When I left you yesterday with a really brief post about the TN Senior Olympics and my gold medal in the Singles competition, I did not have time to tell the complete story.
We played at the Chattanooga Convention site in downtown, 21 courts in the Trade Center exhibit area:
There were four singles players registered for the event in my playing category, three in the 80-84 group and one (me) in the 85-89. They put us all together, two players in Division 1 for the higher ranked individuals and two in Division 2. Each division would be awarded two medals, gold and silver for the winner and runner up (loser).
When it came time to assign a court to each match, I found out that my opponent had failed to show and I would automatically win the forfeit game. That is the story of the gold medal, but there is another story here also.
While waiting for the organizers to figure out what to do with me, I noticed another older man having the same problem. His opponent had failed to show also.
After hearing this, and realizing that neither of us had to play a match, I asked him if he would like to play a few games, just to get some practice in. He agreed, and we approached the lady in charge to see if we could get a court. We did and moved to it to begin.
As we readied ourselves to play, this 75 year old man, mentioned that this would be his first time to play Pickleball. How in the world had a person who had never played got in the Tennessee finals, I don't know?
After we hit a few practice balls, I realized he was truly a novice. What to do now?
We were out there, we were ready to play, we even had a scorekeeper. Let's go.
It was an interesting time:
He had no backhand shot.
He did not know the rules.
I spent the 3 games we played playing to his forehand, and he even missed a bunch of these.
He got one point in three games, and that was a shanked ball that barely cleared the net.
The scores were: 11-0, 11-1, 11-0 and I never hit a hard ball.
He said he enjoyed the games, but I seriously doubt either of us was happy about it.
I never found out if I got the gold medal for the 85-89 grouping or for winning the lopsided one I had played.
I'll opt for the outright forfeit in my own age group.
Sounds better, anyway.
Our scorekeeper, with the gold medal presentation. You might remember Sally from a blog post some weeks past. She was my employee back in the latter part of the 20th century who had come to play at the BX one day. We reunited there, after a long period of time, and here she was again at this tournament as a volunteer.
A strange day, all in all.
And now you know the rest of the story!
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