Mid-South Diamond Regional Tournament
Posted on May 29, 2023 by Ching under Pickleball, Travel.
Finally sitting down to recap Mid-South Diamond Regional, the tournament that wasn’t actually on my list of planned tournaments this year but happened anyway. At the beginning of the year I really didn’t have much planned for May because I was going to use it as my recovery month from the US Open. Also, May is when we have the Rotary Club of Andover’s Picklemania pickleball tournament so I would be busy planning for that all month. Besides that, I didn’t plan on going to Florida for Diamond Amateur Championships this year so Mid-South really wasn’t on my radar. I did, however, have Nationals on the agenda for this year since I’m already qualified for singles and women’s doubles so I had APP Vlasic Classic on my list of potential tournaments so I could earn my mixed doubles ticket.
This is what the month of May looked like at the start of the year:
- May 13 – APP Vlasic Classic in Cincinnati, OH
- May 20 – Picklemania MMXXIII
Then shortly after the Picklemania tournament at Life Time in OKC, Melissa Hawk invited me to play in PPA Texas Open. She is a player that I admire and have been wanting to play with for a while so I said yes. We were planning our outfits and I was actively looking for a mixed doubles partner to make the trip worthwhile so I reached out to Casey Dominguez, my mixed partner for the OKC Picklemania to see if he would be interested in running it back with me at TO. He said he wasn’t doing TO this year but I was welcome to join him at Mid-South if I wanted and so that’s pretty much how Mid-South happened. Casey is super fun and I enjoyed playing with him in OKC so, even though it wasn’t the tournament that I was wanting to do initially, I was willing to add it to the list.
At this point, my May began to look really crazy:
- May 5-7 – Mid-South Diamond Regional
- May 13 – APP Vlasic Classic in Cincinnati, OH
- May 20 – Picklemania MMXXIII
- May 26-29 – PPA Texas Open
Add the ICT Summer Classic on June 2-4 weekend and I basically was looking at a tournament every weekend for five consecutive weeks. So much for recovering. I was still actively looking for a mixed doubles partner for TO when PPA announced their agreement with USA Pickleball which resulted in Nationals moving to Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas and PPA Texas Open and PPA Kansas City Open becoming golden ticket tournaments for Nationals. Along with this change was a date shift for the TO. TO would now be June 2-4 (same weekend as ICT) instead of its original dates.
Despite me trying to kill myself playing all these tournaments, the universe decided to give me a break after all. But then I was faced with a choice TO or ICT. Obviously, I was going to choose ICT because not only is it far cheaper (registration is $50 compared to $200) but I wouldn’t have any additional travel expenses since it’s in Wichita. It’s a good thing I hadn’t found a mixed partner yet because I only had to notify one person of my withdrawal.
That brings us to Mid-South on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Even though Mid-South wasn’t originally on the list, I was actually really looking forward to it after securing a couple of great partners. I got Casey for mixed and then Molly Sager for women’s doubles. This was our second time playing together. Another reason I was excited for Mid-South is because it’s a tournament that we can drive to so we could take Saki with us. She was such a good girl on the drive to and back.
We finally got to experience a Buc-ee’s first hand. It’s the only gas station convenience store I’ve ever been to with its own door greeter like at Walmart.
As massive as the place is, we still managed to run into a couple of friends. Molly and I got a selfie with Drake and Cassidie Johnson.
Drake, Cassidie, and the McAllister clan (Karen, Danny, and Josh) except for youngest Isaiah who stayed in Oklahoma came out to play some rec on Thursday evening. Cassidie and I were unintentionally matching so naturally I need a pic.
It was pretty much warmup for women’s doubles day on Friday when everyone was matchy matchy. The ladies definitely like to play in matching outfits.
In the pic above are Kali Wilson and Olivia Bond, a couple of friends who were in our same women’s doubles division.
These ladies were so matchy matchy, they even had matching paddles, matching shoes, and matching sunblock bottles.
Molly and I played in 4.0 19+ (because she is a baby) ended up finishing just outside the medals. We were actually 3rd after pool play but ended up having to play 1st place in the playoff bracket and then lost the bronze medal match. That tournament was all sorts of jacked up because they had 1st vs. 3rd and 2nd vs. 4th in the playoff bracket, instead of the normal 1st vs. 4th and 2nd vs. 3rd. I’m not sure if the ultimate outcome would have been different but I guess we’ll never know.
Once we got a lay of the land and figured out the tournament flow on Friday, we decided to pitch our canopy on Saturday (which we brought with us, just in case — better to have it and not need it, than need and not have it). The McAllister clan got there early and were already set up so we just pitched our canopy next to theirs.
Michael Harris grabbed an Adirondack chair and claimed it for the day. It was the perfect size for his giant frame.
I only mention his gigantic frame because he made EVERYTHING look miniature in our Airbnb. He could barely fit at the dining table. LOL.
Anyway, Saturday was mixed doubles day. I didn’t really get any pictures because I mostly focused on not letting my partner down. I say this because I agreed to play 4.5 this time which is the highest level I’ve ever played in a regional tournament. I mostly play 3.5 for regional and national level tournaments. I’ve dipped my toes in 4.5 and 5.0 in smaller, local tournaments but only when I’m tricked into doing so.
Casey wanted to play 5.0 but I wasn’t ready for that I really wanted to play 4.0; however, guys can be really proud sometimes and he felt like he was too good to play 4.0 (which I would agree with, unfortunately for him, he had me as his partner and I am “3.5 at best” or so the Pickleball Studio guys would say) so we decided to split the difference and play 4.5. He was super confident we could podium at 4.5 because he assumed I was more like a 4.2 and had absolutely no idea how much of a handicap I would be.
For someone who is “3.5 at best” I actually didn’t play too terribly. Here’s a video from my most favorite match of the day. It was my favorite because we had a lot of amazing rallies and, according to DUPR, we should have lost this match against Jonathan Hill and Courtney Glenn. But even though they had match point against us, we didn’t give up. We fought hard and ended up winning 16-14.
There were 10 teams in our division so we were split into 2 pools for round robin pool play. Considering I was probably the lowest rated female in the group, we actually did pretty well. We had a 2-2 record (2 wins and 2 losses) but our only losses were to the Gold and Silver medalists. We ended up 3rd in our pool but only the top 2 in each pool advanced to play for medals.
I don’t think I would have predicted these results based solely on our ratings. I think this a definite case of 2 + 2 = 5. Casey is one of the few guys that I actually have synergy with. When I play with most people, I end up not playing up to my full potential and I also end up making them play worse.
When I watched our matches at Mid-South, I was amazed at the shots I was making. Sure, I made errors but there weren’t as many as I could have made and, at the end of the day, I felt good about how I played. I felt the same as I did after the OKC Picklemania earlier this year. It was disappointing not to medal but I had an amazing time and enjoyed every minute of playing. This is saying a lot because I’ve played in tournaments before where, at the end of it, I’m left feeling like I never ever wanna do that again.
Of course, just because I loved playing with him it doesn’t mean that he felt the same. He could have hated it and probably wouldn’t have said anything. I mean, I don’t usually tell people I hated playing with them. I just don’t play with them again. It’s like when I order food at a restaurant and I don’t like it, I don’t send it back to the kitchen. I just know either (a) don’t go back to that restaurant or, if I do go back, then (b) I don’t order that dish again.
I can only assume that he doesn’t mind playing with me because he agreed to play with me a second time but I am kind of glad that he didn’t look me up before we played Mid-South because I’m thinking he wouldn’t have agreed to play with me. When we all got back to the Airbnb that night and we were recapping the day, he was completely shocked at how low my DUPR is. I think, had he known he possibly had the weakest female partner in the bunch, it would have completely changed the dynamic. I feel like we played based on what he knew from when we played together in January and he trusted me to handle my business. Often the lack of trust is the biggest detriment to having synergy with your partner and if you think your partner is not very good then that can definitely be a detriment to you trusting your partner and, whether you mean to or not, it affects your on court chemistry and teamwork.
Anyway, don’t have any future tournaments planned with Casey but, if he asks, the answer is definitely 100 percent yes because he’s made my list of most favorite partners to play with; however, he doesn’t generally play with people below 4.0 and now he knows. Ratings are a big factor for a lot of people. I know it is for me, specially when I know nothing about the other player.
Saturday was my final day of competition because I ended up withdrawing from singles. I really wanted to play but the event started at 1 pm and Brian and I really wanted to be on the road back to Wichita by then because of the 6 hour drive. I was hoping my start time would have been 8 am (or anything 10 am or earlier could have worked). We really just couldn’t get home super late because we still had to do laundry and then I had to pack for Kansas City since I was working there on Monday and Tuesday that following week.
That’s pretty much it for this post. Next few posts will be of the food we ate while we were in Rockwall. We did get to try a few different restaurants so we had some very interesting dining experiences. I’ll also write about the whole storm breaking the bedroom window fiasco, which startled the crap out of me and really did a number on Saki. Until next time, GNG.
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