It would be a nice day today, it was already sunny by the time I left my house for Derby Park to open up the courts. This would be the first time me opening the courts for a month and a half when I was last out and injured my right knee. The backup site coordinators have been very helpful filling in for me.
Last night, I had dug out the simple knee brace that my dad had given me a few years ago and would wear that today. It’s basically an elastic sleeve with vertical semi-flexible metal strips on the left and right sides. While I was trying to get to sleep, the inside of my right knee was very mildly aching. The pain seems to shift, depending on what I’m doing and it comes and goes. About a week ago, walking up the stairs at work brought a sharper pain below my kneecap. Other times, it feels like a dull nail is being hammered to the left of my kneecap. Or an ache to the right of my kneecap.
Derby
I arrived at 8:50 a.m. and the two city nets already had games going on them.
It would be a pretty mellow day as I had originally planned. Initially, my thought was I would come and see how my right knee would manage things. That could have meant part of one game, just one game, a few games perhaps, but I was not expecting my knee to hold up as well as it did and I ended up spending four hours at the courts.
Newbies
A surprise, I’ve been gone from the courts for only six weeks and, looking around today, I didn’t recognize perhaps as many as a third as the players, perhaps even as many has half! People are still coming out and joining the pickleball movement!
Two relatively new players with only a few weeks of experience underneath their belts came today. A woman named Terry and her friend Nikki. I covered some of the rules with them as well some strategies. We played a few games together and Nikki proved to be the better of the two.
Skill Time
By the time 10 a.m. rolled around and we were breaking up court signups into skill levels, I saw that Eric S. ahd arrived and had started an advanced box. Eric asked if I wanted to sign up with him and I added my name below his. After about 5 or 10 minutes, Eric said, “I don’t think there any other players here who consider themselves advanced.” Sure enough there was no one to be seen. A few minutes later, Charles arrived but he signed up as an intermediate. I later discovered that he was still dealing with an injury to his right shoulder so he decided to play left-handed today. That explains why he was signing up as an intermediate instead of advanced.
Over the course of the session I got two, maybe three, solid advanced games. The rest of the time I was training first-time players. There is a woman name Ellen who came, who has some tennis background. And then there was a married couple who arrived, Dave and his wife Denise who supports a British accent. I played a few games with Ellen as my partner against Dave and Denise. I had to be careful. I forgot once and hit a shot more normally—not easing off—and the point immediately ended in our favor.
At 12:45, I showed my three charges how to put away a net, then after stowing it, answered a variety of questions and explained about local courts, the club, email blasts, etc.
Knee
As I mentioned, my knee held up shockingly well. I have an appointment set up for December 12 with the same orthopedic surgeon who did my rotator cuff. The MRI had shown a small tear in my knee and he was looking to operate on it then, but it wasn’t chronic in any sense. Now, it’s more chronic. It’ll sometimes mildly ache for hours.
Monday, November 21, 2022 (No Play)
With all this DUPR, UTPR, WPR, PBR rating consolidation stuff going on, I discovered that I have a WPR rating through PickleballTournaments.com. Currently, they my WPR at 3.549 for men’s doubles. My USA Pickleball UTPR rating sits at 3.580. Here’s a graph of my WPR history…
It’s a bit confusing as the list at the bottom (shows up on the website when you click “March Details”) is not chronological for the last tournament, though if the algorithm is well written, it shouldn’t matter what order since a player’s skill set isn’t going to change in course of the few hours of a tournament.
Four Colors at Brommer
Speaking of ratings, Jason, my tournament partner for Chamisal a few months ago, stopped by work last week and said that Brommer has instituted four colors for signups. Dan Bliss mentioned something to me about this possibility some months back. Jason said that the new color is for 4.0+ tournament players. Since we’re both have 3.5 ratings, that leaves us out of that top group.
The issue I have with this signup system is it’s biased for age. I’ve mentioned this before. A 60+ woman came to me about 4-5 years ago and was successful as a 4.0 tournament player. But she wouldn’t even be a 3.5 in the men’s tournaments. She complained to me that the advanced “red” players wouldn’t let her join them even though she was very much official recognized by the national association as a 4.0. Som which is it? 4.0 or not? Jason shared that he felt we could easily compete with those in this new 4.0 group. It’ll be interesting to me to see who is in it.
I will admit that I looked up some of the local old guard players and was shocked at one who is rated as 4.5—I think he’s a high 3.5 on a good day. Ah, well. We’ll see how this goes.
Number of days on a court: 560 Number of total hours: 2,520
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Before I got up, my wife told me that it was pretty wet outside. I took a look and figured at least some courts would be playable. I decided not to delay play and take my chances with the headaches of not all courts being playable.
Last night, Ted had emailed me a sign to print out announcing the upcoming Parks & Rec Commission meeting, but had erroneously included the physical location of the meeting chamber. I made up a new sign in Adobe InDesign with only virtual meeting information and printed it out. There was some back and forth with Ted and John regarding whether the meeting was “hybrid” or just virtual. It turns out the eventual City Council meeting will be hybrid but the commission meeting is only virtual.
Regardless, this all made it so I arrived at Derby with no time to set up prior to opening. There were about 8 players already there. I spent about 10 minutes using towels to soak up the wettest areas of the courts, which were opposite corners of the courts. I left the portable net bags on those two courts as a warning to just use them for dinking. Fortunately, they were dry enough about an hour later to play full court games.
I played pretty well today, got some compliments.
At the end of the session, I played a game with Rosie against barefoot Terry and also Lisa whom I don’t know well. They barely hit to me—Rosie got a lot of work—which was good as my right knee was bothering me. By shortly after 2 p.m. I was hobbling a bit. At 2:18, we were done and I was checking my phone.
My knee got worse. I iced it and was elevating my leg. I was noticeably limping. Kneeling down on that leg was excruciatingly painful.
Monday, October 10, 2022 (No Play)
Today at 4 p.m. was the Parks & Recreation Commission meeting. On the agenda was the proposal for the city to enter into a 10-year agreement with U.C. Santa Cruz to replace two dilapidated tennis courts at a UC property on Delaware Avenue with eight pickleball courts for public use.
It took about half an hour to get through routine meeting things, such as roll call, approval of previous meeting minutes, a report on progress of the closure of a massive homeless encampment in the flood zone. (On a side note, the city removed 200 tons—TONS—of trash after they cleared about half of the encampment.) After that, the commission moved on to the first agenda item, the new pickleball courts. Tony Elliott, the P&R director gave an overview of the game, the growth of the sport, and the need for more courts.
The commission meeting on Zoom.
I was one of five speakers lined up to speak by Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board member John Pacholski. There were a handful of others who spoke including two tennis players. One was against the proposal, wanting to keep Delaware for tennis. Another had no qualms about giving up Delaware, but wanted the plan of Derby being used solely tennis to be formally written into the proposal.
There were 2-4 speakers who jumped in on behalf of pickleball who were not lined up by SCPC to speak, but did a nice job.
Bathroom concerns were brought up and also someone suggested lights for night play. Lights were not even discussed due to the cost, but a Port-A-Potty was discussed among the commissioners. While one commissioner was pushing for a toilet, the vice chair of the commission instead suggested that the club could hold a fundraiser to cover the cost of it. Another commissioner suggested that it might not be really necessary given many people play for only a couple of hours. (There can be some truth to that. I know at least one or two players use it every session, but personally, in the nearly six years that I’ve played there, I’ve never needed use the bathroom, even with me drinking entire bottles of water and having sessions up to five hours.)
After the discussions, the commission vote was unanimous to proceed with the agreement with UCSC for 8 new permanent pickleball courts! If the City Council approves it, it’ll be the largest permanent facility in the county . . . Skypark and Brommer both have only 4 permanent courts.
So, Mr. Rubin decided to take an indefinite leave of absence from tennis a few weeks ago at age 26. Yesterday, October 10, he announced he was switching to pickleball.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 (No Play)
I’m hobbling less, but my knee is still very much problematic. Going up and down stairs is painful. I’ve never had a knee injury like this.
Thursday, October 13, 2022 (No Play)
René checked in on me for the upcoming tournament. I told her I was closer to heading to the doctor than playing and that I was planning on making a decision on our tournament over the weekend. But she was worried about being able to get a partner, so she found a replacement and arranged to have me be refunded my entry fee. Probably for the best. At this rate, I don’t see myself being ready to play in 10 days.
Thursday, October 20, 2022 (No Play)
It’s been 11 days since I tweaked my knee. Kneeling is still quite painful. Going up and down stairs is sometimes mostly ok, but other times, it’s one step gently at a time and still uncomfortable.
Waiting for my doctor to look at my knee.
I met with my GP doctor this morning. He is almost certain that it’s a meniscus issue. He said to give it a month and see how it is. If it’s still the same or worse, we’ll proceed to an MRI. He said that if he were to send me to a specialist immediately, that doctor would just tell me to go home and wait too.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022 (No Play)
Sad news. The club sent out an email this morning notifying all of us that local player Susie Dougan died. She was playing at Brommer Park on Friday and fell on the courts, hitting her head. She was taken by ambulance to the ICU and tragically passed away yesterday (Monday) morning.
Susie was upbeat and genuine. She’ll be missed. She played in 70+ at Nationals and regularly up and down the west coast for years, and was on the medal stand frequently.
Note from a few days later: Jennifer Yoder said Susie suffered a stroke and collapsed on the court. Another said she was having balance issues after a stroke. I haven’t been able to confirm a definitive story.
Susie (and a cropped out Dan Bliss).
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 (No Play)
This amusing video came up suggested by YouTube, which was uploaded two days ago.
I think it describes a number of us players!
Thursday, October 27, 2022 (No Play)
Pickleball appeared on national television again, on CBS Mornings. This was five days ago, but I just stumbled upon it.
That’s a pretty long segment!
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 (No Play)
Matt Babb texted me this morning checking on me since they hadn’t seen me at Skypark in almost a month. Quite thoughtful.
I found this video online today with Susie Dougan giving a promotion 9 years ago for Prem Carot, “The Pickleball Guru”:
Andrew’s Knee
I don’t want to be a whiner. Such as asking for an MRI when I don’t need one. It’s been 3 1/2 weeks since I injured my knee. Walking briskly currently has some mild pain. Kneeling is still solidly painful, maybe a 5, with 0 being no pain and 10 being “stop, stop, ow!” Taking stairs is much better, but still not comfortable.
Thursday, November 10, 2022 (No Play)
I keep going back and forth on getting my knee scanned. Overall, it’s trending well, improving. But it’s slow going. Walking is mostly much fine now. Sitting can still bother the knee. I flew to New Orleans for about 48 hours for a trade show and walking off the airplane Saturday night and into San Jose Airport was like someone had hit me in the knee with a hammer. Sitting for so long made it worse.
Monday, November 14, 2022 (No Play)
Being that our family business is part of the Santa Cruz Downtown Association, I get emails from them. A few weeks ago, one was sharing that registration would be opening for the annual Christmas…. er, “Holiday” Parade. Recalling that I’d seeing on Facebook a pickleball club participate in a parade, I contacted the SCPC board—passing along the registration information—and they came back saying the club wanted to participate. There was some back and forth with some board members lining up people to support the event. By the time I registered, we were placed on the eating list. When I wrote the association asking about getting off the waiting list, they gave me permission to pay the fee and to participate.
Today, I paid the $107 fee, so we are formally a “go” for the parade on Saturday, December 3. We just need to get someone to figure out a roller system for a portable net so we can push it along the parade route and demonstrate the game.
Thursday, November 17, 2022 (No Play)
This morning, an email blast went out explaining: “Pickleball.com, along with its subsidiaries, the PPA Tour, PickleballTournaments.com, and PickleballBrackets.com, will adopt DUPR (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating) as its official and exclusive rating system.”
We’ll have to see what this means for USA Pickleball’s UTPR rating system, which it is known for a while has deficiencies. In the meantime, UTPR will be used for placing players in sanctioned tournaments and DUPR will be used for unsanctioned tournaments using the online tournament service.
Pickled!
Back in March, it was announced that CBS would broadcast the brain-child of comedian Stephen Cobert, “Pickled”, a celebrity charity pickleball tournament.
Today is the day. I set a phone alarm and plopped down in front of my iPad to watch. (I have a device that pulls broadcast signals from an antenna in my attic and shares it on my local network.)
There were 16 celebrities taking part. Of those, I only knew a handful: Will Ferrell (comedic actor of Elf and many lame movies), Emma Watson (actress of Harry Potter fame), Sugar Ray Leonard (boxer), and Luis Guzman (support actor). The remainder I didn’t even recognize… ok, maybe I’d seen some commercials for shows with Daniel Dae Kim in them.
Stephen Cobert acting the part of sports announcer host.
I will say, I almost turned it off after about 15 minutes. It was corny and the play was horrendously bad. Rallies were nearly nonexistent . . . and if they lasted more than a few shots, it was a series of newbie-style pop-ups.
As the show went on and the better teams advanced, the play got better and more entertaining. The championship match had some play that was on par with what I see locally in 3.0 games.
Things of note…
Emma Watson is a halfway decent player, The winners included a country music singer, who could easily hold his own with probably any of our local intermediate players.
Unfortunately, the show featured a short segment about that story I shared a few months ago about pickleball players taking over a children’s playground in New York City . . . that was negative publicity for the sport. Overall, though, I think the PR impact was good. It showed the sport as fun.
Oh, and a very pleasant and welcomed surprise, they had an authentic pickleball referee actually enforcing the rules. When Sugar Ray hit an apparent winner, the ref called him on a NVZ foot fault and the show took the time to share the ref’s explanation. Another similar moment was a violation of the double bounce rule.
Overall, I think it was good.
Number of days on a court: 559 Number of total hours: 2,516.5
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First, let me say that after playing a bunch leading up to last Sunday’s tournament, the siren’s call of pickleball was very weak. I took Tuesday night off. Tonight is pipe band practice. I may play tomorrow, Friday morning.
Permanent Courts in Santa Cruz?
The City of Santa Cruz sent out an email. I don’t know if this went to just people on a tennis/pickleball interest list or everyone in their P&R system. (I managed a city league softball team for a number of years, so I’d be in their system from that.)
Dear Community Member,
I would like to invite you to two upcoming public meetings regarding proposed court modifications at 2300 Delaware Avenue (UCSC’s property) and Sgt. Derby Park. The Parks and Recreation Department is proposing for the City to enter into a License Agreement with the University of California, Santa Cruz to convert the two tennis courts to eight pickleball courts at 2300 Delaware Avenue and to appropriate funds to implement the project. Upon the project’s completion, the Parks and Recreation Department also plans to convert the existing shared-use courts (two tennis courts which are striped to allow for pickleball play) to only allow for tennis play at Sgt Derby Park. If approved and funded, pickleball play would be available on permanent courts at 2300 Delaware Avenue and only tennis would be played at the Sgt. Derby Park courts.Please see attached notice for more details.
Thank you, Noah Downing Park Planner Parks and Recreation City of Santa Cruz
John P., on the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board, called me about the proposal, but I was working and had to call him back. When I did, he explained that in order to keep the Parks & Recreation Commission in the best possible mood, the plan was to limit the number of speakers on our behalf to just five people. John asked if I would be willing to be in one of the five speakers. Of course, I said yes.
I don’t have a lot of experience with public speaking, but I did it a few years ago when there was a proposal on the table for the same commission to turn Derby Park into just pickleball and not tennis. At that meeting, I provided some hard data regarding sound pressure levels I had recorded in and around the courts. This was to balance out a neighbor who got up and, as expected, complained about pickleball noise. This time, John explained to me, the meeting would be virtual instead of in person. I would much rather have it in person, but it is what it is.
This proposal would alleviate a lot of issues, most of which are due to the popularity of pickleball. The proposed location would have eight permanent courts instead of just six temporary courts. It would also have a substantial amount of parking, which fixes the complaint about player parking is negatively impacting the neighborhood. Another issue that this would alleviate is the complaints about noise as the new location is not near any housing—it is in a much more commercial and industrial area. All in all, it’s a pretty great solution. It’s also only 2 to 3 minutes of driving away from the current location at Derby Park.
Friday, October 7, 2022 (Court Day #558)
The weather has changed substantially in the last few weeks. We have left summer and entered fall. As I was driving to Brommer Park, the temperature on my car was reading 56°. As I drove, I hoped that the cooler temperature and the periodically very lightly misting fog would keep people from coming as early and leave me a parking spot. Though at 9:20, I could see Art and another apparent player walking down the street toward the courts and there were two cars circling in the lot ahead of me in a futile search for spot. I ended up parking down the block on a side street.
Walking into the courts.
As with all organized club play, the first hour from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., is mixed skill play. I got into some disposable games with very short rallies. 10 o’clock rolled around and I saw the René, who in rolled her ankle a week go, out playing on one of the courts. I waited for her to finish up as there didn’t appear to be any appropriate games materializing. I could either try to weasel my way into a game with Dan and Dean which would probably meet resistance or I’d have to play with players that are signing up in red who I feel are really intermediate players.
Kiko
There was a very tall young-ish man there with blond dreadlocks who I didn’t know and have still never played with. Dave Debiasi explained that this fellow, Kiko, went to Oregon where he played linebacker for the Ducks football team and was later drafted into the NFL and played for Buffalo. Dave said he was very highly regarded and played well. I asked if Kiko got injured and Dave replied the Kiko had blown out his knee. I didn’t get a chance to play with Kiko but I imagine his wide reach would be very helpful for him. I later looked up Kiko online and it turns out he had a pretty long NFL career, playing with several teams over seven years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiko_Alonso In the article, it says Kiko went to Los Gatos High School, which is a mere 20 minutes north, between Santa Cruz and San Jose, so he probably has family in our area.
René
I got a few games in with René as my partner, which is good considering we have a tournament together in about two weeks. I felt in my play was overall subpar today. My dropshots were not super reliable . . . some were a little too low and some were too high—either way the rally was over in very short order. It’s a far cry from my appearance at a club-arranged workshop at Derby when I was nailing nearly all my dropshots.
Don’t Want to Win?
In one game with René, we were playing against Rick and Art. As we were about to start, René told me, “We want to hit to Art.” I said something about hitting to Rick too. She said, “You want to win, right?” “No . . . [dramatic pause] . . . I want to get better.” She thought for a second, then replied, “I understand. I’m in tournament mode.” As I’ve mentioned before, in rec games, I want them difficult. Illegal serve? Fine. Hit to the stronger player? Fine. I can hit to easier players during mixed skill time.
Matt
I played two games with Matt, the taller, thin Canadian 4.0+ player. One game against him and one with him. He’s quick.
One proud moment was in the first game when Matt was directly in front of me. He was dinking crosscourt to René to my left. This went back and forth a few times. Matt did a speed up right at me off a crosscourt dink. But I knew it might be coming. I whipped the ball back down between their feet for a winner. Matt was very surprised and laughed, “You were ready for that one!” Yep. Expect the ball fast, at any time, off of any shot.
In the second game, it was Rick and René—she’s playing with him in a tournament in Las Vegas next month—against Matt and me. I felt bad for Matt. Rick and René were targeting me. Matt had to poach to get into the game more. It’s not a philosophy I agree with. As I mentioned, in rec play, hit to the better player to get better yourself. Years ago, early on in my pickleball journey, I got into a game with Karen Long against Terry Long and John Connor. All stronger players than me. Terry and John barely hit the ball to me. It was Karen, Karen, Karen. I was on an island. They knew they’d get a better game that way. That said, I believe I was better than they thought at that time since I was improving by leaps and bounds in that first year or two. (It was roughly around that time that Karen told me that I was “the most improved player”—that after Kevin and I beat her and Leslie and Kevin told me after that game that I had carried him.)
It was a little after noon. There were no advanced players available and I had work to get to. I called it a day.
Number of days on a court: 558 Number of total hours: 2,511.5
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