric. Maybe Carl is holding up one finger to indicate how many points they won in their first game. (Kidding! Sorry, Carl, I had to!)

Eric dropped me off at my house just after 9 p.m. I had dinner then off to bed!

Number of days on a court: 122
Number of total hours: 348

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