Archive for "Community"
Halloween Pickleball at the Park
Posted on December 29, 2025 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
Halloween fell on a Friday this year; however, since TapNPaddles closed early that day, we ended up gathering at Seneca Park, our old pickleball stomping grounds. It’s probably been almost two years since I last played at Seneca. Now that we have many indoor options, people are mostly playing inside rather than at the public parks. I really don’t know who play regularly at Seneca park anymore. The nets look dilapidated and the courts were full of debris. I think it was different when we were playing there regularly because the players would regularly sweep the courts or bring their leaf blowers and stuff. Though the courts looked largely neglected, it was still a great place to gather on Halloween night — at least until sunset because there are no court lights at Seneca Park.
No Comments
4K Members Celebration
Posted on November 7, 2025 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
Guess what. The Wichita Pickleball Facebook group finally surpassed 4,000 members. We held an event at TapNPaddles to celebrate. Thanks to Cameron Ventling for the idea!
I brought a cake from Costco as my contribution because no celebration is complete without cake.
A few players stayed for drinks that night.
Congrats to Julie Pauly and Matt Dutton for winning Friday Night Fiesta that week.
Anyway, here’s to 4K and looking forward to celebrating the next milestone!
No Comments
Other August Highlights
Posted on September 26, 2025 by Ching under Community, Hobbies, Things to Do.
August was a full month. Besides our trip to Grapevine for our 23rd wedding anniversary, I got to play a lot of pickleball and participate in several fun things. While I never get to play in the Chicken N Pickle ambassador open play anymore (because it’s on Wednesdays this year and I teach Zumba on Wednesdays at West YMCA), I always manage to stop by for the group photo. August was no different.
I also enjoyed a great month of team league with my awesome KC^2 teammates.
I played some chess at TapNPaddles.
I helped with the Dink Minor Leagues MiLP v3 presented by InPickle Nation at TapNPaddles.
We hung out with Chris Townley and Jay and Becca Dill at family fun day.
We celebrated Zach’s 40th birthday at Flight Club.
We ate lunch at Plentibloom (inside the Ruffin Building).
Brian got to try a new ramen place. I will make a separate, dedicated post about this. Stay tuned!
I played pickleball with some fun ladies.
We had our weekly InPickle Nation mini tournaments at TapNPaddles.
Lots of trips to the ballpark.
September is pretty much over so I’ll be recapping what happened this month soon. Eventually we will be completely caught up. Have a fantastic weekend!
No Comments
Mini Tournaments at the Pickle Club
Posted on September 17, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about my pickleball exploits so I figured it was time. I’m giving you a break from all the restaurant and food posts for a bit. To be fair, there’s not really much to report on the pickleball front as I am currently on my tournament sabbatical year. Unlike in the past when I was sharing my pickleball adventures from the nearly weekly pickleball tournaments I was playing in, I’m barely even playing recreationally these days. However, since we are putting together another mixed doubles mini tournament at the Pickle Club in a few weeks, I thought I should share the results of the series of mini tournaments that we held over the summer.
Here are the some pictures of the winners from all three events…
July 6 – Men’s Doubles
- 1st – Matt Dutton and Derek Pruett
- 2nd – Dan Chocron and Steve Alvarez
- 3rd – Kyle Manny and Joshua Schott
July 27 – Mixed Doubles
- 1st – Susie Ternes and Ryan Kellenbarger
- 2nd – Julie Pauly and Zach Nguyen
- 3rd – Lena Quach and Fin Tatum
August 24 – Women’s Doubles
- 1st – Lacy Waugh and Lori Belew
- 2nd – Anna Le and Lena Quach
- 3rd – Jen Tiano and Monica McGehee
For all three of these events, we limited sign ups to six teams max because there are only two courts at the Pickle Club. There would be way too much waiting around otherwise. The format was round robin pool play plus single elimination bracket with a bonus third place game for the losers of the semi-final round.
Round robin games were one game to 11, win by 1 (to limit the wait). Each team played all the other teams so each team got five pool play matches. The single elimination bracket play format was best 2 of 3 games to 11, win by 2. Everyone got lots of play. All results were sent to DUPR after the event so the events are great for building up your match history and DUPR rating reliability.
These tournaments are a great value and specially since you get to pick your own partner (unlike the InPickle Nation mini tournaments that we have weekly). It a slightly different flavor. Anyway, highly recommend grabbing a partner and joining us for this one. Registration will open this weekend on the Pickle Club website.
No Comments
Parking Changes Coming to Wichita
Posted on August 26, 2024 by Ching under Community.
I’m taking a break from catching up this super behind blog to talk about the parking changes that are coming to downtown Wichita in 2025. A few weeks ago someone posted about the parking changes because the changes that were being implemented on January 1 were extending beyond just downtown. It was also impacting Delano district. Delano is where the Senior Services of Wichita and Seneca Park (across the street) is located. They were concerned about how the parking changes would impact parking in the area and how this would create a hardship for seniors, not just financially but also because we all know that many seniors are technologically-changed.
When I saw that there were a couple of meetings at Senior Services and one of them was at 5 PM on a Thursday, I decided to attend that one. I had to reschedule a waxing appointment to do so but I had to know what was going on. I stole the photos below from the Senior Services Facebook page and they are from the Monday morning meeting. They’re better than my photo from Thursday so I decided to use theirs instead.
Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson came to address the group, which mostly consisted of people who are very upset about the parking changes. As you would expect, the people in the community in favor of the changes or those who are indifferent, didn’t really feel a need to attend. I fall under the indifferent category and mostly attended out of curiosity.
In all other cities that Brian and I have visited, we’ve had to pay for parking in the downtown areas, so I am neither surprised nor against the idea of paying for parking. It seemed to me that the parking rates/fees would be reasonable and that the monies collected would go toward maintenance and upkeep of parking and would benefit the immediate area overall so I don’t mind having to pay. As a consumer my main concern was whether it would be convenient, e.g. will there be an app and multiple options to pay for parking because if it’s a pain in the neck then, no matter how cheap it is, people will be discouraged from going to the area just because they won’t want to mess with parking.
As a pickleball player, another concern I had is of the impact to parking around Seneca Park. It’s currently free to park all around the park and also along the street in front of Senior Services. None of the information I had seen showed that this area would be affected by the parking changes but I wanted to know for sure.
Anyway, let’s share some background information first. Here’s a parking report presented by Health ICT back in 2018.
Troy also mentioned this video about the high cost of free parking which supports the notion of moving towards charging for parking in certain areas of the city. Having traveled to other places where paid parking is now the norm, I completely understand why the city wants to move in this direction; however, it’s been really nice having free parking available in our city.
At the meeting at Senior Services on Thursday, we got to see a sample parking payment kiosk and we got to see the maps of impacted areas.
The map above depicts the area that they’re looking to implement paid parking starting on January 1. The picture below is a closer look at Delano. It looks like paid parking will be mostly along Douglas and there might be some paid parking along Walnut, Handley, Osage, Oak, and Sycamore also (but I’m not quite sure what all the color-coding actually means).
It looks like the area around Seneca Park will be largely unaffected; however, I am worried that people who don’t want to pay for parking along Douglas and Walnut will end up parking on the street along Seneca Park and walk to wherever they’re going thus, making parking more limited for pickleball players who frequent the park. It’s possible but we don’t really know for sure what will happen and how people will behave until they implement the changes. I do know there are quite a few people who are vehemently against the idea and they were quite vocal at the meeting I attended last week.
There is another meeting happening tonight at Nortons Brewing Co. If you are at all interested in the changes that are coming, I highly recommend attending.
No Comments
