Author: andrewlenz (Page 113 of 328)

Monday, January 1, 2024 (Court Day #618)

Last night, I dreamt that I was at a medical clinic and I was explaining to the man and the woman behind the counter—which strangely seemed like a hotel check-in counter—that my doctor had told me to come back if my wrist hurt. It’s not a surprise that when I woke up this morning, my right wrist was experiencing some pain. It’s hard for me to say, of course, but I have a feeling that my knee may gradually improve this year, but my wrist is going to be a chronic issue… assuming that I continue to play regularly.

Derby Duties

This coming Sunday, I’ll be resuming my duties as the Derby Park site coordinator for every Sunday morning. That’ll be immediately followed by the first meeting of my January 4-week beginner pickleball class at Willowbrook in Aptos.

I have to admit, it’s a bit of a sacrifice to commit to opening—or being responsible to open—courts every week without fail indefinitely. Especially when it’s my only day off. Yes, my only day off from work. And often more skilled players avoid club play and arrange their own games elsewhere.

Private Games?

Last night was the whirlwind of texts to groups of pickleball players and individual pickleball players, as I tried to set up a private game session this morning. But the best I could do was René and Charles at Derby Park and we couldn’t arrange for a fourth. We figured we might as well just get together for club play at Brommer and arrange some games once club play was over at noon.

Brommer

I woke up this morning in my lower back was a bit sore and tight. I took a couple of ibuprofen to help.

When I got to Brommer Park, it was a very cool 50°, but it was crystal clear skies with bright winter sun. I was expecting a very, very busy day given that today is a holiday. I was shocked when I pulled into the lot at 9:10 and found a ton of free parking. The lot was only about half full. I guess a bunch of people were out late last night for New Year’s Eve!

Bob

A nice surprise, my college PE tennis coach Bob Hansen showed up around 1 o’clock to meet with some other players that had been arranged. I chatted with him for a few minutes, including with regard to his intermediate class that I’m subbing in for him in about two weeks. René and I played a game against Bob and Dave Debiasi. Bob was pretty obviously the stronger player of the two and played very well. I was almost surprised when he made errors. René and I made a game of it, but they won. While a strong player, René doesn’t always cope well with bangers of which Dave is definitely one. She said, “That’s not pickleball, that’s tennis.” Maybe she’s right, but I’m of a different mind. Sure, you see less banging away at higher levels, but that’s because it typically becomes a liability as pro players can take advantage of those shots. But, ultimately, you use what wins. If your opponent can’t handle hard drives, you do it until they can handle them . . . if you don’t win first! On the flip side, if you opponent drives everything and you want them to stop, then make them pay. Then they will be forced to change or lose the game. The only “right” way to play is the way that wins the game for you. (I’m not meaning the games where you pick on the 97-year-old granny to win 11-0!)

Hugh and I played a few games against the man named Bruce and his son Josh. Those were some balanced and very close games. Bruce and Josh won the first and last games and Hugh and I won the middle game.

Skill Creep

Skill creep with regard to signups on the court signup board continues to be a concern. There is a game with Hugh and I signed up in red against a couple of other players whom we beat them 11-0. The woman, Connie, was a good player . . . leaving her partner as the culprit. Even though we beat them 11-0, that didn’t stop the man from going and signing up in red again, even though he is definitely an intermediate player, not advanced player. I mentioned it quietly to Mark Dettle. He said if the man played poorly again—in the game Mark was about to play—Mark would mention something to the guy afterward.

I left at 2:25 p.m. after five hours of play. No wonder I was tired. 

I played a lot of challenging games today. I didn’t play terribly, but I also wasn’t happy with my play. I just have to get better. That’s going to mean drilling.

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Wednesday, January 3, 2024 (No Play)

Rick Abend texted me saying that no cancelation notice had been sent for Derby Park’s SCPC club day today but it was not opened. Barb had texted Rick and myself a few weeks ago saying she was done opening come 2024. Well, it’s 2024. I’m running Derby Park again on Sunday. But something fell through the cracks for Derby today. I did a little sleuthing, then just passed it on via email to Pam R. who is still listed on the club website as the official Venue Coordinator, though I believe it had changed to someone else.

It later turned out that Pam hadn’t updated the website and Andrew McLeod is now the club’s Venue Coordinator. I forwarded my message about Derby to him.

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Thursday, January 4, 2024 (No Play)

Mike at Rec.us reached out and asked if I want to do another beginner class in February. That’d be my third session. I’m starting my second this Sunday. Mike said there’d be a week break between this session and February session in case we need to do a make-up class for rain cancellation. Honestly, I’m a bit concerned about burnout, between Derby site coordinator duties rolling right into a class halfway across the county. But I said “yes” to the February class. I also told Mike that I’ve had requests for an intermediate class and perhaps we can work that in maybe in a few months.

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Saturday, January 6, 2024 (No Play)

My right knee has been bugging me. I haven’t played since Monday.

It was gushing rain this afternoon. It stopped raining around 4:30 p.m. That’s good as I’m resuming my site coordinator duties at Derby Park tomorrow morning, followed by the first day of my second 4-week beginner pickleball class.

Number of days on a court: 618
Number of total hours: 2,697
Number of paid coaching hours: 8

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Sunday, December 31, 2023 (Court Day #617)

In the Santa Cruz Sentinel this morning, they had a 4-page section recapping the best photos of 2023. A big surprise, an aerial photo of the recent Newman camp made the list . . . at the top of page 2!

Football

My son Nicholas is in town for New Year’s weekend so he joined me and my friend Todd to watch the Raiders and Colts game. With a loss, the Raiders would be eliminated from the playoffs. The Colts wouldn’t be eliminated either way, just their odds would be over twice as good a win. As it turned out, the Colts won by three points. Todd‘s wife Karen had me some really yummy rocky road which Todd had brought as a dessert. Between chips, sausage slices, pizza, and rocky road, I was far from hungry after the game, which finished up shortly after 1 o’clock.

Pickleball?

I sent out a text about 1:15 p.m. asking if anyone wanted to play pickleball this afternoon. Paul Swiencicki and René Baker both responded. Paul said he was heading over to Brommer and René said that she was already there. So that’s where I headed!

Brommer

I arrived at Bromer at 1:45 p.m. Pretty quickly, I got into some games. I barely had time to hang up my backpack before Hemie called over and asked if I wanted to join their game as a fourth.

The first game was Pauly and me against Hemie and Spencer. It was a good warm-up game. I started out slow but then my game tightened up and Pauly and I went on to win.

I went on to have various games over my three hour stretch, including Paul S. Folks were pretty good about moving off courts when they were done.

Spencer made a comment mid-game about how my serves land and stay very low and that you almost have to dig with your paddle to return them. Nice to hear. Paul complimented me, “That was a nice roll volley.” We were all at the net and I’d dropped the ball—using a roll volley—at Spencer’s left toe.

Played a few games with René and she was very complimentary. I also overheard her telling Spencer he shouldn’t feel bad since I have some of the fastest hands that she’s ever seen.

I got Hemie, Spencer, and René on my slice service returns—rally over! Spencer eventually got them figured out and made a return to win the rally off of my slice. He was proud of himself—as he well should be in making adjustments and learning how to deal with those.

The last two or three games were a battle against either the sun, or shortly after, fading light. I was hitting my drops pretty well until those last few games.

My last game was René and myself against Sean and Spencer. We lost that game 8-11. Sean is very nice backhand crosscourt dinking mechanics. He’s very consistent with that.

People started to clear out and the sun was setting when we wrapped up the last game at 4:45 p.m.

Overall, I felt ok about my play. Not stellar, but not bad. A decent way to end a year.

When I got home, I crawled into the spa that we had installed in our backyard about a year ago and then later iced my right knee. My knee doesn’t feel too bad, and that is very promising.

Number of days on a court: 617
Number of total hours: 2,692
Number of paid coaching hours: 8

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, December 26, 2023 (Court Day #616)

I was off from work today. Our family business is closed for “Boxing Day”, the day after Christmas. Basically, it’s an excuse to recover from holiday retail and spend more time with family. My wife was in her 1st grade classroom prepping—teachers still work some during their holidays from school—and so things were quiet at my house. I blasted out to the pickleball text group to see if anyone wanted to play this afternoon. The only one who expressed interest was Conner, so we set up a time to drill.

Fraud

A woman asked to join the Santa Cruz Pickleball Facebook group. The account looked sketchy and I was going to delete her, but Brenden had approved her already. She posted, exactly copying a question posed in the same thread a few hours earlier and already answered—super suspicious. I replied to her question asking where she lived. No reply.

Then she posted about a “gift she’d received for Christmas” and shared a link to on-demand illegal copies of “Santa Cruz Pickleball” T-shirts. Uh . . . NO! I deleted the posted and banned her. The problem was the illegal T-shirts are still available. I sent an email to Mark and Jackie (president and VP of the club) and told them about it and gave them the link to dispute the shirt.

Drilling at Derby

Conner and I met at Derby Park at 3:45 p.m. As I approached the courts, I saw a friend’s mom, Lilia, and two of her sons. She said she had just played pickleball for the first time and really enjoyed it.

There was only one empty court and it was a city net so I didn’t have to go back and drag my portable net from the car. Amusingly, the net did have a hole in it just big enough for a ball and our ball did manage to go through it several times over the next hour!

Connor and I worked primarily on dinking and drop shots. We also worked on resets with one person driving the ball hard at the other from the transition zone.

A thing I noticed was that Conner was able to take a lot of my dinks out of the air. He still had to hit up—that’s the goal, make your opponent hit up—but it wasn’t off the bounce. Something to maybe for me to work on.

We also played a game and a half of skinny singles. In the first game, we shifted on even scores. In the second, we shifted on odd scores. So, sometimes we’d be diagonal and sometimes we’d be directly across from each other. In the first game, I took an 8-0 lead, but Conner came back and won. It was a couple big runs of points by each of us.

It’s kind of funny, but I had more fun drilling with Conner than I did doing games with family members yesterday. It was just that the skill levels were so lopsided yesterday, the rallies were very short unless I went way out of my way to make shots easy for them. Today, it was much more balanced.

Conner shared appreciation for my two ATPs during drilling. ATPs are an easy decision when you have very little choice because the ball is so wide!

Conner said that his foot was bothering him so we switched back to net drills—there is less moving involved—then soon after we called it a day at about the one hour mark. I felt it was time well spent. Conner recorded himself during our drill sessions. That’s definitely dedication, I should’ve thought of bringing my sports camera. Next time.

At a quarter to 5 p.m., with sunset looming, there were four games going on at Derby. Yes, pickleball is getting more popular!

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Wednesday, December 27, 2023 (No Play)

Mark Dettle wrote me back about the illicit club T-shirts. Not the answer I was expecting, but Mark said he was taking me up on my offer to assume the position of “Secretary” for the club and my first duty would be to resolve the T-shirt problem! Ha, ha! Key job for a leader—delegate! It seems when I suggested something to the board, it’s often, “Great, go ahead, take it on yourself and do it!” Like when I suggested we should have a local tournament again. “Great, go ahead, take it on yourself and do it!” The trick is bandwidth. I have only so many free hours in a week and in a month and a lot of them tend to be hours when I’m tired from work!

Brother Pickleball

At 11:42 a.m., my brother John texted saying that he played pickleball this morning with a friend of his, Deborah. That’d be his fourth pickleball outing. I think he’s starting to get hooked on the game.

CORE Box

A box arrived from CORE pickleball today, from the order I placed on December 19. It was a dozen of their high-end CORE balls and a dozen of their cheaper Impact balls. I’m interested to see how they play.

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Thursday, December 28, 2023 (No Play)

Three more CORE boxes showed up today. A regulation-sized portable net, a smaller 10-foot wide practice net, and a rolling cart for ball storage during lessons. All with “Made in China” on the boxes. Not a surprise. I’ll open them up when I get enough time.

There’s a bit of a fortuitous twist, or call it divine providence. Out our sliding glass door is our patio. We had the backyard redone about a year ago, with new concrete. I went out and measured the blocks and they are exactly seven feet. I had a sudden recollection that I’d done this before. Regardless, the dividing lines in the concrete are exactly the size of the non-volley zone—yes, seven feet! Perfect for my new practice net! Granted, the concrete isn’t perfectly smooth, but I suspect it’ll get the job done. I just need someone to dink with! Maybe my neighbor around the corner and down the street . . .

Number of days on a court: 616
Number of total hours: 2,689
Number of paid coaching hours: 8

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.