Archive for "Pickleball"
iPN Nation Builders are Finally Here
Posted on July 3, 2023 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
I’ve been working to bring the iPickle Nation Nation Builders to Wichita since the beginning of the year and they’re finally here. We had the first one on June 11 and participation has steadily increased ever since. The format is super fun and guarantees a lot of games — six in the round robin pool play and additional games in the single elimination bracket. There winners and medals so it’s like playing in a mini tournament every weekend. The end of the series the top male and female players for each division get a free tournament entry into one of the super fun pickleball tournaments that iPickle Nation runs throughout the year.
June 11 Winners:
June 18 Winners:
June 25 Winners:
We have a break this weekend because of the upcoming 4th of July holiday. The next session is on July 9. It’s actually already full but the other six future sessions are still open for registration. You can sign up here. For sessions that are full, you can sign up for the waiting list here. You have to come out and play in one of these sessions. They are so fun. Hope to see you at the next one!
The revolution is here. It’s time to join the Nation!
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2023 ICT Summer Classic
Posted on June 23, 2023 by Ching under Pickleball.
Saw Bo Tolbert at Riverside Tennis Center on Friday night, the first day of ICT Summer Classic. He was in his Picklemania shirt from last year. I just love these t-shirt sightings. Not only are they great promotion for our annual Rotary club pickleball tournament but it makes me think that the players really do love the tournament. If anything, at least I know they love the shirts.
Lots of Asians on singles night. For people who cramp a lot, we love our singles. LOL. Anyway, singles was super rough for me this go round. There weren’t enough entries so they just combined all the ladies. I ended up having to play against Colby Fugit and she pickled me!
Here’s the shirts from this year’s Picklemania tournament.
Saturday was gender doubles day. I love women’s doubles day because the women’s doubles teams are always so matchy matchy.
The ladies are also super fun. Here’s our women’s 4.0 17+ podium pic. Kimberly Howe and Janelle Lindeman took third, Alice Tunks-Jones and I got second, and Vickie Hancock and Lisa Alexander were the champs.
Alice and I actually beat Vickie and Lisa in pool play but they got the better of us in the championship game. Anyway, Alice was a complete delight and I had a blast playing with her.
Obviously, Bo and I intentionally coordinated. After I saw him on Friday night, I asked him to wear the blue shirt with white shorts the next day.
The color coordination with Frank Reyes was unintentional, though. Still equally fun and picture-worthy.
Sunday was mixed doubles day. Matt Nola ended up cramping in men’s doubles so they withdrew from the championship and he wasn’t well enough to play the next day so Ev Kim ended up filling in for him.
Lori and Dave Belew were back from their big, fancy tournament in time so they stopped by to watch some matches but didn’t end up playing this year.
Tanner Rice was at the PPA Texas Open that same weekend so no Tanner this year. I did snag a great partner in Dustin Herman, though. I thought we played amazing.
Our first match in pool play was against Cody Courter and Jen Tiano. We lost that 13-15 but they had 4 unreturnable net cord, which if you negate was really the difference maker. We totally could have won that match.
Our next match was against Nathan Peters and Gwen Warwick. I think we lost that 7-15. Nathan was just in beast mode and I couldn’t handle his drives. I learned a ton from that match, though.
Our final pool play match was against Scott Wolford and Kayla Keuter. Their game play was more suited to my style of play, which is a lot of dinking (as opposed to mostly shake-and-bakes, which was Nathan and Gwen’s strategy) so we had a better chance. I think we were down 11-14 and ended up winning 16-14.
It was a solid win considering Scott and Kayla are both amazing, experienced pickleball players.
Our first match in bracket play was against Chris Wilson and Greta Siemens. Bracket matches were best 2 out of 3 games to 11, win by 2. Our first game was rough. We lost 3-11 but then we rallied in the second game and won 11-4 and carried that momentum to win the third game 11-6. Their side choice actually helped us because we finished on the side that worked best for us. Had we started and finished on the opposite side, I think the outcome of that match would have been completely different.
Also, Greta was getting frustrated that Dustin was covering so much of the court. It’s the correct strategy in mixed and it was making it very challenging for them to target me. Add to that the fact that the wind was blowing to my right (and I play the right side of the court – always when I’m playing with a right handed mixed doubles partner). Not only was the target very small with Dustin covering 85% of the court but they had zero margin for error because of the way the wind was blowing. If they target too close to the line (which they generally did), the wind was blowing their shots out.
Our second match was against Ev Kim and Ling Wei Kong. They were the favorites to win but we were actually up 7-2 in game 1. That would have been quite an upset! I totally thought we had a chance. After a few side-outs with neither team scoring, they ended up scoring 2 points. We were at 7-4 for what seemed like an eternity (maybe 15 minutes in reality). We went through multiple side-outs with no one scoring until Ev went beast mode and they went on a tear. When they got to 9 points, I ended up calling a time out. Dustin doesn’t really like to call time outs but we had to because we hadn’t scored in forever. Anyway, we only scored one more point that game and finished it at 8-11. We lost the next game 2-11. Ev didn’t even have to do much that game, Ling Wei was just flawless.
That match was the end of the line for me and Dustin and Ev and Ling Wei eventually won gold as expected. I wasn’t not unhappy about how we played though. I feel like we gave them a good match.
The ICT tournament is so fun. I think regardless of how I do, I always have a great time. Tanner said he would play the fall one with me so I am looking forward to it. Hopefully nothing comes up that prevents him from coming up to play. We’ll see. Until next time, GNG.
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Jenny Marcos and Mike Gates in Wichita
Posted on June 15, 2023 by Ching under Pickleball.
I had an absolute blast the weekend that senior pros Jenny Marcos and Mike Gates came to visit Wichita. I’m so glad that Kathy Moser, owner of the Pickle Club, invited me. It’s such a treat to be able to play with such amazing players.
We got some solo time with Jenny and Mike until about 1 PM when other players joined us. We had some players join from 1 to 3 PM and then some others join from 3 to 5 PM. There were some of us, hardcore picklers, who played all day.
I’m not kidding when I say “all day” because I started playing at Zach Nguyen’s house at 8 AM that Sunday morning. Erika Atkins was in town from Texas (my first time meeting her) and Zach set up a game for her. It was so much fun!
Immediately after that I was off to the Pickle Club to meet up with Jenny, Mike, and Kathy. We played a little bit and enjoyed some lunch. Jenny made a ton of delicious pancit. Besides feeding us pancit, she also brought her portable camping stove and a wok and fried up some fresh lumpia for us to enjoy.
I got some free pickleball and Filipino food. And, I didn’t even have to leave Wichita. It was the best weekend ever!
I invited Matt Nola to join us because he travels to Asia to promote pickleball and has been recruiting some Filipino pickleball players to join his team. Jenny was getting ready to travel down there (in fact, she’s in the Philippines right now) and so I wanted the two of them to connect. Anyway, he invited the out of towners to Mochinut after so Jenny, Mike, and Kathy stopped by on their way back home to Oklahoma. I think they liked it.
It was such a fun weekend. It was a pleasure meeting new people (Erika from Texas earlier that day and Mike who is from all over) and Jenny is not just an amazing pickleball player, she also feeds you which is icing on the cake. I cannot wait for her to be back from her trip so we can catch up. Until then, GNG.
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Picklemania MMXXIII
Posted on June 13, 2023 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
The pickleball tournament fundraiser for my Rotary club just keeps on growing. I remember the very first year we had it. We weren’t sure how successful it would be but we knew we needed to do something that spring because we couldn’t have our Haus of Brews fundraising event due to the COVID pandemic. We planned to have the tournament in May 2021 but then the weather didn’t cooperate so we had to move the tournament to June. It was so freakin’ hot!
We had much better weather the following year but it got really windy in the afternoon and one of the canopy tents flew into one of the courts. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Last year was the first year that we changed the event to a team format (instead of just a normal doubles pickleball tournament) but it was a completely made up team format that I came up with based on Wrestlemania. LOL. You could tag in and out in between points (not during because that would be way too crazy and completely unsafe). Anyway, it was weird but fun. We had 16 teams participate last year.
This year we ended up with 24 teams but we still only had 8 courts so I had to get seriously creative. We kept the team format but change it to MLPlay (rally scoring) because it takes less time and the match durations are more predictable. We also did games to 15 (instead of 21) to further reduce the amount of time to complete each match. We kept the dream breaker tie breaker round because it added a fun, unique element, but still kept the game to 15, win by 1.
Here’s a good summary of this year’s tournament format:
Anyway, the format worked out great. With 6-team pools in the round robin pool play, each team was able to play every other team in their pool. After pool play, the teams went on to 3 different brackets (Elite, Advanced, and Intermediate) based on their results. We started at 8 AM and wrapped up around 5 PM. We were right on schedule. Couldn’t have planned it better!
This is what the pool play schedule looked like with 24 teams and only 8 courts. We basically assigned 2 courts for each pool. This meant there were bye rounds but it worked out fine because it gave people an opportunity to visit, grab snacks/drinks, go to the restroom, etc.
Here’s a fun video that my friend Jonathan Thorne made using pictures and drone footage from the event. I feel like we really exceeded all expectations this year. So much work went into though, as it always does. I did get to salvage some signage that I made last year like these ones.
I’m glad I thought ahead and didn’t put a year on them so we can recycle them for use year after year.
An improvement we had this year is a bag sponsor. Our friends at Bodyworx Physical Therapy provided us with string bags and player swag (coozies and pens) along with sponsoring a team. It was great because then we had a bag to put the players’ tournament shirts and other swag (stickers, overgrips, etc.) in. Definitely a step up from the paper bags that I delivered everything in last year.
Here are some fun pics from the event…
I’m so glad we finally got to play with Tanner Rice (red-head on the left) because the times that Ramon (Lozano), Katie (Merrill), and I have played in team events we’ve had to pick up a different fourth team member because Tanner wasn’t available for one reason or another. Kyle Rinck played with us in the DUPR team event we did back in December in North Kansas City and Jared Smart played with us in the “One Last Dink” team event at the Pickle Club.
I am so grateful for Brian, who ran the tournament so I could play. Kyle Starkel came out in the afternoon and helped, too.
Our team missed making the Elite 8 bracket by one stinkin’ game! We were in a 3-way tie with Bodyworx (Jen Tiano, Mike Ellison, and David and Lori Belew) and Mid-Court Crisis (Ling Wei Kong, Natalie Lubbers, Noi Sourinthone, and Scott Wolford) in our pool. We each had one loss (4-1 tied record for all 3 teams) and they were to one another so we had to count games won. Mid-Court Crisis won 16 total games. Bodyworx won 15 total games. We won 14 games. Only the top 2 teams of each pool went on to Elite 8. Middle 2 teams went to Advanced bracket. And the bottom 2 teams went to the Intermediate bracket.
We ended up winning the Advanced (middle) bracket, but pretty whichever team in our pool didn’t advance to Elite 8 was going to win that middle bracket no matter what because the matchups were sooo close. We had an amazing team!
These were the pool play groups. In each of the groups, the first 2 teams listed advanced to the Elite 8 bracket. Except for in our group, which had a 3-way tie (Bodyworx and Mix-Court Crisis ended up advancing). In pool C, Team Equilibrium and FORVIS both had a tied record going into their final match so the winner of that ended up advancing to Elite 8. Equilibrium prevailed. FORVIS ended up in the Advanced bracket with us.
These were the other medalists:
Intermediate – Drop It Like Itz Hot
Frank and Kim McCormick, Tiffany and Donnie Lesperance
Elite 8 – Chicken N Pickle (No surprise!)
Michael Harris, Kim Blackman, Jack Oxler, Lindsey Vermillion
You can read more about this year’s Picklemania tournament here. More pictures here. That’s all for now. Until next year, GNG.
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Cincinnati Quickie
Posted on June 8, 2023 by Ching under Pickleball, Travel.
I traveled to Cincinnati last month to play in the APP Vlasic Classic in Cincinnati. I saw that someone I knew from Oklahoma was listed in mixed doubles without a partner so I asked if I could play with them to try and earn my “golden ticket” to Nationals for mixed doubles. I already had my “golden ticket” for singles and women’s doubles so I really just wanted to play mixed. It was a quick a trip as it could ever be. I literally flew in to Cincinnati on Saturday, played on Sunday, and flew back home on Monday.
Brian dropped me off at the airport early on Saturday morning, May 13. I arrived in Cincinnati in the afternoon. Went to the hotel first to check in and then went to Sawyer Point Park (tournament venue) to watch the guys — Ryan Luelf and Eric Bunch — play. They played amazing the entire day. They went undefeated in the winner bracket and I honestly thought they would win the whole thing. However, they ended up losing to a team that they had already beaten in the championship match and finished in second place.
Here’s a picture of Caroline Luelf, Ryan’s wife.
Due to some rain delays throughout the day, the matches ran late into the evening. I think we were the last people to leave the park that night.
Here’s a podium pic of the guys. Ryan is on the left and Eric is on the right.
I’m glad that I didn’t have to play until the afternoon the next day so I could sleep in a little bit since we were there so late. I think Ryan and Caroline got to their Airbnb around midnight and then had to get up early the next morning because they were scheduled to play at 8 AM. I didn’t really end up sleeping in because I wanted to go to the park and watch their matches. I also need to get some feminine hygiene products (aka tampons) because shark week unexpectedly started early for me. I ended up taking an Uber to a Walgreens that I found on Google that (a) was in the same direction as the park, and (b) according to Google was open. Yes, I really did check. Unfortunately, Google let me down. The information online was outdated and the store turned out to be closed. It absolutely sucked for me because I paid money to Uber over there and they weren’t even open.
Instead of taking a chance on Ubering to another Walgreens that may or may not be open, I decided to call Brian to help me navigate the downtown area. I thought, surely there’s a Walgreens nearby that I could walk to. He couldn’t find anything. Anyway, I saw this young woman walking and asked her if there as any kind of convenience store nearby (because most convenience stores carry tampons) and she pointed me in the direction of a store which I never did find. Lucky for me, I came across a Marriott hotel. I’d stayed at many Marriotts before and they always have a stash of tampons. I went in the lobby and they were able to help me. They let me take as many tampons as I wanted so I didn’t even have to go to Walgreens anymore. LOL.
The Marriott wasn’t that far from the park so, rather than taking a car, I decided to just walk over there to save money. I walked by the Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds, and a few other sights. It actually worked out great.
I walked along the river that separates Ohio from Kentucky and followed the path to the park. It was a nice day for a walk and I actually quite enjoyed my little adventure.
Ran into Brendon Long at the tournament. He is an amazing pickleball player who I had seen on YouTube and Facebook livestreams several times. I met him for the first time at the US Open in Naples and it was a real treat to see him again at the Cincinnati tournament.
The tournament itself was fine but I didn’t get the results I’d hoped so I still don’t have my mixed doubles “golden ticket” — we are back to the drawing board. Eric is an excellent player but not having played together much prior was a disadvantage. I’m going to try to qualify again in Kansas City in a couple of months. Hopefully, I’ll get my “golden ticket” for mixed then.
Until next time, GNG.
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