Meeting Pickleball Friends In Person
Posted on September 6, 2020 by Ching under Hobbies.
I had the opportunity to meet some Facebook pickleball friends in person for the first time this past weekend when we had some top level pickleball players converge into Wichita. Dylan Frazier, Quinton Birkeness, Noi Sourinthone, and Antonio Cummings were all in town.
Dylan Frazier is from Columbia, MO. I met him for the first time when the Jonny Pickleball Show was at Chicken N Pickle last month. Quinton Birkeness is from the Kansas City, MO area. I’ve been friends with Quinton on Facebook for some time (at least since March when Chris Heck and Jon Maugans played in the SEMO Chemo Smash tournament in Missouri and I was trying to follow their progress). I had to send Quinton a Facebook friend request because he was really good about posting pictures and videos from the tournament and it was the only way I could keep up with the tournament results. Despite being friends on Facebook for a few months, we’d never actually met in real life until last weekend. Of course, we had to take a picture together (below).
Dylan and Quinton both played in the Saturday morning big boys’ game at Chicken N Pickle. It was a huge pickleball morning. Even Chris Heck, who never comes out for the Saturday morning game, played with Cody’s group that day.
Later that day, Michael Cheung’s friend Noi Sourinthone and his doubles partner Antonio Cummings arrived in town. They are both top level pickleball players from Tennessee. I wanted them to have some challenging games so I hooked them up with Cody. Cody managed to talk Quinton into playing with him against Noi and Antonio. Quinton is such a trooper. He played for ten hours straight that day.
Here is a picture of me with Noi. I became friends with Noi through Michael. They went to church camp together and have known each other for many years. Last year they realized that they’re both into pickleball. Michael and I have actually sent Noi videos of our games to critique and he’s given us really good feedback. It was so nice to finally meet him in person.
Antonio is Noi’s friend and doubles partner. They traveled together to Wichita. I didn’t really become friends with Antonio until this past weekend. I’m so glad that he came. Noi and Antonio are ridiculously good and it was fun to watch them play together against Cody and Quinton.
Here’s a video of one of their games. Mind you, this was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon and Quinton and Cody had been playing since 7:30 am that morning and then Noi and Antonio had been up since like 5 o’clock in the morning for their early flight that day. They basically landed in Wichita and then went to play right away.
Here are a couple more videos.
Here’s a video of a game between Jimmy and Antonio vs. Tom and Noi at Edgemoor Park on Sunday morning.
On Sunday evening, Fong hosted a get together at her house.
It was so fun! I didn’t stay too late because I had a 7 o’clock am lesson with Chris Heck in the morning. After my lesson I went to Seneca Park to check on everyone. Noi and Antonio were holding a clinic. Afterwards I managed to talk the guys into taking a “jumping” picture.
We took a more serious group photo also.
I had so much fun hanging out with the guys. We ended that morning with lunch at TJ’s. The burgers and root beer floats hit the spot.
Until next time. GNG.
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