Friday, October 12, 2018 (Court Day #213)

I woke up with a headache and what felt like sinus pressure around my eyes. I took some Mucinex and an ibuprofen. I arrived a Brommer a few minutes after 9 a.m. to sunny courts. It would be a lighter attended day, but still busy with occasional short waits for courts.

Melody ready to receive.

John and I played a game against Leslie and Dean. (Dean won a gold medal in a large southern California tournament a week ago.) Dean was taking it very easy on us. I remember he passed up on two winners in succession at the net and instead just lollipopped them over. John and I won the game but it was pretty meaningless. We made a decent showing, but while Leslie didn’t pull punches, Dean had dialed it back. He got me on two hard flat serves that I simply returned right into the net. After that he took it easier. After the game, he said because he was serving to us onto the less grippy green court surface, “it wasn’t fair” since the ball would slip, so he didn’t serve as hard.

John and I lost 12-10 to (English) Alan and Di. (Not John’s wife Diane.) I was not as focused. It’s kind of like Dean playing against someone like us. Dean’s not as sharp and taking it easy. While I wasn’t pulling my shots, I wasn’t dashing about and crouching down. I was moving more leisurely around the court.

Another man named Dean was visiting, though I don’t know where really. It sounded like he lives an RV life, with a permanent “residence” in South Dakota, but is more or less never there. Visitor Dean is a very good player. John and I had a game with Dean and Kim. John and I got absolutely clobbered. 11-0. Every possible little opening that we left was pounced on. Kim was playing the best I’d ever seen her play and Dean was a machine. It was awesome. I’ve never been so happy to lose 11-0. It was a full-on, 100%, no-holds-barred challenging game and we were shown where we stand in the pickleball universe’s pecking order. Intermediates, and definitely intermediates. We still have work to do.

By the end of the morning, I was dragging. I had no energy left.

The last game was John and me against Josh and Tish. After a few points, the outcome was never in doubt. We won 11-5. After, John turned to me and said, “We’re ready.” We have the tournament in San Juan Bautista in two days, on Sunday.

The courts were thinning out and coming down and I was done at 12:06 p.m. Home, then work.

Podcasts

A couple months ago, at the Concord tournament, I spoke briefly with Morgan Evans. Morgan said he was working on a podcast under the Selkirk umbrella and it’d be out before too long. Well, that time is now—well, a couple of weeks ago, actually, September 26, but I just found it. “Selkirk on Serve” is the name of it. Tonight, I listened to the only episode, which was Morgan interviewing his tournament partner, Tyson McGuffin, also sponsored by Selkirk.

The other podcasts I’ve been listening to are “Pickleball Kitchen” by Barrett Kincheloe and his co-host Jana and “Pickleball Problems” by Mark Renneson. As an aside, I typically listen to these on the 1 1/2 speed setting, so they take less time but are still intelligible.

Tournament in two days!

Number of days on a court: 213
Number of total hours: 584.5

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Thursday, October 11, 2018 (Court Day #212)

I arrived late at Skypark, about 7:15 p.m. I had needed to get some things done at work.

Terry (in white), Lauren (behind him), Rochella (back turned) talking to someone, plus others.

I had one game with Larry as my partner against Dave Cox and Mark Dettle. I think we won, but I can’t remember, it was a very close and long game.

My next game was John P. and me against Mark and Dave. We won 11-5.

We had a rematch. We won that one too.

We had one more rematch. I was getting tired and sloppy. (Staffing is challenge at work and I woke up in the middle of the night from a “work stress” dream—I didn’t get a good night’s sleep.) Dave got me for points on two hard forehand drives. John and I lost that one 11-9. I’ll claim credit for this loss.

Number of days on a court: 212
Number of total hours: 581.5

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

Monday, October 8, 2018 (Court Day #211)

Today was the club’s fall celebration. Play followed by food followed by an update on the workings of the club administration.

I arrived at Brommer Park at 8:45. I was worried about finding parking, but the lot was still half empty.

Terry Long explains the play format for the randomized team tournament.

We had 8 teams of 6 players, plus some players who came just to visit and hang out but not participate. There were around 60 people there today.

Each participant drew a number from a basket. I drew “4”, which put me on a team with Leslie, her husband Tim, Chris (tall tennis player), Melody, and MaryAnne who has been playing for about a month. They wanted me to be their captain. We needed to pick three pairs to play the three games in each round. Leslie and I were our #1 pair, Mel and Chris were our #2, and Tim and MaryAnne were our #3 pair.

There  was a twist in that a losing team could randomly pick a numbered rock from a bag and swap whatever player on the other team who was assigned that number. Oleg and Kent ended up on other teams. Our team stayed intact, start to finish.

I have to admit, I was a bit worried while warming up first thing—coincidentally, with Leslie—when I was dink/dropping shots into the net. “And that’s why I’m not a 5.0!”, I told her. But once real play started later, it was like a switch was flipped. All—almost—of my shots were going where I wanted.

Leslie and I wiped out all of our opponents. 11-2, 11-4, 11-2, 11-5 were our game scores for the four rounds of the day. I was expecting more of a fight from Dave Cox and Bob (visiting from SoCal) but they never got any momentum. Leslie and I were leading Dave Witte and Craig 10-1, when they got the serve back. “All we have to do is score 10 points in a row!”, announced Dave. They did go on a run of 4 points, but then we finished them off 11-5.

Lunch!

After the funky tournament, we had a potluck lunch. I brought an assortment of chips. There was a lot of assorted yummy foods.

SCPC Meeting

After everyone was done eating, we all gathered on the grass for an update from the steering committee. We learned some things, such as:

• The City of Santa Cruz is considering adding new courts downtown somewhere near the county courthouse.
• There are 308 people signed up for club emails and are de facto members.
• The club is going to an annual paid membership ($20 to start/$30 for 2020) which will give special access to parts of the club website.
• The club is incorporated but is looking at 501(c)3 or 501(c)7 status. (Karen mentioned having to sign forms as an individual and incur risk doing so, maybe that was before they incorporated.)
• The club is in good financial shape, but the City/County are considering charging the club the full rate instead of the non-profit rate for our reserved hours. They are hoping not, but the club is prepping for it, just in case.

Alan (English accent) asked about an organized competition on the Brommer courts. I don’t think he used the word, but he was asking about a club “ladder.” Karen said that if we to run an organized thing at a set time at the courts, that the club would have to pay the county for reserving the courts for that time.

Club members spread out on the lawn during Karen’s portion of the presentation.

Afterward, I approached Karen and also voiced my support for a club ladder. She said in the past, we haven’t had enough players to do one, but we probably had enough 3.5 players now. She then asked, “Are you willing take it on?”
I said, “I’m not saying ‘no’. I’m pretty organized.”
She smiled and said, “I know you are.”
“Let me do some research.”

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 (No play)

Monday afternoon, I posted asking about ladders in the Pickleball Forum on Facebook. A woman, Susan Buchman shared her experiences with running a ladder and also included a link to ladder information on the USAPA website:
http://usapa.org/ladder-leagues/

Reading to do!

Number of days on a court: 211
Number of total hours: 580

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