Archive for "Events"
Celebrating Alice
Posted on December 14, 2023 by Ching under Events, Pickleball.
I think I’ve mentioned before that Wichita has turned into everyone’s favorite place to celebrate their pickleball birthdays. This past weekend we celebrated Alice Tunks-Jones, my friend from Emporia’s, 30th birthday.
Our friend Susie Ternes did a fabulous job of organizing and bringing everyone together. She even got this delicious cake.
Here’s a pic of the three of us:
Some of Alice’s friends from all over converged in Wichita as well. It was wonderful meeting everyone.
This weekend will prove to be another exciting one as it is Molly Sager’s turn to celebrate. The Sagers live in Great Bend but will be celebrating in Wichita as well. If you’re having a birthday, and pickleball is part of the festivities, you need to come to Wichita. This is where it’s at – LOL!
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Wichita – Pickleball Birthday Capital of the World?
Posted on December 7, 2023 by Ching under Events.
These are some highlights from Ramon’s birthday celebration at Mortdecai’s a few weeks ago. This month, we have a couple more out of town pickleball friends (Alice and Molly) who are coming to Wichita to celebrate their birthdays. Is it just me or has Wichita turned in to pickleball birthday party central?
Ryan Kellenbarger’s ICT SOS charity tournament also happened earlier that day at Chicken N Pickle. Ramon and Nicole (Mathis) played in it together. Here’s the video from that tournament.
ICT SOS Benefit Tournament
Posted by Ching on Saturday, November 18, 2023
It was a super fun (but busy) weekend overall. We had Wild Lights on Friday night (with Kendra and Colby) and then I had iPN at Sandbox on Sunday morning. Ramon’s birthday was sandwiched in between on Saturday. Anyway, despite the hectic-ness of the weekend, I’m glad Ramon chose to celebrate in Wichita so at least we could participate in celebrating him.
Cheers to another amazing year!
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First Minor League Pickleball Team Tournament in Wichita
Posted on October 23, 2023 by Ching under Events, Pickleball.
I was fortunate to be part of bringing the first ever Minor League Pickleball team tournament to Wichita earlier this month. The iPickle Nation team has been hosting these in the Kansas City area but this was our first one in Wichita.
We had quite a few hurdles to overcome but, overall, I think we had a pretty successful first event. The first hurdle was finding a suitable venue. Riverside Tennis Center had various events going on and was limited on dates that they would be willing to allow us to have. Besides that, we had to dodge a bunch of other tournaments in the region that were happening at the same time and we were running out of warm weather days. In the end, we ended up going with Crestview Country Club because Riverside was going to be too expensive (there was no way we were going to be able to have the event at Riverside and not lose money) and the rate we were able to negotiate with Crestview was much more reasonable.
We ended up with 8 teams each in DUPR 16 and 18 and 4 teams each in DUPR 14 and 20, which was perfect for the number of courts we had. Crestview has six painted pickleball courts and we taped up six additional courts for a total of 12 on event day. We taped up courts and set up nets on Saturday night and were all set to go first thing on Sunday morning.
Visit Wichita, our local visitors’ bureau, was a huge help as well. They set up group rates at a couple of nearby hotels for our out of town players. It worked out great.
I did host three players from a DUPR 18 team that I helped put together (Genevieve Eskridge from Tulsa, Craig Morford from Kansas City, and Gloria Knoles from Nebraska teamed up with Chris Wilson and formed “Strangers with Candy” team) and helped find housing for some others but for those players who we couldn’t find free housing for, Spring Hill Suites and Tru next to Chicken N Pickle offered really good rates for our group. It was perfect too because those who stayed there could easily walk over to Chicken N Pickle.
I always get super cranky and stressed out but thankfully I have Brian who is always such a huge help. He helped us set up on Saturday and Sunday and, although he left for part of the event to take care of some chores and honey-dos, he came back to help tear down after. He is the best!
Anyway, I dream of having many of these types of events here in the future. I feel like Wichita is the perfect location to bring players from all over — Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and so forth — to compete with one another. I can’t wait to see what the future holds!
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Susie’s Pickleball Birthday Party
Posted on August 16, 2023 by Ching under Events, Pickleball.
Susie Ternes, Karen Fox, and I were all matchy match at Susie’s pickleball birthday party at Rolling Hills this past weekend. DJ Jeff Kenworthy was there playing some tunes and lots of people came out to celebrate Susie, as you can tell from the group photo that we took at the party below.
The party was so much fun but the most memorable part for me was getting to play against senior pro Rich Lively. I didn’t even know it was him at first because I didn’t recognize him. I just saw this guy in a blue “Diamond Amateur Championship” shirt who I had never seen before playing with Jason McCutchen. And then we started playing and he was hitting these killer serves. Finally, I was just like, “I don’t think we’ve met before. What is your name?” That’s when I found out it was Boca Raton Picklers’ Rich Lively. No wonder he had killer serves and amazing shots! He’s a pro! Naturally, I tried to engage him in dink battles almost every point. It was so much fun! Pickleball birthday parties are THE BEST!
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Tournament Recap – OKC Picklemania
Posted on August 14, 2023 by Ching under Events, Pickleball.
I had a blast playing in Picklemania at the Life Time in Oklahoma City last weekend, a tournament I wasn’t even set to play in. My friend Mandy O’Neil and I just happened to be texting each other and so it got me looking at the tournament. I found one of the guys from Wichita, Nathan Peters, signed up for men’s doubles but not mixed so I asked him if he would be interested in playing mixed doubles together. With a women’s doubles and mixed doubles partner lined up, I decided to make the trip down since I didn’t have any plans that weekend anyway.
Originally, Brian and Saki were going with me but then Brian’s office move got pushed back to August 4 weekend so then he couldn’t go. It worked out that he had to stay in town because the two iPickle Nation team members we had Amanda Ades and Fernando Martinez were both unavailable to run the Nation Builder that weekend. Amanda had a wedding and Fernando was out of town fishing with his son and, since I was playing in the tournament in Oklahoma, Brian had to fill in for all of us. I’m pretty sure that everyone being out that weekend was main the reason I didn’t sign up for the tournament to begin with — because I had to be around to run the round robin at Riverside — but, with two amazing players as partners, I had to figure out a way to make it work.
I met Mandy at some tournaments and got to spend time with her at one of my friend Tanner Rice’s DUPR events last year and she seemed to me like such a fun person to play with so I’d been looking for an opportunity partner with her so I was glad when the opportunity finally came knocking. And then Nate single-handedly smoked Dustin Herman and me at the ICT Classic tournament so I was excited to actually be on the same side of the net as him this time.
Here are a couple of pictures from Saturday that Mandy’s husband Justin took of us with some of the teams in our division.
I’d never played 4.5 women’s doubles before but that’s the level Mandy wanted to play. For our first time playing together, I thought we did really well. I enjoyed playing with her a ton. She prefers playing on the left and I prefer playing on the right so I felt like we were a perfect match.
Here are a couple of action shots of me and Nate on Sunday. Nate and I did really well for not having played together either. We were second in our pool and made it to quarters in a 4.5 mixed doubles division stacked with 18 tough teams.
We defeated the Luelfs (Caroline and Ryan) in the first round of the single elimination bracket and then had to face a couple of tennis players (Alex Bowers and James Seagrass) in the quarters. It was like having to play against two Nates across the net from me which, as Nate put it perfectly, is my Kryptonite. We ended up losing to them and they ended up going on to win gold.
These are some highlights from mixed doubles play on Sunday:
Besides all the fun, competitive play, I enjoy Picklemania for an opportunity to reconnect with some of favorite pickleball players and fellow Chicken N Pickle ambassadors outside the state. Below is Karen McAllister, matriarch of pickleball’s “first family” in OKC.
This next one is of Antonio Lares, Jared Smart, and Ramon Lozano.
If you are a pickleball player looking to play in a fun tournament, I highly recommend checking out one of the Picklemania events in OKC. It is one of my favorite tournaments to do. I already can’t wait until the next one.
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