My Friend Chris Wilson
Posted on April 12, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
I attended a safety meeting at one of our service locations last week and ran into my friend Chris Wilson. I met Chris through pickleball and played with him for months (yes, MONTHS) before I realized that we both worked for the same company. Of course, we were working at different locations so we never ran into one another.
It wasn’t until another pickleball friend (Paul Haas), who worked for the same company, retired that I found out Chris worked at Evergy also. I was looking for someone to play pickleball with me for the Wichita Corporate Challenge and I asked Paul to play because I knew of his Evergy connection, having recently celebrated his retirement. However, Paul was like, “Why don’t you ask Chris? He still works for Evergy.” That’s how I found out. I totally had no idea we were employed by the same company until then. But then, I guess that’s what happens when your company employs over 5,000 people. You don’t really know anyone.
Anyway, Chris has been my “go to” guy for anything pickleball-related that the company sponsors. Evergy chose not to participate in the Wichita Corporate Challenge last year but, had we participated, I would have asked Chris to play with me. With the increasing popularity of the sport, more and more people are work are getting into pickleball so I guess we might have to do tryouts next time. But, back when I first discovered pickleball, I only knew of Chris and Paul and me.
When I first discovered pickleball, Paul and Chris had already been playing a long while. I was a beginner playing at West YMCA when I found Paul’s church on the West side of town — a super secret place to play pickleball that’s not even listed on Playtime Scheduler. It was my first time there and everyone knew I was not any good but they were nice enough and let me play anyway. On my very first game, they paired me with “the best guy there” — because that’s what you do with the worst player, in order to make the games more fair — and that was literally my introduction to Chris. For a long time, he was the best player I knew.
Shortly after (I’m still very much a beginner) he asked me to play in a tournament with him. It happened to be the Senior Games. At the time, I couldn’t decide if I should be flattered that he felt I was good enough to play with him or if I should be offended that he thought I was old enough to play in “senior” events.
Once I had a bit more experience, we did end up playing in some tournaments together — both sanctioned and unsanctioned — besides just the Wichita Corporate Challenge and charity tournaments. We even teamed up for Middle States Regionals. Although, it wasn’t longer after that when I got benched. Chris decided he needed a more “age appropriate” partner. By age appropriate, I mean someone who could play in 50+ events with him.
The bigger tournaments have both age and skill divisions such as 19+, 35+, 50+ and so forth. I guess he was tired of playing 35+ with me, specially when he could do so much better in 50+ events. To be fair to all competitors, players can play down in age but they can’t play up so I could not play 50+ with him. If we played together, he would have to play down to 35+ with me. It really didn’t make any sense when there were several 50+ players he could team up with.
The dissolution of our partnership was an amicable one and it actually proved beneficial to me because it gave me the opportunity to play with some higher level mixed doubles partners. It’s great to have a “young buck” with young legs to play with in younger age groups. Anyway, despite having divorced each other, Chris and I still team up from time to time for events like the Picklepalooza. And maybe the Wichita Corporate Challenge again this year (if there aren’t any other employees who want to represent our company).
Even though we have both moved on and are playing with different partners competitively (we actually had to face off against each other not too long ago in the Oak Tree tournament in Edmond), Chris is still one of may favorite pickleball players to play with and against. He’s good people and I am grateful that he has been part of my pickleball journey.
Until next time, GNG.
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