Pickleball Birthday
Posted on November 20, 2019 by Ching under Events.
You know how 2016 was my big Zumba year? Well, this year is shaping up to be the “Year of Pickleball” for me. Granted, it was last year that I discovered pickleball; however, this is the year that huge things happened.
I made a ton of new friends. Played in my first tournament. We had a couple of fun cookouts. Met a bunch of pros at the Franklin Pickleball Masters. I even had a pickleball birthday party at Y thanks to my friend Matt.
Zumba birthdays are fun but I’d never been to a pickleball birthday party before — and, it was mine to boot — so that was HUGE. Hopefully, this is just the first of many more celebrations like it.
Brian and I got to the party late because we first had to pick up the cake.
Oh, since my birthday is so close to Halloween, I forgot to mention that it was a costume party. LOL. The pickleball group was planning a Halloween cookout that same weekend that Matt planned the pickleball birthday party so we ended up combining the two events.
Here’s a better picture of the very chocolate-y cake.
This is my friend Tom’s wife Lani. She is also Filipino.
Do you like the photo frame? It’s the same one from the Cancer Crawl a few months ago. I just repurposed it.
This is my friend Karen in her very clever pickleball paddle costume which she designed after her own paddle.
Becci and Greg.
Trixie.
Mary.
Debbie and Bill. Debbie hurt her ankle several days before this so she couldn’t play but she came out anyway. She had an awesome Ghostbusters costume too!
This is Mr. Clean who also sometimes goes by Bruce.
Debbie, Bruce, and me with Matt (in green on the left). Matt did all of the legwork to make the event possible.
Bruce, Debbie, and me with Tiffany and Donnie (on the right).
Even in full out Halloween costumes, they still had no problem kicking everyone’s butt. There’s another pic of Karen, Debbie, and Tiffany below.
These ladies are so much fun!
Debbie sandwiched between Donnie and Tiffany.
Debbie with Gregg. Gregg is THE pickleball guy. He’s our official pickleball ambassador in Wichita.
Matt and Debbie. This party could not have happened if it weren’t for Matt’s persistence. He made it so that all of our non YMCA friends could come out and play also. We had such a great turnout!
The picture below is only about half of the people who were there. We took the group pic after several people had already left. Some people were there for just the normal open play. Some people came out because they saw the event posted in our Facebook group. I had a great time and it seemed like everyone else did too!
The pickleball party was the Sunday before my birthday so, not one to waste a really good picture frame, I brought it again with me to our league tournament on Wednesday night (the day of my actual birthday). Because of an overbooking issue, we skipped a week and the final night of league actually fell on my birthday.
It worked out perfect because I got a few more pics with the picture frame and got lots of mileage out of it.
My partner Renee and I didn’t win the tournament but I felt like we had great chemistry and played really well together. I really think we held our own with some of the better intermediate teams. It was a very positive first league experience for me. Anyway, here are some action shots…
Overall it has been a fabulous birthday month! And, we continued to celebrate during our trip to Mexico. More on that next time. Until then, GNG.
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