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My visit to Las Cruces was brief but worth it. I took I-10 West out of El Paso, Texas in search of pickleball in Las Cruces (a mere 50 minute drive) and was fortunate enough to find it.

Apodaca Park is located at 801 E. Madrid Avenue in beautiful Las Cruces, New Mexico. It has four outdoor courts with permanent nets and lines. The park itself is nice, quiet and has plenty of parking. But you might want to bring your own chairs.

I dropped by on a Wednesday evening and found a wonderful group of people playing pickleball there who were kind enough to let me invade their group. We only played three or four games but I enjoyed it and we had a nice visit. They even invited me for dinner and drinks, but since I had an early flight the next morning and a long drive that evening I sadly declined.

I would love to go back and visit someday. In the meantime, I would definitely recommend Apodaca Park as a place to visit and play a few games.

The dates may be wrong as I can only guess within a few months. But it was sometime in the early part of 2019. It may have been January, February, March, April or even May. I honestly don’t recall. Time is funny that way. In lieu of knowledge we create a “feel” for the passage of weeks, months and years. A guess? Yes, indeed. But a recent one, so I believe it to be true. In the future, for the blogs sake if nothing else, I will try to do better. For now…..let us say it was March 2019.

My determination and passion for golf had been put on hold due to the winter. Oh, I still went out…..and played well enough to regularly return….but once the mercury dips below a certain line so does the desire to go outdoors. The warmth of spring was still a couple of months in the future and putting practice on the carpet can only quench an addiction for so long. I needed another fix.

Ahhh…..pickleball!

I began playing pickleball indoors on Sunday afternoons at a Recreation Center in Carl Junction, Missouri. The people were very nice and I enjoyed it. It was (and is) a very relaxing environment with a water fountain, bathrooms and plenty of seating in between matches.

It was there that I first played with Missina, who would eventually become my mixed doubles partner. Did we win the first time we played together? I believe we did, although I cannot be certain. I don’t even know if we teamed up again that day. But we did after that.

I needed someone who matched my intensity and drive. Someone who also felt the need to get better, stronger and smarter. Someone who pushed me. It was the perfect person at the perfect time. Missina makes me be better. She watches pickleball videos, matches and instructional and goes with me to clinics. We compare notes afterwards and push each other further. She might be the only person I have found that is as competitive as I am.

During this time we also began playing outdoors at Landreth Park in Joplin, Missouri. There are usually weekend games and Tuesday and Thursday night games. There are eight courts that are well lit and fenced in. Plus, the people there are wonderful and welcoming also.

After that came Friday nights and Saturday mornings at the Millennium Fitness Center in Joplin, Missouri. The Millennium is a wonderful facility that I played tennis at for years. It is very inviting, with an awesome staff, a beautiful weight room with free weights and machines. Lots of aerobic equipment as well. There are four indoor courts and two outdoor with room to expand for tournaments inside and out. And once more, the nicest pickleball people you could possibly find!

If one were to do the math, by this point I was playing almost every day. I felt guilty if I took a day off (as Missina did as well).

By the end of the summer of 2019 pickleball had become my new addiction.

Somehow believing I was ready, I entered my first pickleball tournament. An indoor tournament (thankfully, as it was snowing outside) in Springfield, Missouri. Against all better judgement, I was talked into playing in the 4.0 ranking by my partner. I was not a 4.0 player as I soon found out.

The matches were over quickly as it was a double elimination tournament. It was two and done and long drive home through the snow and rain. Did I learn anything? Of course! I learned there was a lot to the sport I did not know about. I learned that there were a lot of good players out there. I learned that most all pickleball people are really friendly and fun to be around. I also learned that if I was going to play at a tournament level I had to work at it…….hard!

So I went back to playing golf and tennis.

A few months pass by and I get the itch to try again. Another tournament was coming up. I entered once again with more information and a touch more skill. It was a round robin style tournament with reseeding and bracket style matches in the afternoon. I played all out in the morning and was exhausted by the afternoon. I thought all tournaments would be alike. I was wrong. I failed to realize that it would be essentially nine hours of matches. More than once I cursed myself for not bringing along proper nutrition, medication or even fluids. Once again…..a learning experience. There were quite a few good players out there. The people were still really friendly and fun. I learned there was still a lot I needed to learn. And if I were to play in tournaments I needed to work and practice hard!

So I went back to playing golf and tennis.

Yet, much like life…..something unexpectedly cool happens. But it takes awhile.

Hello everyone! My first post will be a brief glimpse of my introduction to the sport of pickleball and the people that helped me along the way. The posts in the future will involve places I travel, tournaments and the awesome people I have met.

So here goes….

The first time I ever heard of pickleball I was December 2017. I was on a brief vacation/getaway to Fort Collins, Colorado and happened to visit a local golf course on a rainy, winter afternoon. As I drove into the facility I noticed what appeared to be very small tennis courts. They were painted green with nylon nets and odd, random lines, surrounded by tall chain link fencing. My first thought was, “what are they doing on those”.

Confused, I asked the young lady in the club house what those courts were. She replied, “pickleball”. Okay…..I had no idea what that meant and told her so. She laughed and showed me a small room filled with solid looking, over-sized ping pong paddles and these odd, neon colored whiffle balls. “Pickleball”, she said again. And I nodded, with more questions than answers.

The first time I ever played pickleball was February 2018. I had returned home and found out that there were pickleball matches on certain nights at an event center named Memorial Hall. I arrived with no expectations, paid and walked down some steps to the playing surface (wooden basketball flooring) with portable nets and taped lines. Coming from a tennis background the noise was quite loud.

Admittedly, the game “looked” easy enough from a distance. Straightforward, with obvious patterns, the four people per court moved about with purpose and ease. A lovely lady named Cathy took me to a vacant court, handed me a wooden paddle and explained the rules and scoring. She was gracious and more than patient as I had no real idea what the kitchen was or why. And the scoring? Why three numbers? But I began. And boy was I awful! Absolutely terrible! The balls moved both slower and faster than I thought they would. The refused to bounce off the ground or the floor like I believed they should and I had to swing using every muscle in my body.

As bad as I was, I kept trying. I realized soon enough that touch was more important than pace, and that getting to the kitchen line was the best place possible if you wanted to win the point. And getting hit by the ball did not hurt and was actually part of the game.

I would like to say I fell in love with the game immediately, but it took awhile. I still had golf and tennis, so pickleball took a back seat for awhile. Yet, eventually, it began taking up more of my time. I thought I was getting better…..until I played my first tournament that is……