Archive for "Community"
My Friend Chris Wilson
Posted on April 12, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
I attended a safety meeting at one of our service locations last week and ran into my friend Chris Wilson. I met Chris through pickleball and played with him for months (yes, MONTHS) before I realized that we both worked for the same company. Of course, we were working at different locations so we never ran into one another.
It wasn’t until another pickleball friend (Paul Haas), who worked for the same company, retired that I found out Chris worked at Evergy also. I was looking for someone to play pickleball with me for the Wichita Corporate Challenge and I asked Paul to play because I knew of his Evergy connection, having recently celebrated his retirement. However, Paul was like, “Why don’t you ask Chris? He still works for Evergy.” That’s how I found out. I totally had no idea we were employed by the same company until then. But then, I guess that’s what happens when your company employs over 5,000 people. You don’t really know anyone.
Anyway, Chris has been my “go to” guy for anything pickleball-related that the company sponsors. Evergy chose not to participate in the Wichita Corporate Challenge last year but, had we participated, I would have asked Chris to play with me. With the increasing popularity of the sport, more and more people are work are getting into pickleball so I guess we might have to do tryouts next time. But, back when I first discovered pickleball, I only knew of Chris and Paul and me.
When I first discovered pickleball, Paul and Chris had already been playing a long while. I was a beginner playing at West YMCA when I found Paul’s church on the West side of town — a super secret place to play pickleball that’s not even listed on Playtime Scheduler. It was my first time there and everyone knew I was not any good but they were nice enough and let me play anyway. On my very first game, they paired me with “the best guy there” — because that’s what you do with the worst player, in order to make the games more fair — and that was literally my introduction to Chris. For a long time, he was the best player I knew.
Shortly after (I’m still very much a beginner) he asked me to play in a tournament with him. It happened to be the Senior Games. At the time, I couldn’t decide if I should be flattered that he felt I was good enough to play with him or if I should be offended that he thought I was old enough to play in “senior” events.
Once I had a bit more experience, we did end up playing in some tournaments together — both sanctioned and unsanctioned — besides just the Wichita Corporate Challenge and charity tournaments. We even teamed up for Middle States Regionals. Although, it wasn’t longer after that when I got benched. Chris decided he needed a more “age appropriate” partner. By age appropriate, I mean someone who could play in 50+ events with him.
The bigger tournaments have both age and skill divisions such as 19+, 35+, 50+ and so forth. I guess he was tired of playing 35+ with me, specially when he could do so much better in 50+ events. To be fair to all competitors, players can play down in age but they can’t play up so I could not play 50+ with him. If we played together, he would have to play down to 35+ with me. It really didn’t make any sense when there were several 50+ players he could team up with.
The dissolution of our partnership was an amicable one and it actually proved beneficial to me because it gave me the opportunity to play with some higher level mixed doubles partners. It’s great to have a “young buck” with young legs to play with in younger age groups. Anyway, despite having divorced each other, Chris and I still team up from time to time for events like the Picklepalooza. And maybe the Wichita Corporate Challenge again this year (if there aren’t any other employees who want to represent our company).
Even though we have both moved on and are playing with different partners competitively (we actually had to face off against each other not too long ago in the Oak Tree tournament in Edmond), Chris is still one of may favorite pickleball players to play with and against. He’s good people and I am grateful that he has been part of my pickleball journey.
Until next time, GNG.
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Raising Money for LLS
Posted on March 21, 2022 by Ching under Community, Events, Pickleball.
The pickleball community came together for a great cause earlier this month. On March 6, LLS Students of the Year candidate Josie Morris hosted a pickleball tournament at Chicken N Pickle to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. As you can tell from this short video, everyone had a great time and the tournament was a huge success!
I am pretty sure Chris Heck had the most fun out of everyone. He was drinking the entire time! I don’t think there was ever a moment that he didn’t have a beer in his hand. Actually, he wasn’t playing with beer in hand (that’s a totally different pickleball tournament) but his drink was always close by so he could take a drink every couple of points.
The funny thing is, he wasn’t even supposed to play with me. I had signed up for Noi Sourinthone, my friend from Tennessee who recently moved to Wichita run pickleball programs for the city, and I to play together. However, he ended up having to fly back to Tennessee for a funeral the weekend of the tournament so he had Chris take his spot.
It worked out great that we already had matching shirts. Karen thought I had them made special but they are actually shirts we had from 2020. In fact, they are so old that rule #2 on the back is now wrong and needs to be revised.
Chris and I ended up winning the tournament. Chris is one of the best players in Wichita so the outcome wasn’t a surprise. I think it would have been more of a shock if we didn’t win. Although, I think the result would have been the same had Noi been able to play. Being new in town, he hasn’t met everyone and they have no idea what an amazing pickleball player he is.
Besides raising money for LLS, my main goal that day was not to let Noi down. I was goofing around mostly and almost messed it up. Thankfully, I had a great partner and we ended up taking first place and earning a couple of gift cards to 6S Steakhouse donated by our friend Jen Reifschneider, who is the executive chef at the restaurant. You’ll probably remember her as the old executive chef at Woodfire Grille at the Kansas Star Casino.
Last night, a bunch of us got together for dinner at 6S to support Jen’s restaurant and also so Chris and I could use our gift cards. However, Chris forgot to bring his gift card so I guess we’ll just have to go back. LOL.
6S is a special occasion sort of place but, if you go during “first call” from 4:30 to 6:00 pm when they have $5 drinks and $8 appetizers, you can actually get out of there without spending too much. I might have to take Brian there on a date another night soon. Until then, GNG.
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Nahola Farewell Party
Posted on March 2, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
Stopped by Nahola after work on Monday for free open play. I initially wasn’t going to be able to come because Kayla said it was 3p to 6p but then she said I should swing by anyway because they’ll probably be there until 9p.
When I arrived I found Noi, Chris (Heck), Kayla, and Kimberly playing on one court and some others who I didn’t know very well on another court. I think I got maybe three games in before we stopped playing at 6p. The most memorable one was the last game with Chris against Bob and JB. I hit three ATPs in one game. I think that’s the most ATP winners I’ve ever hit in a single game. I found it fitting that on my last game on the very last day of play at Nahola I hit three ATPs because Nahola is where I actually first learned to hit these on purpose.
Play stopped at 6p because people started arriving for the farewell party. I think that’s what Kayla meant by saying they’d be there until 9p that night. I didn’t have to be at Chicken N Pickle until 8p so I hung out for a bit and took some pictures.
I didn’t even know I was on the slideshow on the TV until I was looking at this pic on my phone after I got home.
It was a lovely farewell party with some of the OG Nahola members.
I made a short video of some of the pictures and videos we took on Monday night and some of the old pics I already had in my phone from before.
I will really miss this place. Nahola brought so many amazing people into my life who I would have never met otherwise. I’ve really enjoyed my year and a half as member. My only regret is that I didn’t find Nahola eight years ago when they first opened. At least I now have pickleball and all of these wonderful friends I’ve made. And, though we no longer have the physical space of Nahola, we will be forever connected by the bond of friendship and our collective love for the sport.
Until next time, GNG.
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Farewell to Nahola
Posted on February 28, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
Today will be the last day of Nahola as Nahola. It makes me so sad to think about it. Even though I’ve only been a member a little over a year, I quickly grew attached to this place. It was my “go to” spot for pickleball on weekends. I think several others felt the same way, specially the retired pickleball players who were playing there on a daily basis during the day.
For those who don’t know, Nahola was started in 2014 by three visionary women: Nancy, Holly, and Kayla (thus, Nahola). They originally had just one pickleball court with gym floors in the main building. In 2017, based on the popularity of the sport with the fitness center members, they added an auxiliary building with two pickleball courts on an outdoor surface.
You can watch Nancy talk about the expansion and pickleball in general in the following Wichita Eagle video:
For the next few years, Nahola quickly became the premier place to play pickleball and was the training ground for some of the best pickleball players in our city. It was common knowledge that one of the best ways to improve and get better at pickleball was to join and play at Nahola. Nahola had well-established pickleball leagues with long waiting lists even before Chicken N Pickle entered the market.
Over the course of my year and a half long membership, I was able to participate in a few leagues and special events like their team tournaments (November 2021, August 2020). I played in a couple of their women’s leagues — once when it was held on Saturdays and most recently the Sunday one.
This is a short video I made of our very last day of the very last women’s league. Several players were out of town that weekend so we only had eight ladies (four teams) in our league tournament. It was a lot of fun but bittersweet.
Kayla runs the league and keeps track of each player’s performance throughout the league and then on tournament day you get paired up based on your record. Fong and I ended up getting paired up. Fong was also one of my teammates in MLP so this was kind of a reunion. Fong is a fierce competitor who is super aggressive and, as former tennis player, has shots that I cannot do so her style of play complements mine really well. I was super excited that we got to team up.
We played round robin first before going into single-elimination bracket play. We had an excellent record, only losing to Heather and Krystal. In the bracket play, we ended up having to play Amy and Huyen. Though we had already defeated them in pool play, we ended up losing in bracket play so we didn’t advance to the finals.
The finals came down to Amy and Huyen versus Heather and Krystal (the two winningest players of our session). This match up was made even more interesting by the fact that Huyen and Krystal (who normally play together as fierce women’s doubles duo) were having to play against one another.
Heather and Krystal reigned supreme and went completely undefeated that day. The two of them have been on fire the entire session, battling it out of the number one spot. Except the week before tournament, Krystal got some losses and Huyen was on fire that day and ended up sneaking in to take the lead.
I’ve been keeping track of how everyone was doing too and, by my tally, Huyen had the greatest win rate and most wins out of everyone; followed by Amy, Heather, and Krystal in a three-way tie for second. So it really could have been anyone’s game.
These ladies are so talented that it’s fun to watch them play but it’s even more fun to play with against them. I have really enjoyed playing in this league and will miss it immensely. These ladies will forever hold a special place in my heart.
I’m talking like we’re all gone forever. LOL. I really hope we can have a similar league like this somewhere. It was really fun and it helped my women’s doubles game significantly. Here is a group of photo of these great bunch of women:
From left: me, Brandi Richardson, Amy Jaramillo, Fong Witte, Huyen Nguyen, Krystal Fosnight, Heather Griffin, and Kimberly Howe. (We were missing Kayla, Jannell, Lesli, and Shawna.)
Anyway, the new owners will be taking over after today and will reopen next week as the Pickle Club. So far, there aren’t any compelling reasons for me to join so we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, GNG.
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Pickleball Birthday Party at Chicken N Pickle
Posted on February 22, 2022 by Ching under Community, Events, Pickleball.
Cindy Witte, one of our pickleball friends, hosted a surprise 60th birthday for her husband Joe at Chicken N Pickle on Saturday night. It was absolutely perfect!
As you can see from the video above, I think he was truly surprised.
Cindy invited a bunch of friends (most of them pickleball players) to help surprise him. She rented all of the indoor courts and even had a DJ (another pickleball friend, Jeff) for the private event.
Jeff Kenworthy, DJ extraordinaire, played fun tunes for us all night long. He even got Joe to sing a Sinatra song! If you are looking for someone to DJ or host karaoke or just play background music at your event, Jeff is your guy. You can reach him at oneheavenlypeace@aol.com.
Lisa Laham did a great job with the cupcakes and her husband helped with the balloons. They did such a fabulous job of making the place look festive for the birthday party.
The wooden paddles were not just great signs but also made for great cupcake trays. Kudos to whoever made them. They were brilliant!
Here’s the man of the party.
I think some people had left already by the time we took a group pic.
Anyway, it was a huge turnout and I am glad I got celebrate his big day with him. Pickleball people are so much fun and Chicken N Pickle is the perfect place to celebrate. Can’t wait until the next birthday celebration!
Until then, GNG.
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