Author: andrewlenz (Page 114 of 328)

Sunday, December 24, 2023 (No Play)

I worked today for about 5 hours. I don’t usually work Sundays—the store is normally closed—but Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday and so I opted to take pity on last-minute shoppers and have our family business open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with volunteer staff. It was a pretty steady flow of customers, though not crazy. (For those of you keeping track, yes, it’s only four hours from 11 to 3, but there’s time before and after a store is actually open that work has to get done!)

Relative Pickleball

My brother John texted me a video of his kids opening up a gift, a pickleball set. Two standard paddles, two mini kids’ paddles, and some balls. They were excited!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is when my extended family gets together for dinner and gifts. In my lifetime, it was originally held at my mom’s mom’s (great-grandmother’s) house in town when I was a toddler, then it moved to my mom’s mom’s (grandmother’s) house, then decades later, to my mom’s house where it was again this year. We had a “secret Santa” gift exchange and my brother John had me. He got me a “Dink Responsibly” cap along with a travel mug with “Tears of My Pickleball Opponents” printed on it. He also included a bag of a dozen USAPA approved pickleballs from a brand called “Vigel” that I’ve never heard of.

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Monday, December 25, 2023 (Court Day #615) Christmas

Christmas morning brought a really nice breakfast and presents. My wife and daughter had picked out a new PBAW pickleball backpack for me. (I’m not sure I’d heard of PBAW before.) I’ve been content with my current backpack, but I have had to do several hand sewing repairs on it. This new backpack has a 4-balls-sized pocket on one side and an assortment of pockets, including a vented/mesh pocket at the bottom for a pair of shoes. I probably won’t be using the shoe pocket except for tournaments. A minor but clever feature is a built-in plastic hook at the top for hanging the backpack on a chain-link fence. Nice!

Relative Pickleball

About a week ago my sister-in-law has suggested that we play pickleball on Christmas Day when she and your family came to visit Santa Cruz. Unfortunately, the plan changed in the becoming much later in the day. Charlotte and Nicolas expressed interest in playing so I also invited my brother John to come. 

The trick was having enough paddles. I had sent one to New Mexico for my daughter Charlotte. The only other paddle I had sported autographs, and I was not too keen to use it. But I didn’t have much choice as it was the one I had to make up our foursome.

Derby

It was shortly after 2:30 p.m. when we made our way to Derby Park. I brought a portable net however, it turned out that it was unnecessary as only two of the four city nets occupied when we arrived.

I split up my paddles, keeping the special “autographs paddle” for myself. Aside from not wanting to damage the autographs, I realized/remembered that it was delaminating and made for some wimpy shots.

It wasn’t until halfway through the session that I realized that I also had the special reduced-size Focus training paddle. I switched to that—better training and no risk to the autographs!

A woman came over and asked about my children’s “Tillamook” cheese T-shirts. Brooke is her name and she lived in Tillamook, Oregon and couldn’t help but come over and ask. Brooke was there with her son Charlie and her husband Adam. I talked to Adam while Brooke was chatting with the rest of our group. Adam said they started playing about six months ago. I asked if they play at Derby on Sundays and he said they do. I told him that my site coordinator duties would be resuming January 7 and maybe I’d see them out on the courts.

Christmas Dinner

My sister-in-law Liz and family arrived shortly before 5 p.m. We all hung out, had dinner, then opened presents. I got a pair of socks…

I better put my feet up often while wearing them!

Liz really wanted me to open the pickleball trivia game that they’d gotten us. I told her husband Steve that I’d probably know 90% of the questions. There were A, B, C, and D as possible answers or “true or false” . . . but before she got to those, I’d blurt out the answers: “20×44!”, “7!”, “Time allowed to serve the ball!”, “24 inches”, “False”. We went through about a dozen cards and I got them all right.

Then she pulled a card from the a different section. “Which couple got married on the court and were the first tournament directors for the USAPA Nationals?”

“Uhhhhh…” I had no idea. Piper, my niece, carefully just showed me the possible answers on the card and I still had no idea. I guessed the names that seemed most familiar but I got it wrong. Liz was ready to move onto other things. Maybe it was a good thing too, I’m not sure how I would have done if the rest of the questions were like that! Ha!

Number of days on a court: 615
Number of total hours: 2,688
Number of paid coaching hours: 8

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

Sunday, December 10, 2023 (No Play)

Today was last day of teaching for 2023, the final day of my 4-week beginner class.

Sporting Goods

I stopped by Play It Again Sports and picked up some target cones for “serve deep, return deep” drill. While there, one of the clerks was explaining pickleball paddles to a middle-aged man and two woman about the same age. This is my second visit in a row where customers congregating at the pickleball paddles wall. When I asked the cashier if pickleball was popular, he said, “It is around here!”

Class

Two of my students were out, leaving six of the eight enrolled. As I’d planned, we worked on serving deep and returning deep and also worked on block volleys. It was a bittersweet day. The end of a successful class series. I got three hugs, seems like I did a good job!

Newspaper

A sign that pickleball is getting more popular, this appeared in an advertising insert for Big 5 Sporting Goods in the paper today:

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Monday, December 11, 2023 (No Play)

Some big news over the weekend, the “bad boy of tennis”, Nick Kyrgios, told a crowd in Miami over the weekend that he’d start playing pickleball after his tennis career is done. Nick is a top-15 tennis player in the world, and won the doubles title at the Australian Open last year. He also played in the Wimbledon singles final last year as well. He has reputation for a temper and questionable sportsmanship with throwing racquets, taunting, and arguing. I’m sure it’ll bring a lot of attention to pickleball if Kyrgios does indeed cross over.

New Paddle

Last month, Aidas came out with a new paddle—”Metalbone”—that’s unique in that on the sides of the paddle, just above the handle along the edge, are metal holes for three screws that can be add or removed depending on the player’s preferences in regard to balance. Gimmick? Maybe. It seems that they could/should have added holes at the top and the middle of the edges as well. It seems to me that there isn’t all that much difference adding weights only within an inch or so of each other.

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Tuesday, December 12, 2023 (Court Day #614)

PT

I had left work about 5:15 p.m. today and headed to physical therapy. During physical therapy they were doing exercises they were more demanding on my knee certain motions were causing pain, although on a scale of 1 to 10 topped out at about a 3. Nonetheless, it was uncomfortable for those exercises.

I left physical therapy and popped across the road, and parked on the dirt off to the side of the courts. (Parking that is proposed to be eliminated.) It was a colder night so initially there were only a few people there. Though more people came later.

Bad News

I am going to jump to the important news of the night. SCPC President Mark Dettle stopped play to make an announcement. He said that he had gone to the Scotts Valley Parks & Rec meeting and there had been some disturbing developments. They decided that the lights for the courts would go off at 8 p.m. for most of the week with the exception of maybe Friday and Saturday which would likely continue until 9:30 p.m. There is also the decision to eliminate the parking along the side of, and also behind, the courts which would eliminate about 10 to 12 parking spots.

I don’t think that eliminating parking is a good idea because players will just park in the neighborhood and take up on-street parking instead. (That has to be more annoying for the neighbors!) Turning off the lights will definitely eliminate playing after that time. That is very unfortunate. People like me, who normally wouldn’t be able to arrive until closer to 7 p.m., we would only be playing for an hour. That barely makes it worthwhile to go . . . but I believe that may be their goal. During the summer, it will stay naturally light until almost 9 p.m., but that is only for a short portion of the year.

Mark went on to say Parks & Rec will be talking to the school district about adding lights to the courts over at Scotts Valley High School. The school has a lot of parking—though it’s not right next to the courts—so that could be a positive development, but we will see.

Even with eight courts, there were still about a dozen people waiting to get on and play. The dry erase board was out and in use.

My play tonight was a mix of frustration and satisfaction. I hit the net at least 4-5 times. I served one of my serves into the net and another one that sailed long.

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Sunday, December 17, 2023 (No Play)

New rule changes for 2024 were shared by USA Pickleball this week. Nothing too major, but all “carries” are now illegal, regardless of intent or lack thereof. (Refs no longer have to be mind-readers.)

Nagging Injuries

My right wrist is continuing to hurt. It’s a minor concern compared to my right knee which is still hurting.

Newpaper

Apparently, once is not enough! Big 5 Sporting Goods advertised pickleball paddles both inside and on back cover of their four-page newspaper insert.

YouTube Instruction

I found this to be a good video to watch…

A nice analysis.

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Monday, December 18, 2023 (No Play)

One thing about being a certified coach is you do get a some special deals from a few manufacturers. I placed a CORE Pickleball order today. They has a special year-end promo making the pricing even better.

We’ll see how long this order takes to show up. With the holidays, I expect it’ll likely be after Christmas.

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Tuesday, December 19, 2023 (No Play)

I got a call from Precision Physical Therapy canceling my PT appointment tonight as well as my appointment for the day after Christmas. Apparently, though they told me they had authorization from my insurance, there was some kind of mix-up and they are now saying that I don’t. It’s probably all for the better, my knee is hurting and I’m not too keen about putting it through PT today anyway.

My right wrist is continuing to bug me. And my knee. Bleh.

Relative Pickleball?

My wife’s family will be in town for Christmas Day. My sister-in-law was suggesting pickleball, since they’ve been playing up in the Bay Area. That’d be fun. I haven’t played with any of them yet.

Rain

It was pretty rainy today. It cleared for short times and late in the day, the sun briefly popped out. Conner was bulk texting looking for people to play with. Uh. Not me. Even if I wasn’t working.

Around 4:30 p.m., Conner shared a photo of play in progress…

I opted to do a quick photo edit and propose a future reality and shared it with the text group.

Max replied, “Well played!”

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Thursday, December 21, 2023 (No Play)

I was chasing our younger dog around our backyard last night to wear her out and my left knee was hurting. Yes, you read that correctly. Left knee. Hopefully, it’s just a passing thing. The last thing I need is both knees hurting.

And just for fun I made this up and posted it in the Santa Cruz Pickleball Facebook group:

But there is a big difference between “cold” (uncomfortable) and “wet” (injuries)!

Number of days on a court: 614
Number of total hours: 2,687
Number of paid coaching hours: 8

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

Sunday, December 3, 2023 (No Play)

I left my house about noon and stopped by work because my staff was holding a parking lot art show. (Our family business was closed, so the parking lot was available.) I hung out there for a while—and briefly did some work in my office—then left about 1 o’clock for Aptos to conduct the third Sunday of my Parks & Rec class.

I arrived at Willowbrook Park at 1:15 p.m. A couple was starting to stake out one of the two rolling nets and I had to tell them it would be reserved starting at 1:30.

Last night, one of my students, Julie, emailed and said that her parents caught COVID and she would be taking care of them and not be able to make it to class today. It turned out another one of my students, Brooke, also didn’t make it to class, leaving me with six out of my eight students. At least it was a balanced set of pairs for drills.

Today, I had my students working on net volleys and later, we worked on how to lob and how to defend a lob. With last 20 minutes I had them play a game and—hopefully—put things into practice. I had Jennifer and Jana play against just me . . . with me occasionally suspending play to comment on the other student game on the adjacent court. It’s an interesting trick to play in one game but also watch another game going on nearby. It’s much better to be able to just sit out and observe, but you do what you have to do.

The quote of the day was, “You are such a good coach!” Oh, and also me overhearing Scot telling another student about a lobbing detail I shared; “I’m glad he said that, I would have never thought of that.” Learning! I love it.

PPR Online Assessment

Just before 8 p.m., while stretched out on my bed and starting to wind down, I remembered that I had planned to take the PPR online assessment today. They gave us a 7-day window to take the test. Originally, they wrote that they were going to send the testing link on Monday. However, it turned out that they actually sent the link the same day as our workshop on Friday. The link email said it typically took less than an hour to complete, so I figured I’d tackle it and just get it done.

I sat down to take the test at my computer and it took about an hour for the 100 questions. Some of the questions were very easy—such as court dimensions and rules tennis players wouldn’t know—some made me stop and and think, others appeared to intentionally try to trick you, and a few, I believe, were outright confusing and one even wrong (in my opinion). As you went along, the test gave you immediate feedback as to whether your answer was correct or not.

In the end, I scored 95% which is easily passing. The PPR has three different coaching levels: associate coach, coach, and professional coach. There are three evaluations, one for your playing ability, one for your live coaching ability, and then one for the test. Whatever your lowest evaluation was in any of those three segments would determine which of the three coaching levels you would be assigned. After workshop, I was graded as a mid-level playing skill “coach” candidate which was everyone except two very strong players who were 4.5 or better—one was a even a 6.0. The 95% on the written assessment would’ve garnered me the level of Professional Coach but since my playing level doesn’t warrant that, I’ll be assigned the “Coach” moniker. I wasn’t expecting to be assigned “Professional Coach”, my primary goal was to avoid being assigned “Associate Coach”.

Once I completed and submitted the test, I wrote to the PPR sharing with them which questions I felt should be rewritten to be clearer. I don’t know if they’ll write back to me or not, but maybe I’ll save some future candidates some trouble.

Hunger Strike

While talking to my son Nicholas on the phone—before the test—he mentioned a “hunger strike” over pickleball. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he’d seen it months earlier and he was surprised that I hadn’t heard about it. He found the article and shared it with me:
https://www.theprogress.com/news/chilliwack-pickleball-hunger-strike-ends-without-a-solution-2355539
It was a couple in Canada concerned about game noise. The hunger strike didn’t last long—just two days!—and that was that. But they got a lot of publicity, and that was the point, right?

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Tuesday, December 5, 2023 (Court Day #613)

I had physical therapy at 5:30 p.m. tonight. My knee seems to continue to improve. When my PT session ended at 6:24 p.m., I left and hopped in my car and popped over to the Skypark. The parking lot was extremely full. Cars were parked off-road between trees. I drove around to the backside behind the courts and there is no room back there either! Crazy. I put my car in reverse and backed out, then found a spot on the street a block away then hoofed it in.

First Game

They had to dry erase board going to rotate people onto courts and I added my name. My first game was with Darvin against the tall man named John and a woman named Cimarron, who I believe is his wife. It was a good warm-up game. John and Cimarron were better than I was expecting. Both are 3.5 level players. Darvin is more of a 3.0 level player and I did my best but we still lost by a few points. There is only so much I can do when they are targeting my partner.

Balanced Games

As the evening went on, I found myself in better and better games. I had a few games with Matt Babb against his friend Paul and Ann‘s husband Eric. Those were challenging and fun games.

Eric shared, “Whatever you are doing with your serves, you are doing it right. The balls aren’t coming back up.” Topspin!

Eric stepped out and David (Minori’s boyfriend) stepped in. We got clobbered in the first game. We went on to win some of the remaining games against Matt and Paul. We finished up the last game a few minutes before the late clicked out at 9:30 p.m.

Last week when I was walking off the courts on Tuesday night, my right knee was hurting. Tonight, I didn’t have that problem. Yes, my knee bothered me a little bit at times but it was surprisingly good. I chatted to some of the players afterward, then headed out. I got home shortly after 10 p.m. Once home, I iced my knee. It may not be feeling bad, but I don’t want to attempt fate!

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Saturday, December 9, 2023 (No Play)

It’s official. I got my email notice from PPR—at 5:32 a.m. today when I was sound asleep!—that I’m now officially a “Certified Coach”. That’s a big milestone for me.

As a courtesy, I sent an email to Karen H., the other local active PPR certified instructor and let her know that I have no plans to get hired as a club pro or actively seek students, just continue teaching the classes through Parks & Rec.

I made it a whole 12 hours before I was stopped by a couple that I know while out and about and was asked about lessons. Ah, well. Maybe I’ll be doing some private lessons regardless!

Number of days on a court: 613
Number of total hours: 2,684
Number of paid coaching hours: 6.5

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