Sunday Mixed at the Park
Posted on July 17, 2020 by Ching under Community, Hobbies, Things to Do.
Seneca Park is hands down my most favorite public park. I’m not really much of a park goer. Except, twenty years ago visiting Sedgwick County Parks to have a nice picnic and feed the ducks was one of our favorite cheap date activities. I can honestly say, I haven’t been to Sedgwick County Park in forever. For one, we have ducks out back that I can feed any time I get the hankering for it. Secondly, it’s clear out West.
Seneca Park is probably the only park (besides Edgemoor Park) that I visit regularly (and mostly only because of pickleball). I like playing at both public parks (primarily because it doesn’t cost a dime to play) but Seneca Park is my ultimate favorite because of the shade provided by the trees and street access. You can basically park right next to the pickleball courts. Also, it’s easy to do a quick drive-by, see who is playing, and decided whether or not you want to stay and play.
At Edgemoor Park, there’s a little skate park between the pickleball courts and the parking lot. There are also windscreens that prevent you from seeing who is playing. You can’t tell who’s playing just by driving by. You actually have to get out of your car and walk over to the courts. LOL.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to figure out who’s playing when people post their play times on Playtime Scheduler, but people don’t always do that. Sometimes people just want to play privately with their own crew. When you post on Playtime Scheduler (or on the Wichita Pickleball Facebook group, for that matter), it’s an open invitation for everyone to come and play.
I don’t really do open plays as much anymore because I’m always already playing with specific people. My favorite thing right now is Jimmy’s mixed doubles events on Sunday. Our start time is so early but totally worth it. At first we started with only 9 mixed teams and now we are up to a solid 12 teams on our roster.
The first weekend that I played, I played with my friend Michael Cheung and we revived our Cobra Kai team shirts. The following weekend, I played with my friend Tom Pham (one of my favorite leftys). The funny thing about this is I actually asked my friend Chris Wilson first (also a lefty) but Kim Knotts had already asked him to play and they usually play together because the have an upcoming tournaments so he had already said yes to her. So anyway, I told him I found another lefty to play with. He immediately thought I was referring to Cody Courter, another lefty who is super amazing and well-known in our circle. I didn’t reply to his text because I just wanted him to mull it over because Cody is probably the best lefty pickleball player in all of Wichita. LOL.
The other hilarious thing is when Jimmy sends a group text to the ladies to tell him who their partners will be, and all of these texts come in, I’m usually texting some random made up thing like “Ching and Chris Heck” or “Ching and Patrick Smith” just to see people’s reactions. They know I’m totally joking because those guys wouldn’t play in our little Sunday thing, but I think it’s the funniest thing ever.
This last Sunday however, I did get Patrick Smith’s men’s league partner Jamie Lynch to play. So I had three different partners over the last three weeks. Since Brian doesn’t play pickleball and I don’t have a “pickleball husband” (like my friend Karen does — she’s gone through two already), I’m not locked in to a specific partner. I’m kind of enjoying the flexibility that I have to play with various people. Sometimes it sucks because I don’t have someone I can count on to play with me for various events and play times but the positive side of it is if there’s a different person I want to play with for a specific thing then I don’t feel like I have to “check” with my normal partner to give them first rights of refusal.
Anyway, we first started our Sunday games at Seneca Park but quickly outgrew it. Patti has a large group that plays there on Sundays and the most we can get is usually three courts. We relocated our mixed doubles games to Edgemoor Park where we know we can get all six courts as long as we start at 6 AM. It’s worked well for us the last couple of weeks. We will be playing with a full group of 24 players again this weekend. This time were doing full-on King of Court. Normally, the mixed pairs stay together as they move up or down the court ladder. This weekend Jimmy is going to have the pairs split up. It should be interesting.
I’ll let you know how it goes this weekend. Until next time. GNG.
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