My very first Pickleball tournament…and a Medalist at that, but this story deserves a slight bit of background, before the awards are handed out.
First of all, you all know about this sport because I have mentioned it before, and I also put a picture of two couples playing (even though I did not know who they might happen to be), on my Fb page.
I also place in this post, a picture of the Pickleball court, so you might get a mental picture of the scene of action. Smaller than a tennis court, with an area between the service court and the net, called the kitchen which has all kinds of special rules.
We played indoors today, which was fortunate because it rained hard most of the day.
Back this past Tuesday, a friend came up to me, saying that his partner had to back out of a tournament, and he needed someone to sub for him. Could I play this coming Saturday (today)?
Checking my social calendar, I could, and so I showed up this morning at 9:15 ready to show how much I had learned in these past couple of months.
At 10:30 or so we hd our first match, absolutely crushing our opponents by the score of 15-6. We felt good about our play and our chances for a medal.
Then shortly thereafter, we suffered a defeat of our own 15-1, and our record dropped to 1-1 in our bracket.
One more match in the preliminary round, and it was a close set, but we again lost 15-9.
Now we are 1-2 and seeded 3rd in the double elimination finals coming up later in the day. The first two seeds will medal and the others will go home empty handed.
Bear in mind that we finished the prelims around noon, and did not get to play the finals till around 4pm.
Also bear in mind that we were seeded 3rd in our group based on skill level (we were in the 3.0, the lowest group playing today).
One other thing, there were 4 teams in our group. We had beaten one badly, been solidly shellacked by another and played the last team close. Our chance for a medal rested on defeating the 2nd seed to get another shot at the #1 seed.
When our final round came around finally, the #1 seed had to play #4, but then we learned that #4 had gone home after being beaten by all three other teams in the group.
Next was our game against the #2 seed, and we felt good, knowing we had not been beaten badly by them, and knowing also that we had not played our best game.
Then, the unbelievable, the #2 team had to leave, and that left only the #1 and us. Could we improve our game and wrest the gold medal away from them. They were good, and, I think, should have been a group higher in the ratings, but it was up to us to bring our A game and show them how it is done.
We did improve, bringing our B- game and got trampled 11-3, 11-3.
Actually it felt pretty good to score 6 points on them, and become a silver Medalist in this our first tournament.
At the end of this day, we knew there had really only been two teams left in our group, and we finished last, but the story is of a silver medal around the neck, and we won't embellish the story any farther.
At 82 I am only too happy to be able to play.
Wait till the Family Cornerstone tournament comes around next year.......Gold Baby
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