Archive for "Events"
Ryan’s Birthday Weekend
Posted on April 26, 2023 by Ching under Community, Events, Pickleball.
I just love when friends come to visit. A few weeks ago we had a surprise visit from the Sagers. They were in town the same weekend as the It’s a Big Dill pickleball tournament at the Wichita Country Club. They were supposed to stay at the Egans but the Egans were in Tulsa for a concert so they weren’t in town. They made a game time decision to stay with us instead. It was quite spontaneous but everyone’s always welcome at our house.
They ended up meeting us at WCC and hanging out for a bit. We had early supper at Wichita Brewing Company, one of my most favorite pizza places. They also happen to have great craft beer so it’s a winning combination.
I love when the Sagers visit because they are so fun. After supper, we hung out at home and played cards. They taught us how to play Pitch. I love learning new things and I love card games so I can’t wait to play it again.
It was a pretty quick visit for the Sagers. They stayed over on Saturday night and left on Sunday. But then later that same week, Ramon Lozano came into town. He didn’t have any specific plans, other than I think he wanted to get some practice time with Kyle Starkel. They both played in a “Bring Your Own Partner” DUPR session I had at the Pickle Club that I organized at Zach Nguyen’s request.
While he was in town, he got invited to a bunch of pickleball games and also Ryan Kellenbarger’s birthday celebrations. Yes, celebrations with an S because they were celebrating all weekend long. Anyway, Ramon is probably one of the most spontaneous people I know. He doesn’t really plan too far ahead. So he arrived on Wednesday and stayed through Sunday — without any pre-planning. I think this was the longest length of time he had ever stayed with us. I was actually surprised he had enough clothes with him.
I love cake so I volunteered to bring the cake for the pickleball celebration.
Solo pic of Ryan with the cake above and a picture of our group below.
Later that night, we met up with the gang for more birthday festivities.
Here’s a pic of Ryan and Ramon with our friend Ty Richardson.
Ryan with Ian Carr and Austin Jones.
Group picture of those who stayed for dancing. Jared Smart and Kendra Wicks came for dinner but didn’t stick around. They left shortly after Brian and I arrived.
Dawn Hazlewood with Ramon and Ryan.
Last pic is an obligatory selfie of Brian and me. Cos, you know, we just have to do it. Until next time, GNG.
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It’s a Big Dill Pickleball Tournament
Posted on April 24, 2023 by Ching under Community, Events, Pickleball.
The It’s a Big Dill Pickleball Tournament at the Wichita Country Club which benefits the Wichita Children’s Home fell on April 1 this year. This was my third year helping with the tournament and every year it’s a little bit different and every year we encounter different challenges. Last year one of our biggest challenges was having so many teams (four divisions worth) and not having enough courts. The WCC team tapes up 8 temporary courts to supplement the 3 permanent ones so we always have just 11 courts.
The first year that I helped, we only budgeted half a day and the tournament ran until a little after 1 pm. I couldn’t stay that year because I had a Saturday morning Aqua Zumba class at the time that I couldn’t get out of (or it might have been some other commitment that I had later in the day). I remember I was only there to get it kicked off and then I had to leave.
Last year we factored in lunch and allowed for play until 2 pm. Despite having a limited number of courts, everything ran smoothly and on schedule. I remember looking at my watch as we were pulling out of the parking lot to leave and it read 2:01 pm. That meant we were able to award medals and start tear down in time for everything to wrap up by 2 pm as planned.
This year they wanted me to work an exhibition match into the tournament schedule. Two of our top pros Jay Devilliers and Patrick Smith were being auctioned off at the kick off party on Friday night and the winners of the live auction would get to play with them during the lunch intermission at the tournament on Saturday. Because of the exhibition match, we added an extra hour to the schedule and planned to wrap everything up by 3 pm.
But that wasn’t even the biggest challenge I had to face. I always like to print all my round robin schedules in Excel ahead of time so I’m not having to cross-reference team numbers against team names. Well, about 15 minutes before the start of the tournament, I found that we had an extra team in the men’s doubles division. One of the sponsors didn’t sign up to play in the tournament ahead of time but showed up that morning. The sponsors donate a lot of money so we couldn’t turn them away. I basically had to scrap my pre-printed worksheet for the men’s doubles and just used a generic team round robin from printyourbrackets.com for the men’s division. At least I only had to do that for one division and mixed and women’s didn’t have to be modified.
Amazingly enough, everything once again ran super smoothly and on schedule. Bryce and Michael from the WCC were fabulous at keeping things going and helping me put matches on as soon as courts became available. We were able to finish all the round robin play by noon and start the exhibition match as the players enjoyed their lunch.
The exhibition match was a nice addition to the tournament day. Not only did it raise $10,000 for the Wichita Children’s Home (both of the winning bidders paid $5,000 each to play with Jay and Pat) but it also gave the players a nice break for lunch so that they didn’t feel like they had to rush through their food.
Here’s a link to the exhibition match video for those who want to watch it. Below are pictures of the winners of this year’s tournament.
- Mixed Doubles
- First Place – Matt Nola and Jackie Hall
- Second Place – Dave and Lori Belew
- Third Place – Tanner and Britney Blaske
- Men’s Doubles
- First Place – Mitchell Born and Klee Watchous
- Second Place – Zach Nguyen and Noi Sourinthone
- Third Place – Ron McMahon and Daniel Ritchie
- Advanced Women’s Doubles
- First Place – Karen Fox and Vickie Hancock
- Second Place – Beth Fischer and Zoe Rohr
- Third Place – Chandi Bongers and Krista Crawford
- Intermediate Women’s Doubles
- First Place – Krista Onofrio and Kristin Conrad
- Second Place – Brenda Bishop and Margaret Dechant
- Third Place – Trish Mueller and Karen Taylor
So grateful to our wonderful pickleball community and generous players for supporting the Wichita Children’s Home pickleball tournament. We had a another successful event. I’m already looking forward to next year!
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Katie’s Birthday Weekend
Posted on March 17, 2023 by Ching under Events.
My friend Katie Merrill decided to celebrate her birthday weekend in Wichita this year. We started the weekend with an awesome two-hour lesson with Chris Heck.
I had initially booked the lesson just for me and Katie but our friend Genevieve Eskridge spent the weekend in Wichita too and Chris was nice enough to let us make it a trio. Thanks to Genevieve for these pics.
After our lesson, Katie planned to take a nap but we ended up learning line dances from our other friend Josh McAllister instead. He came up to Wichita to spend the weekend and celebrate with us, too.
Genevieve, Katie, and Josh
Genevieve and Katie both live in Tulsa. Josh lives in Oklahoma City. We also have another friend Ramon Lozano from Hays who spent the weekend as well.
Wichita actually turned out to be the perfect location to celebrate because it’s centrally located and an easy drive for everyone. The funny thing is, we had more people staying with us than we had rooms so, earlier in the week, I tried to figure out when everyone would arrive on Saturday. I told them the last person to arrive would get the couch. Ramon was like, “I’m coming on Friday.” LOL. He didn’t want us to give his room away.
Here are a few more pictures from dinner…
Colby Fugit, Jenny Cole, and Chris Heck
Jenny and Austin Corley
with Jenny and Colby
Ryan Kellenbarger, Ed Egan, and Ramon Lozano
Brandi and Ty Richardson
with Josh McAllister and Cindy Egan
We had a lovely group gather for dinner at Doma to celebrate Katie. I will post pictures of food next post. For now, we are going to continue with birthday weekend festivities.
After dinner, several of us went to Club Rodeo for some dancing.
These guys are wild. Genevieve, Brian, and I didn’t stay late.
I think we left around midnight. The rest of them stayed and shut the bar down. I know Brian, who is kind of a worry wart, stayed up waiting for everyone to come home. I was tired and just went to sleep. I was half asleep and half awake around 2:30 AM and he was like, “Your friends still aren’t home.” I’m pretty sure I mumbled something like, “They can get in through the garage,” and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Brian, the responsible person that he is, stayed up and when he heard the garage door open sometime after 3 AM, was like “Your friends are back. Ryan is here too.” He went down to check on them because he said Josh didn’t look too good. He must have had too much to drink. I’m glad they had enough sense to just come to our house and people didn’t drive home drunk.
Genevieve had her room upstairs. Katie and Ramon each had their rooms in the basement. We put Josh in the living room because he said he didn’t mind sleeping on the couch. Ryan spent the night instead of going home. They all looked pretty rough the next day.
Josh ended up crashing on the Xorbee chair, while Ryan took the couch.
They were like, “Whose idea was it to play pickleball this morning?” LOL. Hey, that’s what Katie wanted to do. I guess next time, the plan will be to play pickleball and then go to dinner and dancing, and not the other way around.
Even with staying up late the night before to make sure everyone was okay, Brian got up early to make breakfast. Papa Brian did such a great job of taking care of us all that weekend.
Everyone looked so rough. You can tell the people who stayed out way too late.
We all met up at the Sandbox in Derby for some birthday pickleball. Katie has a lot of friends in Wichita but also had some friends come up from Oklahoma (Kali Wilson and Tanner Rice) and western Kansas (Cory Sager) for the day — in addition to those who spent the weekend in Wichita to celebrate.
Anyway, I was working on a website for Katie for her birthday (ktpickleball.com) which I tried to finish in time for her birthday weekend but didn’t through no fault of my own. However, Tanner did come through for me on the “bag of dicks” gag gift for Katie. I had joked I was going to get her a “bag of dicks” for her birthday. Tanner got a good deal on them from his rock lady so all the ladies at pickleball that day got a mini penis as a party favor. LOL.
Anyway, it was such a fun weekend. I had a great time and hope that Katie did too. Here’s a fun video montage I made of all of the adventures and birthday festivities that weekend. Next year Katie will be turning 40 so I think we are all planning to go to Hawaii. I cannot wait!
Until then, GNG.
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Dream Team Doubles — Over and Under
Posted on March 9, 2023 by Ching under Events, Pickleball.
Last year we had a couple of Dream Team Doubles team tournaments at Riverside Tennis Center. This time Noi wanted to do something different. He wanted to include a population of player that usually gets left out of team events. The twist on this recent team event is that at least two of the members of the four-person team had to be 55 and over.
I always enjoy running these events because it gives me a creative outlet for creating some tournament worksheets, which kind of my jam. I shared about it in the ictpickleball.com site.
Here are a few pictures from the event…
Noi Sourinthone – the main pickleball guy.
Erica Case and Cindy Egan
Patti’s Ballers (Wanda Ballard, Dustin Herman, Brady Randall, and Patti Mackey)
JB and the Dinkers (Nathan Peters, Erica, JB West, and Kari Steffy)
NOIsy Picklers (Steve McKinney, Noi, Shelley McKinney, and Katelyn Goldsmith)
Paddle CERJ (Robert Mansfield, Jenny Corley, Cindy Egan, and Ed Egan) — They were the champions of the event.
Left: Team KSBS (Scott Wolford, Becci Young, Kay Schierling, and Stephen Wilson)
Right: Let’s Taco ‘Bout It (Parrish Gumeringer, Ramon Lozano, Fernando Martinez, and Dawn Hazelwood)
These were the top three finishers:
1) Paddle CERJ
2) Team KSBS
3) Let’s Taco ‘Bout It
What I love about this event is seeing a diverse group of players of all ages come together and play as a team. It was so much fun to run and so much fun to watch.
Erica generously hosted an after party at one of her restaurants. It was me and Brian’s first time at Hurricane and we really liked it. It’s clear on the opposite side of town as us but we’d likely go back.
Here’s a highlight video I create of the pictures and video clips from the event.
Anyway, it seemed like everyone had a great time. Can’t wait until the next team event! Until then, GNG.
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Updates are So Behind Because – Life
Posted on March 6, 2023 by Ching under Community, Events, Life.
Fifteen years ago today, we moved from the old Protection One building (now the LUX) on Main to the Ruffin Building on Douglas and Broadway. We have since moved again. Now we are at the old KGE building on East Central.
We left behind so much — my old whiteboard (which I am a little bit sad about), Zumba VHS tapes (I had donated them to our wellness center when we first moved and realized we would have our own fitness area — I didn’t want these back), and fax machines (who still uses these things, anyway) — but the memories we will forever take with us.
Besides moving offices, there was also the Leadership Wichita alumni reunion hosted by the Wichita Chamber at the IMA rooftop. I wish it hadn’t been cold that day so we could enjoy the rooftop terrace but, either way, it was nice to see some of my classmates. At least those who made it from the class of 2014.
Then there is the pickleball. Lots and lots of it.
So many DUPR sessions (because I try to squeeze them in whenever I can). We also had a Dream Team Doubles Over and Under event at Riverside, which I will write a separate post about but you can read about it some here. My friend Katie’s birthday weekend (also to be covered in a separate post). And then driving up to Kansas City to have some practice games with Parker yesterday.
I was coming up for a DUPR Waterfall event but they canceled the 4.5 Division because of lack of sign ups and they wouldn’t let Parker play down because he is too good. Anyway, I ended up going up and was able to get some good practice games in so it was a productive trip. The best part is Parker showed up with the exact same pickleball bag as me. He didn’t know I had this bag (I literally had just gotten it a few weeks ago) and he just got his two weeks ago also. We just happened to order the exact same bag. Crazy! All I can say is — great minds think alike!
If you want the exact same bag for yourself, you can order it from Just Paddles here. Then we can all be matchy matchy.
There’s so much to write about. I’m hoping to find some time this week to get caught up before life gets completely crazy again. Until then, GNG.
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