Farewell to Nahola
Posted on February 28, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
Today will be the last day of Nahola as Nahola. It makes me so sad to think about it. Even though I’ve only been a member a little over a year, I quickly grew attached to this place. It was my “go to” spot for pickleball on weekends. I think several others felt the same way, specially the retired pickleball players who were playing there on a daily basis during the day.
For those who don’t know, Nahola was started in 2014 by three visionary women: Nancy, Holly, and Kayla (thus, Nahola). They originally had just one pickleball court with gym floors in the main building. In 2017, based on the popularity of the sport with the fitness center members, they added an auxiliary building with two pickleball courts on an outdoor surface.
You can watch Nancy talk about the expansion and pickleball in general in the following Wichita Eagle video:
For the next few years, Nahola quickly became the premier place to play pickleball and was the training ground for some of the best pickleball players in our city. It was common knowledge that one of the best ways to improve and get better at pickleball was to join and play at Nahola. Nahola had well-established pickleball leagues with long waiting lists even before Chicken N Pickle entered the market.
Over the course of my year and a half long membership, I was able to participate in a few leagues and special events like their team tournaments (November 2021, August 2020). I played in a couple of their women’s leagues — once when it was held on Saturdays and most recently the Sunday one.
This is a short video I made of our very last day of the very last women’s league. Several players were out of town that weekend so we only had eight ladies (four teams) in our league tournament. It was a lot of fun but bittersweet.
Kayla runs the league and keeps track of each player’s performance throughout the league and then on tournament day you get paired up based on your record. Fong and I ended up getting paired up. Fong was also one of my teammates in MLP so this was kind of a reunion. Fong is a fierce competitor who is super aggressive and, as former tennis player, has shots that I cannot do so her style of play complements mine really well. I was super excited that we got to team up.
We played round robin first before going into single-elimination bracket play. We had an excellent record, only losing to Heather and Krystal. In the bracket play, we ended up having to play Amy and Huyen. Though we had already defeated them in pool play, we ended up losing in bracket play so we didn’t advance to the finals.
The finals came down to Amy and Huyen versus Heather and Krystal (the two winningest players of our session). This match up was made even more interesting by the fact that Huyen and Krystal (who normally play together as fierce women’s doubles duo) were having to play against one another.
Heather and Krystal reigned supreme and went completely undefeated that day. The two of them have been on fire the entire session, battling it out of the number one spot. Except the week before tournament, Krystal got some losses and Huyen was on fire that day and ended up sneaking in to take the lead.
I’ve been keeping track of how everyone was doing too and, by my tally, Huyen had the greatest win rate and most wins out of everyone; followed by Amy, Heather, and Krystal in a three-way tie for second. So it really could have been anyone’s game.
These ladies are so talented that it’s fun to watch them play but it’s even more fun to play with against them. I have really enjoyed playing in this league and will miss it immensely. These ladies will forever hold a special place in my heart.
I’m talking like we’re all gone forever. LOL. I really hope we can have a similar league like this somewhere. It was really fun and it helped my women’s doubles game significantly. Here is a group of photo of these great bunch of women:
From left: me, Brandi Richardson, Amy Jaramillo, Fong Witte, Huyen Nguyen, Krystal Fosnight, Heather Griffin, and Kimberly Howe. (We were missing Kayla, Jannell, Lesli, and Shawna.)
Anyway, the new owners will be taking over after today and will reopen next week as the Pickle Club. So far, there aren’t any compelling reasons for me to join so we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, GNG.
Related Stories
« Pickleball Birthday Party at Chicken N Pickle « this post » Nahola Farewell Party »
