Another Great Pickleball Weekend
Posted on July 20, 2020 by Ching under Hobbies.
People sometimes will ask me, “What are you up to this weekend?” The answer is always predictably pickleball, pickleball, and more pickleball. The last few weeks I’ve spent my Friday evenings at Nahola (with our Friday night pickleball crew), Saturday mornings at Chicken N Pickle (doubles with the ladies), and then Sunday mornings at Edgemoor Park (Jimmy’s mixed group).
This weekend pretty much followed that normal schedule but it was a really great weekend in several ways. On Friday night, I got to “own” a court for the first time ever. On Fridays nights we have five women and five men who play together. Debbie keeps the group pretty even in terms of skill level so all the games are always fun and competitive. We have two courts between ten people so we always have two people on standby. The format is winners stay and split so the wait is never long. This past Friday, I played one game on court 2 and then, when I got to court 1, I just kept winning so I stayed on that court pretty much the entire time. Eric and I even won against Chris and Tiffany, which never happens!
A bunch of them went out after, which I skipped because I have a 7:30 AM to 10:00 AM play time at Chicken N Pickle on Saturday mornings. We had so much fun playing. And, Karen and I were matchy-matchy per usual.
After pickleball Karen, Brooke, and I went to grab breakfast at IHOP. Brian joined us. It had to be a quick one because I had an 11:15 AM facial and waxing at Beau Monde that morning. On the way home, I stopped by Chicken N Pickle to check out the Dink and Drink tournament. I caught a few games and then just watched the rest of the tournament at home. Matt (Mayfield) did a livestream of the best 2 out of 3 final match between Flying Monkeys (the Rick and Jacob Thomspson father-son team) and Sober Living (buddies Jeff and Bobbie who play as #Town in the Thursday night men’s league). Flying Monkeys prevailed.
Brian and I spent the rest of Saturday watching Bad Boys 1-3. He wanted to see Bad Boys 3 (Bad Boys for Life) but I didn’t recall every watching the first two so we had to watch those two films first before diving into the third one. We only had to pay for the latest one because the first two movies are available to stream on Netflix.
Anyway, I couldn’t stay up late on Saturday night either because I had an even earlier play time on Sunday. On Sundays we start at 6:00 AM to ensure that we get all six courts at Edgemoor Park. Yesterday one of the courts was already taken when we got there so we only had five courts for the first hour or so. Since we had 12 teams, some people had to sit out quite a bit. It was weird and not as until after seven-ish when the other people finally left and we had use of all six courts.
Another thing that was weird about Sunday was that, instead of having 12 men and 12 women, we somehow ended up having too many guys. It’s not necessarily bad because we were mixing partners anyway, instead of staying with the same partner the entire day but even that turned out really weird. On the plus slide, it gave people a chance to play with various partners but if brought a great partner then you didn’t really necessarily want to play with someone else.
The mixed partner I invited, Jamie, is really good so even though we started at the bottom court, he kept winning and went straight to the top court. As for me, we had to split up after the first game. He ended up beating me in the second game so I went back down to the bottom court and had to fight my way to the top. It took several games for me to get to the second to the top court. It was rough. Unless you are really good and can carry your partner, you have to have the right partner to win games and move up. I think, had we been able to keep our own partners, I could have gone with him to the top court right away.
On the plus side, I did get a chance to play with two of the strongest guy players on Sunday morning so that was a lot of fun. I got to play with Han, who is the nicest guy ever. He always makes me feel better when I miss my shots. And I also got to play with Tom, my favorite lefty of all time.
Here’s a couple of pictures of me with Tom and Karen. Predictably, Karen and I were in matching outfits.
But the fun didn’t stop there. Karen, Kim, Brooke, and I continued the fun at Brooke’s house after where we hung out in her pool and played even more pickleball. Here are a few pictures from that afternoon.
I have no idea why Brooke put the pickleball paddles on our backs. LOL. Anyway, we had a great time. Monty smoked some ribs and they were fall-off-the-bone amazing. Thank you so much to Brooke and Monty for having us over. #GoodTimes. Until next time. GNG.
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