PB, Silver, Eye Candy, 159

I played in two more Pickle Ball tournaments this past weekend. Friday morning I played in the mixed doubles in the lower intermediate division. I talked my neighbor in my MN condo building into playing with me. I know this because as we are getting into the car Friday morning she said, “I can’t believe you talked me into this”. I said, we’ll have fun and how often in life at this point do you get a chance to do something like this”.

Before going farther, it is important to note my partner, EV, is an excellent athlete, outstanding tennis player, and a very good PB player. Also, she was really really fun to play with. We played a couple of times in open play at our PB club over year ago, but not since then.

So how did we do. First of all, the division had no age limits. Since our combined age was 159, I knew we would be playing teams younger than us. All the teams could have been our children and a couple our grandchildren. I may have not mentioned there was no age limit until we got in the car. Oops. EV said no worries, it will be fun.

We started modestly and that was my fault. The venue was both indoor courts and outdoor courts. I took us to the indoor courts first and we quickly realized we were supposed to to the outdoor courts. I put the address into GPS and it was only a few minutes away. Unfortunately, GPS sent us to a different part of the park and by the time we got to the PB courts, they were just starting. The volunteers very quickly checked us in and we were literally playing our first game a couple of minutes after we got out of the car with very little warm up. We got an early lead but our opponents, a very young couple, came back and beat us pretty easily.

That was the last match we lost until the Gold Medal games.

The first part of the tournament was round robin and there were five teams in our bracket. The games were to 15 and we won our next three games, one was very close, the others pretty easily. One of the things I noticed in several games was our opponents would look at us at the beginning and think to themselves, “isn’t this nice, these elderly people are playing PB”. After a few points, you could see them look at each other and say “oh oh, their good”. In most of the games we played, we were the lower rated team, but we still won.

We won our round robin and moved into the tournament draw of 16 teams. We won our 4th round game easily, and had a very tough game in the quarters against a higher rated team which we won 16-14. On to the semi-finals and another very young team. We got behind, but came back and beat them. At one point, EV hit a great shot to win the point and one of the people behind me said, your partner is really good. I said “yeah, I’m pretty much just eye candy out here”. EV gave me the “what is wrong with you look”. Well obviously there is a lot wrong with me, but we have to play PB now.

The reality was EV was the better more consistent player most of the day. I hit a lot of winners, but missed too many shots. Most often in mixed doubles, there other team targets the female partner assuming she is the weaker of the two. That was a really dumb move on our opponents part.

When we got to the finals, we had already played seven games, all to 15 and were 6-1. The finals were best out of three games, each game to 11. We were tired, and our opponents were about a combined 80 years younger than us. But played we played well in the first game, getting ahead and hung on to win. The guy was very good and played extremely well in the second game. On to the third and again, we were tired. And even though we lost this game, it is the game of which I am most proud. We got behind 10-4 and we could have rolled over, but we didn’t. We got a couple of points and told EV their tight, we can win this. And we almost did. We tied it at 10-10 and I had a tough shot to go ahead. I made a good shot, but unfortunately just clipped the top of the net. Their serve now and they won the next two points to beat us 12-10.

We got the silver medals. But if anyone had told me the night before we would place second and almost win it, I would have been happy.

So what did I learn from this experience.

Number one, pick a really good partner. EV is one of the most fun best partners I have ever played PB with. And no matter who we played, she was never intimidated.

Two, it was really fun competing against and beating teams younger than us, much younger than us. That’s really cool.

Three, you can get better at something at any age. I started playing PB at my AZ HOA a little over two years ago. Like any other beginner I was not very good. But kept playing, took a lot of lessons,and got better, not great, but better. It is really cool to get better at something at any point in life, but especially this point.

I strive to play with joy. One of the volunteers told me I was the funniest person there. There is a lot of negative stuff going on Nationally and locally including my AZ HOA. Playing PB does not make any of it go away, but sure helps me deal with it. And if I can bring a little joy to someone else, partner or opponent while playing, that’s a win by itself.

My daughter gave me fridge magnet years ago which says “If you did not know how old you would be, how old would you be?”