This is Cheryl, Tim’s wife and guest blogger. I joined my first Pickleball league, maybe somewhat on a whim. My friend Julie, also a PB enthusiast, decided to partner with me to play in a six-week outdoor league with a tournament at the end. We both went through the online assessment and determined that we were probably between a 2.5 and 3.0 on the PB scale. I went online to register and we were #11 on a waiting list! Long story short, they called, I signed us up, and we are now the Silver Slicers! I guess when other PB’rs found out that there was an indoor league, they jumped ship. Little did we know that the temperatures would soar to 87 degrees on our first night of matches.
We had some hope in our first set. My son dropped me a hint to hit to the lady, but she turned out to be a real dinker! Her partner said he had only played one game as a substitute in another league so we were initially pretty confident in our dink-abilities. Nevertheless, the sun was in our eyes for half the time as we switched back and forth facing the sun, but it was so hot! We lost the first two games and didn’t score a point, well, maybe one or two points but I’m not real sure due to a blank spot in my memory. Tim and Grayson came in and played a third game against our opponent just for fun. They easily handled the pair and assessed them to be better than a 2.5 to 3.0.
The second set was more evenly matched against a young couple, super nice, and admittedly beginners. We lost the first game on a close one and I had Grayson sub for me in the second game. I was feeling a bit fuzzy, sweating bullets, and my calves were cramping. Grayson helped bring our team back from the brink and we won the second game. Unfortunately, there was no time to play a decisive third game. Thus, the match was decided on a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and we lost! It was quite grueling for a first week of matches due to the heat but it was really fun and the Silver Slicers will be much better prepared for next week!
Update: Week 2 went much better, the Silver Slicers won one game and lost another. The weather was much nicer!