{"id":24646,"date":"2021-08-03T19:34:40","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T00:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=24646"},"modified":"2021-08-02T16:17:31","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T21:17:31","slug":"she-came-she-played-she-conquered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=24646","title":{"rendered":"She Came, She Played, She Conquered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet Meredith Novy. She is the cutest ever. I met her through Michael Harris last year. He found her in one of the beginner leagues at Chicken N Pickle, immediately recognized her potential, and invited her to be his mixed partner for the mixed competitive league. She was mostly playing tennis on the pickleball court at first but it didn’t take long for her to figure out the game. <\/p>\n

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It didn’t take long for people to figure out how amazing she is. She’s not only good at pickleball but she’s a good person overall and just a joy to be around. It didn’t take long for her to capture the heart of our little pickleball community and her boyfriend Brian Harshman. <\/p>\n

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When Fong Witte (pictured with Meredith above) invited me to come to her farewell party at Chicken N Pickle, I immediately agreed to come and even put myself in charge of bringing the cake. Cake is kind of my thing, in case you haven’t noticed. I relish every opportunity to buy and eat cake. <\/p>\n

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They kind of frown on you buying an entire cake for yourself so I like it whenever there’s a party because then I can buy cake and nobody bats an eye when I end up eating all of it. I just can’t buy cake for no reason and then eat it all because then that would make me a cake-a-holic (which I kind of am but that’s beside the point).<\/p>\n

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Not knowing how many people Fong and Brian (Meredith’s Brian), Brian (my Brian) and I bought two round cakes from Costco. Better to have extra than run out, right? Plus, I figured, I would likely eat half of one anyway. <\/p>\n

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We ended up with way more cake than we needed. LOL. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the party.<\/p>\n

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Here’s Meredith with Lori Belew (middle) and Fong. (Tommy Chau, aka Ching’s little brother, and Huyen Nguyen, aka Ching’s daughter are in the background.) <\/p>\n

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These are Dave Belew and Lori Belew, well-known pickleball power couple. #TeamBelew (I am a huge fan. Can you tell?)<\/p>\n

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This next pic has Tommy, Krystal (Fosnight), Huyen, Anna, and Tiffany.<\/p>\n

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I think Meredith is telling everyone — Brian, Lori, and Kim (Knotts) — that she will only be gone for a year and will eventually return because she will be the first ever young professional on rotation at Textron to pick Wichita as their permanent post-rotation location. I’d like to think the super awesome Wichita pickleball community has a lot to do with this choice\/decision but I’m pretty sure Brian Harshman was the biggest factor. I’ve been part of various initiatives for economic development and retention of our young professionals in the past. Now, next time they ask for my feedback I’m just going to suggest that we get the said young professional into pickleball and maybe get them a boyfriend\/girlfriend to get them to stay.<\/p>\n

Obviously, we cannot keep Meredith from leaving, but, unless something drastically changes in her relationship status, I am absolutely certain that we will see her back in Wichita in a year’s time when her Maryland rotation is over.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a group picture with the ladies (from left): Kim, Lori, Meredith, Krystal, Anna, and me. Below, we have the same six ladies plus Tiffany (Lesperance), Huyen, and Fong.<\/p>\n

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Fong did such a fabulous job with the decorations, cookies, and making all of the arrangements for the party. Brian Harshman is in this photo talking to a couple of Meredith’s colleagues. <\/p>\n

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I didn’t really get pictures of Meredith’s coworkers as I did not know them well. Plus, we had four courts so we were all kind of our own little clusters. No pictures of the guys either because guys don’t really do pictures. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m glad that I got to be part of her send off. Best of luck to Meredith on the next chapter and I cannot wait to see you again in a year’s time! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Meredith Novy. She is the cutest ever. I met her through Michael Harris last year. He found her in one of the beginner leagues at Chicken N Pickle, immediately recognized her potential, and invited her to be his mixed partner for the mixed competitive league. She was mostly playing tennis on the pickleball court […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2385],"tags":[3163,3137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24646"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24668,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24646\/revisions\/24668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}