My First Pickleball Tournament

The City of Yuma brought back the Yuma Games for 2022. Being held locally at Fortuna De Oro – a CalAm Resort, I decided to participate if I could find a mixed doubles partner, and/or a women’s doubles partner. Back in October, Doug Stelma told me that he and I should team up if Barry and I didn’t want to play together for the Senior Games this winter. Barry and I considered it at first when we had some games when we seemed to click pretty well with each other. Barry was concerned about letting me down knowing my competitive spirit and total addiction to this game. I tried to reassure him that I would not be disappointed, but Barry thought Doug would make a better partner for me. He suggest that I see if Doug was available. Doug did not have a mixed doubles partner yet, so we decided to play together since we both qualified for the 65-69 age group. We soon started getting in some practice play. Doug and I were playing really well together and looked forward to the tournament. We only had about two weeks to play together before the mixed doubles on February 9th.

Feb 9th was the mixed doubles tournament. Unfortunately, play was determined only by age groups. Our play for the first two matches was truly AWESOME! Our third match we went up against a team of 4.0/4.5 players. They were placing their shots and we were not, and we did not recover. We lost to Linda and Berry. (Yes, that is how he spells his name.) We did not remain calm. They smoked us. Moving to the loser’s bracket we immediately played one game to 15 against Diane and Loren who had previously lost to Linda and Berry. While Diane and Loren were also really good players, I felt we should have done better than we did, but I think we were still rattled from our loss to Linda and Berry. We rushed shots as we played reactively instead of keeping calm, to remain patient and have a focused shot strategy. Doug and I placed 4th (or possibly 5th) within our age group. I was still quite pleased with my first tournament experience. Thank you, Doug for being my partner.

OTHER PARTICIPANTS FROM CAREFREE VILLAGE RESORT

Ken W and Josie (64-69)

Gold Medalists age group 70-74

Herb H. and Joyce H.

SILVER Medalists
age group 60-64

Brenda L. and Doug L.

Letha and John Rodrigues (Selkirk rep/instructor) (The Palms)
Gold Medalists 55-59

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WOMEN’S DOUBLES –One Week Later…

On Feb 16th, I played the Women’s Doubles age 65-69 with Giselle Wardaugh. We did not know each other prior to signing up together! Sandy Conoway told each of us separately that we should play together for the tournament, so we arranged to meet to fill out the team form the day before Barry and I left for Quartzsite in January! Giselle and I only played together a handful of times within the two weeks prior to the women’s tournament. We were just in it to have fun, and hoped we each would have a good day on tournament day. We played quite well together, even though we each certainly made mistakes in all the matches. We emerged with the bronze medal for the 65-69 age group!! WOW! Cool. 🙂

OTHERS FROM CVR

Brenda (from CVR) with Twila (from Country Roads) BRONZE medal winners for 60-64

Joyce & Janelle (both from CVR) GOLD medal winners for 70-74

Additional friends who played:
Glenda Tedrow & (Both from The Palms)

The following Wednesday was Mens Doubles. I must have deleted the pictures, but several from our park played together. (Doug & Phil; Jim R and Herb; Doug L & Bob M) Here’s a quick video clip of a point played by John Rodrigues and Jim Watson (Gold Medal)

I look forward to next year because I just LOVE pickleball!