{"id":24701,"date":"2021-08-13T13:50:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-13T18:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=24701"},"modified":"2021-08-13T13:50:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T18:50:58","slug":"weekend-pickleball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=24701","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Pickleball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/51349199965\/in\/datetaken\/\"  title=\"Untitled\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51349199965_1ed5a9ae27.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My friend Debbie Fanning sets up the best pickleball play groups. I still remember when she first invited me to play in her Friday night group. I was so excited! I also owe her for getting me connected with Tom Pham. I had never played with him before she and Dave started inviting us to play mixed doubles in the bubble at Riverside Tennis Center (RTC) a year ago. If it weren&#8217;t for these games, <a href=\"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=23135\" >I never would have gotten the idea to team up with Tom last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t do mixed during the week anymore because our schedules have diverged. Before I picked up additional classes at VASA, I was playing in multiple leagues so it was hard to play during the week nights. Nowadays the main hurdle with playing during the week is my Aqua Zumba schedule. I teach classes every single week night except for Friday. I have a 6:30 PM Aqua Zumba class at the Harry location on Mondays and Wednesdays and a 5:30 PM Aqua Zumba class at the Woodlawn location on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This makes it nearly impossible to get in any play groups. Even leagues are tricky. I can&#8217;t do a league that starts any earlier than 8 PM most of the time. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, in addition to our <a href=\"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=22579\" >fabulous group on Friday night<\/a>, Debbie has started organizing weekend play. They usually start at 9 or 10 o&#8217;clock in the morning, which is impossible for me to make because I have Aqua Zumba on Saturdays (Woodlawn location) and Sundays (Harry location) from 9-10 AM. There were a couple of Saturdays that I piggy-backed off the 10 AM Saturday group and started my group at 10:30 AM just so I could play with them. And then there were a couple of weeks when it was too hot to play outside and Debbie booked courts inside the bubble instead. On those times, the indoor courts at RTC weren&#8217;t available until later so I could actually join the fun. <\/p>\n<p>The one day that has always eluded me is Sunday. They usually play from 9-11 AM at Rolling Hills so it&#8217;s impossible for me to join them. However, luck was on my side last weekend. The pools at VASA were closed for maintenance so my weekend classes were canceled. I didn&#8217;t find out until the weekend so I was on the waiting list but, luckily, there were a couple of cancellations and I managed to in. <\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/51366554460\/in\/datetaken\/\"  title=\"Untitled\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51366554460_e2a05ac372.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was so excited to finally be able to play with this group that I begged them to take a group picture at the end. I wanted to remember this forever because I wasn&#8217;t sure when the stars would align for me to be able to play with them again. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s so amazing that Debbie&#8217;s groups have grown so much. Our Friday night group is always a standard 10 players. Her weekend groups have gone from 12 players to an average of 16 players to now 24 players routinely playing a ladder format together. Even with that many players, she still ends up with a pretty deep waiting list. <\/p>\n<p>I just love playing with this group. I wish I could play with them more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Debbie Fanning sets up the best pickleball play groups. I still remember when she first invited me to play in her Friday night group. I was so excited! I also owe her for getting me connected with Tom Pham. I had never played with him before she and Dave started inviting us to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2385,2304],"tags":[3376,3229,3137,96,3377,3378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701"}],"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=24701"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24711,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701\/revisions\/24711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}