Episode 8 - Diamond Amateur Championship Recap

Abby’s doubles play - not great. Played with a friend I hadn’t played with in a while, forehands in the middle actually caused me confusion. She’s always left handed so she wasn’t confused but I was. I made too many mistakes. Also, I think I can say I’m a very good, steady, supportive right sided player. Playing straight up 50/50 on the left side threw me a bit. I don’t think it was solely the left side, I actually enjoy the left side and think I can handle myself, but it was just the whole thing of staying on the left AND playing the 50/50. I’m an aggressive player but as a female on the right there is just a difference. In fact one of our guy friends had to play the right side in Florida while he’s usually a left sided player and he even said he needs to work on how to be a right sided player “the right side takes a different mindset so shout out to people who play the right side. Hopefully I will figure it out” I know he will figure it out, and I don’t think he would mind I quoted him. And Matt, people have even told you that you need to work on the right side a bit. Anyway, that’s a whole thing, but it truly is a thing. Originally after that day, I was super discouraged, thinking it was time to retire, haha. But after processing some things, not making excuses, I made too many mistakes, but sometimes processing and finding the strategy that either failed or helped can help us move forward after a tough day. So women’s wasn’t great outcome, but I still had fun playing with my friend Kelly and hopefully we can play together more in the future.

Mixed I had a good outcome. Josh was a clutch left sided player when he needed to be but we did play straight up quite a bit, and in fact, we reverse-stacked (meaning stacking so I was on the left) in the gold medal match for a bit because we got stuck on 6 and just needed to do something different and it gave us a few points. We started in a hole nearly every game that we had to dig ourselves out of, but as I was processing that, except for the gold medal match, we chose side over serve whenever we could, and we chose the side into the wind, looking into the sun and a touch downhill so when we switched at 8, we got the better side. And then on that side we would dig ourselves out of the hole we dug and won. Maybe we just liked to get our money’s worth. Anyway, we won gold 19+ 4.0 and got our golden ticket to nationals November 2023. So that was really fun. I haven’t won a medal since Beer City in July so I think I emotionally needed that. And again, Josh did a fantastic job not only covering for all my mistakes but he really just killed it that day.

Matt’s overview (RIP spin serve)

• Mixed- Played well against 5.0-ish competition in 35+ but got left out of the playoff due to points

  • Talk format

  • Talk about 35+ vs 19+

• Men’s- Just didn’t have it– running into my partner, just couldn’t find the flow… shouldn’t have lost to the teams we did but went 2-3…

• Singles- exceeded expectations but not really my jam

• Still good memories though with the family and getting away

Pictona vs Nationals: slightly less competitive, but still very high level. Round robin and medal rounds vs double elimination (pros and cons). More of our friends were there, more Fort Wayne medals (Sarah had 2 and Jean had 2 in Cali and I think that was it?), in Florida, I think around 17 medals to the FW crowd (some earned two medals), and fun to note in my age/division all six medalists were from Indiana. We took the girls on this trip and they really did great, they loved taking our paddles and finding an empty court and hitting around with each other and with us. I thought this was really sweet, on our livestream on our Hoosier Pickleball fb page, Matt was streaming and had a tough loss in doubles, he forgot to turn the livestream off and our youngest comes sprinting on the court with a paddle and he started playing with her, so the livestream catches that and our friend Jean said something like, “Matt dinking with his daughters right after a tough loss is exactly why I love Matt” and I was like “same, Jean, same” so having the kids there keeps us in the right mindset, that it’s only a game, it’s fun, it’s competitive but in the end, our family is more important. Daytona is an interesting city, suffice it to say the Pictona facility is really neat, great layout, fun place. But our first time in Daytona was surprising, to be fair we didn’t realize how run down it was. But it’s always good to get out of our comfort zone. By the end the girls were loving the place and loving the sun so it all worked out well.

We conned our friend Matt Carpenter into driving through the night down and back with us, and staying in our air bnb which ended up being really fun. He did see me lose my cool at the kids once but I tried to keep that locked in most of the time, lol. My Matt sees it all the time so whatever.

Ending: As always we want to end with something we love…

Matt- Dulce De Leche Sundae from Hagan Daaz

Abby - hot water!