Author: andrewlenz (Page 47 of 327)

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 (Court Day #813)

When I got to the Skypark neighborhood at 6:50 p.m., I spotted Jordan walking out to his car. I rolled down my passenger window and he said I could take his parking spot because it was super-crowded and he was leaving. He said there were at least 24 people waiting to play. Eight courts, four players each, so 32 players. 32 + 24 = 56. That’s a popular local sport!

While my wait for the first game was long and the wait for my second game was about half of that, then from there on out it was pretty quick.

Tonight was fun. I left feeling pretty happy about my play, but that was tempered by knowing that I wasn’t playing against the strongest players. It wasn’t a cakewalk, but they were not among the strongest either.

I would say that I was mostly inconsistent tonight. While I had some shots that pros would be proud of, there were also shots that were simply lame. I hit a high ball from near the net and I angled it off the court too wide so we lost that rally. On the flip side, I hit one of those high balls a few minutes earlier to great success, as well as hitting an overhead crosscourt backhand shot which angled the ball off the court to my right also for a winner. In games with Alex against Ahbi and Thad (Mike O’Brien’s friend), I had three forehand rips down the left sideline for winners—two against Ahbi plus one against Thad to wrap up the last game of the night. Thad was kind of funny, Thad was telling me that my last shot crushed his soul!

When the lights clicked off a few minutes after 8:30 p.m., we had enough natural light to continue to play until 8:44 p.m. In about a week and a half, we will have a summer solstice and then the days will, unfortunately, start getting shorter again.

I was expecting the back of my right hand to bother me more than it did. I maybe had a twinge of mild pain once early in the evening, but that was it, thank goodness. It seems to be just a passing thing.

Drilling Fodder

After a game tonight, I was walking back to sign up for my next game when David & Beth Black were leaving. David shared that Christine and me beating them pretty handily last week prompted them to get out and do some drilling work on the court. Ah, that’s why they were out at Skypark on Sunday when I happened to spot them while I was teaching!

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Wednesday, June 11, 2025 (No Play)

Here’s a list of paddles made in the USA:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/the-complete-list-of-pickleball-brands-making-paddles-in-america

Of the ones on the list where all their paddles are made in the USA, Engage and Paddletek are very well-known. And Players, I know since I have a couple of their paddles, but they don’t get much buzz. Selkirk and Vulcan make “select models” here in the USA—I suspect that is a small subset of their overall lines.

Number of days on a court: 813
Number of total hours: 3,183.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 141.5

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

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 (Court Day #810)

I left work about 6:25 p.m., it was sunny and warm.

My elastic brace has been a companion to my right knee for the last few weeks. After playing on Sunday morning, me jumping up and down, it was probably about 6 or 7 out of 10 on the pain scale. It hurt.

I gave my near a weeklong break Sunday to Sunday, but it only helped marginally with my knee. The question is whether I’m going to have to give my knee a longer rest or if it is going to heal up on its own, even with use on a court. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Games

Christine and I played two games against David Black and his wife Beth. We won the first game 11–5 give or take. The second game was very lopsided—I think the final score was 11-1. 

Manda and I were playing a game at the end of the evening against Skyler and someone else. In the game before, I started keeping track of my errors. It wasn’t until about halfway to the game that I made my first mistake, but you were hit a drop shot into the net . My next error was hitting a hard drive while running in and hitting it into the net. Next error was slamming a ball that flew beyond the baseline. By the end of the game, I’ve made six or seven errors in total. One of the errors was hitting a ball that would’ve otherwise gone out. Nonetheless, my number of errors was about half of that of Monda.

One observation from tonight, I’m getting better and better at resetting shots off of slams. For instance, there was a slam of a high shot when I was a step or two inside the baseline. That slam came down hard and fast, bounced, and off of that shot . I had a low drop shot that my opponent had to hit up on the ball. It was an extremely nice shot.

Party Time

After pickleball, a few of us headed over to Bruno‘s restaurant. Aaron Hicks bought me a beer while Manda and Thad and Michael O’Brien had dinner. Christine and Rachel were there too. Once they were done eating, we took a very quick trip down the road to Rachel‘s house where we played ping-pong and hung out and talked for a little bit. Rachel dug out our 1985 Harbor High School yearbook from which she shared my graduation photo. A few minutes before midnight, I called it a night. I was the first one to leave.

Pickleball Injuries

I stumbled across a research paper about pickleball injuries hosted at the National Library of Medicine:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11758564

What’s interesting is that the graph says that if you are under the age of 35, your injury is minimal. I’d be interested why they picked those age brackets, maybe there’s some standard or maybe those ages were an obvious break given a deep dive into the data. It also says you’re two-thirds more likely to have an injury over the age of 65.

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Saturday, June 9, 2025 (No Play)

USA Pickleball reached a sponsorship agreement with a milk organization, so milk is now the “Official refuel Beverage of USA Pickleball”. USAP posted on social media about it and had a cow out on a court playing pickleball.

Number of days on a court: 810
Number of total hours: 3,174
Number of paid coaching hours: 138.5

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

Monday, June 9, 2025 (Court Day #812)

Today is our monthly board meeting of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club. I took the morning off from work to get in some play before the meeting.

As I have the last few weeks, I’m continuing to wear my reinforced elastic knee brace on my right leg. My knee isn’t bothering me too much, although it is kind of nagging and will cause the mild pain sometimes

It was 57° and overcast when I left my house about 9 a.m. As I drove to Brommer Park, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was going to get any good games. I was at Brommer for club play on Memorial Day and, while pickleball is always fun, it’s kind of debatable if it was worth the trouble.

Brommer

I was walking into the courts at 9:17 a.m.

Surprisingly, Dave Ryan was back again this morning. I wasn’t expecting to see him at club play. Dave Ryan teamed up with a woman, a regular, named Maylene against Mo and me. We won 11-6.  Maylene is not a bad player—she’s one of those people whose skill belies their older appearance—but she’s not quite the same caliber as the rest of us. The loss was not on Dave. He was playing very well.

I had a few game with and against Mo. Mo is always fun to get on a court with.

Nariel—whom I’m starting to get to know recently—and Alan Cable played against Mike sullivan and me. We were up 4-0. They came back, mostly on my errors, to go ahead 10-8. But Mike and I scored the next four points to win 12-10.

Nariel and I played against Sean McElhaney and Trevor Fish.  They went up, but we came back and won 13-11. There were some great rallies in that one. We had some great defense as well.

Trevor and I took on Mo and Nariel. We won 11-5.

Meeting Time

By then it was almost 12:15 p.m. and time for the board meeting. I grabbed my backpack and headed over to the picnic area where we held our meeting until 1:43 p.m.

More Play

Once the meeting ended, four of us decided to play a game. That was Mark Dettle and myself against Jackie and Mike sullivan. We played 4-5 games, with Mark and I losing every one of them. Most of the games were somewhat close but one or two were lopsided.

We decide to make a rotation of players and I teamed up with Jackie against Mark and Mike. They took the first few points on errors by Jackie but she and I came back and took that game 11–8. Mark finished his afternoon with no wins.

By then, it was 3:26 p.m. and time for us all to get on with our days.

Somewhere in the midst of playing today, I tweaked the back of my right wrist. The last time I did that, it nagged me for a while. Hopefully, it’ll be a fleeting injury.

Times Square Famous

About a week and a half ago, women’s #1 player, Anna Leigh Waters was featured on a billboard in Times Square! That’s pretty fun. I do have to wonder who paid for it. The PPA? Paddletek? Someone else?

Is this even real?!? Pickleball has given me so much and now I can say I have been on a billboard in TIMES SQUARE NYC! I’m soaking up each and every moment 🫶🥰 pic.twitter.com/T2mSJ1Slgd

— Anna Leigh Waters (@AnnaLeighWaters) May 30, 2025

Number of days on a court: 812
Number of total hours: 3,181.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 141.5

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