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[00:00:00] Speaker A: But we didn't know that. We were on the precipice of an absolute explosion of the sport across the US and the globe. So, apparently we were ahead of the game. Okay, it has been a few days. We launched our podcast to the worst kept secret on the entire planet of. What's the name of our podcast gonna be? At the end of the last one, we said, we'll come back and we can tell you, because we're noobs. [00:00:35] Speaker B: We are very new at this. [00:00:36] Speaker A: And by the time we had to set up our podcast, it was like, you have to give it a name to save your information. So we gave it the name Sweet Lobs. Sweet lobs. Everyone already knows that. So, like, this is a big letdown for me. I was all excited to tell everybody the name of our podcast. And they already know. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:52] Speaker A: Not a big deal to you. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Not really, but I don't know if we told them. Why? [00:00:59] Speaker A: Well, we haven't told him anything about it yet. Yeah, we just said, please listen to our podcast. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:01:05] Speaker A: I called it sweet lobs because clearly, pickleball. I love hitting lob shots. I don't hit a lot of them. I'm not a lobber, so to speak, but I hit them when it's the right time. And I love them. I love putting them right near that back line and that top strategy. Yeah. But sweet lobs, because we've been married 30 plus years, you are coming up on a 32nd anniversary this year, and I've called you sweet love forever. [00:01:34] Speaker B: It has been my pet name. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think of his pet name. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Whatever you call your. I don't know, your nickname. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Lover's name. Nickname. I don't know. [00:01:44] Speaker B: I don't know what you call it. It's just something that you avoid. [00:01:48] Speaker A: It's my cute little name for you. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:50] Speaker A: So, sweet love is here on the Sweet Lobs podcast with me today, aren't you? [00:01:56] Speaker B: I am. [00:01:57] Speaker A: And today is community as a focus. So I was thinking about this guy we knew we wanted to do community. Second, because community is such a huge part of pickleball in our world. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Pickleball makes a huge impact on the community. [00:02:09] Speaker A: It does. But guess what? I was realizing that when you and I say the word community, we are potentially saying at least four different things. And so I thought I would really quickly make sure that you and I are on the same page so that our listeners, when you and I listen, who knows who else will listen to the second one, but that we will be on the same page with everybody. So community in general, just the people around us that play pickleball and hang out because of pickleball. Community specifically in that there is a hospital in town called community hospital, and they have some involvement with pickleball. We'll get that in a minute. Community sports and wellness, which is the place that you work at. [00:02:47] Speaker B: That's correct. [00:02:48] Speaker A: And a movement in our area, in our county called community in motion, which also has to do with the hospital. That's why the hospital is involved. So when we say community, we're going to maybe have to be a little bit more clear if we're talking about community in motion, let's say, versus just our pickleball community. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Fair enough. So let's start with the first one, our pickleball community. We had touched on how you didn't have a friend group when we first moved back. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Because you're not from here. I am. And Pickleball gave you that friendship group, gave you a group of people that could work together to improve different things in our community. Yes. Because most of the people that we found that we're playing pickleball with, we're also interested in making the world a better place. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker B: As cheesy as that sounds, but it's true. And they have. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. My big thing with pickleball is, and I hope always will be, that I think Pickleball is a great. A great unifier in our community at large, just the area we live in. So I guess there's five communities. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Right? [00:04:00] Speaker A: I've talked about this before. I'm not sure. You know, I'm not going to be able to memorize what I said on the previous podcast. I'm just not that guy. But look, there are people who are a different orientation than me, whether it's belief, whether it's physicality, whether it's nationality, whatever it is. That may be completely on the opposite spectrum as me politically, let's say, or from a religious standpoint, doesn't matter. And we share a court, and we have an absolute blast and we don't care and we love each other and we get on with life. [00:04:31] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:04:32] Speaker A: So it's wonderful. So from that perspective, I think you're right. The community we build is amazing. We've got people. Oh, my gosh. We could just start listing them. [00:04:41] Speaker B: I mean, we can, but I think the important thing is that we didn't expect that. [00:04:48] Speaker A: No. We expected to have fun playing pickleball with a few people. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:04:53] Speaker A: And so let's go to, just for a second, our intro song. Right, right. I'm ahead of the game. We didn't actually know that we were ahead of the game. No, because when we started playing pickleball, it was just, hey, here's another sport. Kind of a weird one, I suppose. [00:05:08] Speaker B: It was fun. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Fun game with a funny name, right. And it was fun, but we didn't know that we were on the precipice of an absolute explosion of the sport across the US and the globe. So, especially here, apparently, we were ahead of the game, which is why I chose that theme song or that theme music for our podcast. And. Yeah, maybe even especially here. I agree. There were two groups going here. There was a group in Edgewood, and there was a group at the YMCA in Anderson. In Anderson. And in Pendleton in the Pentagon. There was a group also, but they're actually the same people as the YMCA. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:46] Speaker A: They played at Falk Creek Christian church. And then the group in Edgewood, as we mentioned, played at Calvary. No, not Calvary. Whatever. Methodist. What's the Methodist church? [00:05:58] Speaker B: Wesley Free. [00:05:59] Speaker A: Wesley free. [00:06:00] Speaker B: You've already forgotten that. [00:06:02] Speaker A: Wesley Free Methodist. But. So they. They're in a group called Britain Falls. That's the area they live in. And then the other group. I love their name. This is like Debbie Chambers, Steve Jones, they called themselves. You ready for this? I don't know if you know this. [00:06:16] Speaker B: I have a guess. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Has to do with Madison county. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Yep. They are the mad cow. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah, the mad cows. They literally had like a really cool shirt design with a logo of a cow. Like, crazy looking. A mad cow. Like eyeballs, bulging, tongue sticking out, hitting a pickleball. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Which is funny because we live in a farmland. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Oh, it totally fits. Mad cows totally fits for where we are. Anyway. Those two communities actually already existed. [00:06:44] Speaker B: They did. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Our community, really. So again, divided is the wrong word, but we ended up with sort of what I would call three major pickleball focused groups in our community. Locally here in Anderson, we had what really started, which was BCC pickleball. That's just Bethany Christian church pickleball. And there's a ton of people that follow that page on facebook. And then some of us in that group wanted to really go after it. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Be competitors. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Be tourney players, etcetera. So we. I think we talked about this before, but we formed leagues, etcetera, and we called ourselves, and still do, the pickle brawlers. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:21] Speaker A: We've had that name for most of the last six years because that started pretty quickly. And then we got to another part of our community side, which was, what do we do in our area to get more people interested in and attracted to pickleball and more courts. And more courts, which is a big part of that, clearly. And so we had what's called a pitch night here in town. We had several of them, one a year for three or four years. I actually helped behind the scenes with those pitch nights, but Shane Bivens took. [00:07:50] Speaker B: In charge of that. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but I actually also was a part of sort of pushing a team to go in the pickleball space. So that was Cheryl McKinney, Jessica Jones, and Robin Abels that really, like, I mean, Cheryl drove it, but the three of them were up on stage together. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Jessica told her story. We're gonna get her in here on a podcast. [00:08:10] Speaker B: Love to. [00:08:11] Speaker A: We'll get her story from her directly. Robin was just a part of the planning and prepping and being on stage with Cheryl, but really, Cheryl was driving it. And ultimately, they won the pitch night. And from that, they started Madison County Pickleball association. [00:08:28] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:08:29] Speaker A: And that group has got over a thousand members easily on Facebook that follow it. I don't know how many actual members are in the. In the organization like that are paying members. Right. But because of them, we got courts in indoors, six courts indoors that we were able to use on some basketball courts and eventually got them lined. And then they were a big part of helping push the city to get some outdoor cards. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Yes. Because one of the people that learned at BCC and also, well, that's not MCPA, tied. [00:09:03] Speaker A: So separately. [00:09:05] Speaker B: Separately, yeah. [00:09:06] Speaker A: So separately, what BCC did on their end to get pickleball growing was we had once, well, it's now once a quarter, but it used to be more frequent. But we had frequent beginner like, free beginner pickleball clinics or free beginner pickleball nights. We used to do three nights. So we would say, come on, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. And really we wanted them all three nights at them for 2 hours each night. We had a whole process in place for getting them to. By the. By the third night, they could literally leave and go play pickleball just about anywhere. I'm not saying they were good at pickleball, but they, they understood the game well enough. They could hit well enough that they would be accepted into most parks and be allowed to just sort of say a lot, but that they could just jump in and play. [00:09:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:46] Speaker A: Well, sky, during the effort which you're bringing up to get courts outdoors, one thing we recognized was there was just some pushback or disinterest might even be a better way to put. [00:09:57] Speaker B: It was too new. I don't think it was. It was just right. I remember bringing it up at a visitor bureau board meeting, and they just. They didn't know what it was. [00:10:07] Speaker A: They were like, what's pickleball? [00:10:08] Speaker B: And I told them it was going to be the biggest thing here. And they didn't laugh, but they also didn't understand. But you were ahead of the game. Exactly. Fast forward four years, five years, and here we are. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah. We have 16 outdoor courts. They're spread out across three locations. And I think one of the big things that really helped get that going was we invited the parks and rec again. Director, superintendent, director, whatever her name was. She ran the parks in our area for the city. Her name is Jayma. And we got Jama to a beginner night. I just accidentally flipping through my phone the other day, ran across a video of her and Michelle Hochwalt from community hospital. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Really? [00:10:51] Speaker A: At the beginner night at Bethany Christian Church. And it's hilarious because, I mean, Jamie's a good pickleball player today. [00:10:58] Speaker B: She's amazing. [00:10:59] Speaker A: But she was not a great pickleball player when she picked up a paddle, as most of us aren't. [00:11:03] Speaker B: She was an athlete in high school. [00:11:04] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. She didn't have trouble with eye hand coordination. She was fine. But it was. I was just like, that can't be Jayma. But it's Jayma. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Wow. [00:11:11] Speaker A: So Jima, our parks and rec gal, gets hooked. I mean, hooked on pickleball. She loves it. And voila. We have three parks with courts on them now. [00:11:23] Speaker B: And she worked really hard. [00:11:24] Speaker A: She did. [00:11:25] Speaker B: There was a community group like Madison County Pickleball association. [00:11:30] Speaker A: Yep. [00:11:30] Speaker B: They were pushing in, talking players across, across the city that were. [00:11:35] Speaker A: Cheryl was really driving people to town meetings. Yeah. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yep. It was. It was a. [00:11:40] Speaker A: It was a team effort. [00:11:41] Speaker B: It was a. Yes, it was a team effort. And because of that, our city is only about 55,000. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:47] Speaker B: And we have 16 outdoor courts. [00:11:50] Speaker A: I talked to the mayor a couple times. One time, interestingly enough, we unintentionally connected at the airport in Houston. [00:11:56] Speaker B: Oh, that's funny. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:57] Speaker B: He was flying out of Houston. [00:11:59] Speaker A: We were both flying in and waiting on our luggage. We didn't even see each other on the plane. We didn't see each other until we were at the baggage claim. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:04] Speaker B: So I don't know what happened there, but that's serendipitous. [00:12:08] Speaker A: But he goes, hey, let me ask you about pickleball. And I was like, yes, please do. I thought I had him at the time convinced to put in, like, 30 courts and create a true, like, mecca. I want to call it that. But like, a true, like, I want the PPA and the app and the MLP. Like, I want them to come through my town and be like, we want to play pickleball there. Because you have the best. You have the best courts, you have the best facility of the best. I couldn't quite get there. [00:12:36] Speaker B: Not there yet. I will say pickleball does impact sport tourism in our community, our county. And we're very thankful for that. [00:12:46] Speaker A: You are. Well, you were the president of the Madison County Visitors Bureau. [00:12:50] Speaker B: The board. Not that. [00:12:53] Speaker A: President of the board. Yeah, sorry. You're right. You're right. You weren't the Ed or the president or whatever. Mark's. Nick. Mark's role is. [00:13:01] Speaker B: Mark Thacker is our executive director. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And we leveraged that to get. To get a sponsorship or two for some of the tournaments that we did. Because you knew that you guys could get revenue out of people traveling to our tournaments. [00:13:15] Speaker B: Oh, no, you know what? I actually had nothing to do with that. That was all Mark. He saw the. I actually didn't know until after the fact. He saw the potential. He had worked for another organization that is basically involved in sports tourism. So. No, he caught on really fast. He's been a big supporter of pickleball and bringing in more sport revenue into the. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Great guy. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah, great guy. [00:13:45] Speaker A: Great guy. You're past president now, right? President, pro temporary chair. [00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:50] Speaker A: Leftovers. That's what they call it. Oh, here comes the leftovers. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Oh, that's mean. No, I think our new president's going to do great. Our new chairperson's going to be great. And, yeah, we just had a board meeting this past week. But let's go. Go back to what happened after the outdoor courts. So Pickleball has continued to grow in our community, our town area, our county is growing. And people were noticing. And one of those people was Tom Bannon from community hospital foundation. And he wrote, as part of his doctorate, he wrote a dissertation. And the theme of that was community in motion, which is an initiative that wants to break down barriers of physical fitness and health in our community. Because much of our city of Anderson and some of our rural towns don't have access to fitness facilities or education or that type of. There's just a gamut of stuff that the community needs. And he wrote about it, and it has been a passion project of his. So fast forward, he contacted you to meet about community in motion. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Correct. [00:15:11] Speaker B: And he wanted to do a countywide pickleball tournament. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Well, no, he just wanted pickleball. Can you do something for pickleball? And I said, yeah. And I thought about it for a few days and what came to mind was, man, you know, it'd be really cool. Would be a city versus city tournament for the cities in our county. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:15:29] Speaker A: That's how that went down. [00:15:30] Speaker B: Okay, so fast forward to last year. Last year was the first year for the initiative. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:39] Speaker B: And it included not just pickleball, but a multitude of sports. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, yeah. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I mean, curling. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:44] Speaker B: To equestrian, cycling, running, cycling, running, walking, frisbee, golf. [00:15:50] Speaker A: Yes. Lots of stuff. I believe they call it disc golf. You gotta wanna. [00:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I apologize. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:57] Speaker B: And we have a great disc golf course. [00:15:59] Speaker A: We do. [00:16:01] Speaker B: And that was another wonderful thing from parks and rec. Anyway, so last year was the first year, so we had a tournament, and the goal was to have a tournament in every town with a high school. [00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, we have six of those in our county. And we fought for it. We didn't quite get there, but we had multiple cities come together. And I'm going to actually just really quickly thank the people that helped out with that tournament, because what happened was just a few. A week or two back, you and I got honored. I mean, it was my name and I'm all over it, but you were there with me, and we were honored by community hospital, or community foundation, which is part of community hospital, for our work with community in motion. They had a big dinner and they invited several of us that ended up volunteering our time and helping out running programs. And so we were very honored at that dinner. It was really cool. In fact, there's a link, we're gonna put a link in the description of this podcast to the video. It's what, two or three minutes? [00:17:00] Speaker B: It's not that long of your part. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. [00:17:05] Speaker A: They shot a video of us playing pickleball. They shot a video of us talking about it and some of the other activities that happened as well for community in motion. And it's pretty good. I think you should watch it, especially if you're from our area or if. [00:17:17] Speaker B: You wanted to build pickleball. Well, yeah, in your community. [00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to talk about that a lot. Like, that's a whole podcast, but I love your point. So I'm going to thank some of the people that, that made that happen. Joe drown, helped by running one of those city tournaments. Lisa Farley, helped by running one of the city tournaments. Christy Pasman, helped by running one of the city tournaments. You helped by just being my marketing right hand gal, my social media chick, all that wonderful stuff you did. And then there was plenty of others. There was an organization up north, and I can't remember the name, but that they printed our shirts. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Yes. [00:17:53] Speaker A: I've been told to be careful about who I promote on these podcasts, because apparently there's algorithms out there that bust you if you're being sponsored or not being sponsored. [00:18:01] Speaker B: We're supposed to say, we're not sponsored. [00:18:02] Speaker A: We're not sponsored. [00:18:04] Speaker B: We're not sponsored. [00:18:06] Speaker A: I'm sure that you were all wondering who was sponsoring this podcast. And I suppose I could say my own company, disruptify, is the pod pod studio. Probably is. But truth be told, we're not sponsored. [00:18:18] Speaker B: We don't care about that. [00:18:19] Speaker A: No, but we're saying it because we don't want the algorithms to get all Jackie and wonky on us. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:18:23] Speaker A: So now that we've said that. [00:18:24] Speaker B: But what's important to us is how much pickleball has made a difference here. [00:18:29] Speaker A: Yes, that's what matters. [00:18:30] Speaker B: We want to share that message with you so that you can take this information, make it your own, and hopefully grow pickleball in your area and have similar effects. [00:18:42] Speaker A: There's one ugly thing I want to. I want to talk about. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Why? Why bring up nasty? [00:18:49] Speaker A: Oh, I know, but hang with me. So you and I have talked offline about my progression in pickleball versus your progression in pickleball. I went the pickleball path. You were down the martial arts path. [00:19:01] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:01] Speaker A: So you were progressing well in martial arts, and I was progressing in pickleball, but that meant we weren't playing together much. And so as we will get to in my dupers in the pooper episode. What? That's our next episode. [00:19:13] Speaker B: I was gonna. I thought you were gonna save the name for that. [00:19:15] Speaker A: No, we said it on the first podcast, so people already knew. That's true. Yeah, that one I remembered. Anyway, now you've got me all flustered. [00:19:25] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:19:26] Speaker A: When I play with you now, I get to play with my wife, which is wonderful. I love playing with her. But if I played with somebody else equal to you in capability often, it wasn't my wife, I wouldn't be as enjoyable for me. It's the fact that you're my wife that makes it enjoyable for me. Right. I'm just being honest. I told you, I'm working together. I told you. This is raising. It's rearing its ugly head. So just bear with me. I'm almost there. I'm just setting it up. This leads to great. We now have 16 outdoor courts, which is awesome. Awesome. Six of them are at the most gorgeous place, shady side park, surrounded by water. Stunning. [00:20:01] Speaker B: It's beautiful. [00:20:02] Speaker A: Gorgeous. And the thing is, that's where everybody wants to go. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Right? [00:20:06] Speaker A: Okay. I'm all for that. But then you get 40, 50, 60 people coming to six courts community. That's wonderful. Right? That's the point. But I think there's always this thought out there, and I see this on Facebook post after Facebook post of, well, the better players want to play with the better players, or I just. Or I don't want to play with somebody who's going to spike it at me or, you know, they're too fast and they get every ball back. And I'm just here for, you know, leisurely play or whatever. Like, everyone kind of has what they're looking for in pickleball. And gosh, I have so much to say on this, but I think it's important to understand that in public situations, like a public park, unless the parks and rec organization has placed signs with specific rules, we have to accept that everything is probably okay. Like, if I want to bring a group of four and play as my own foursome, it's not against the rules of pickleball. It's not against the rules of the park. I should be allowed to do that at the same time because pickleball feels like such a sharing sport where we rotate in and rotate out after every game, you know, two on, two off or winners staying split, or, you know, winners, four on, four off, where there's too many people waiting. That's not a rule of the sport. But here's the thing. This is where that comes from. This is kind of what I think there's an opportunity for pickleball players. Six years ago, we were desperate to have anywhere to play. Desperate. And so we were okay waiting and waiting and waiting. True, because we were just happy to have a place to play. And so what, what formed in pickleball over the last 40 years, 50 years, was this mentality or this comfort zone of we don't take a court to ourselves when other people are waiting. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:56] Speaker A: We rotate, and a lot of people go, well, that's pickleball. Well, no, that's just what Pickleball has had to be because we didn't have a choice. But now they're building courts everywhere. I'm not saying we have enough. I'll probably never say we do, even when we do. But they're building courts everywhere and there are a lot of courts, and there's a lot less pressure than ever before. And the new people coming into the sport, they don't have that background sky of pickleball having been a place where you didn't take a court to yourself. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:32] Speaker A: So now we'll go out to shady side, and there's people I don't even know out there playing on their own court. People are waiting. They don't know any different. Are they wrong? No, they're not wrong, because it's a public place. They could take it for, I guess, 8 hours if they wanted to. Tennis dealt with this in the eighties, and so tennis courts put up signs that said, you know, limit your play to one and a half hours or 2 hours or whatever. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:52] Speaker A: Or if somebody's waiting, you know, start the timer, you got an hour, that kind of stuff. We may end up having to see that with pickleball, but I do hope that we can impress upon the newer players this idea of a unifying sport, not a dividing sport. We don't need another reason for division in our country. Right. So I have a lot to say there, but to me, the ugly, the ugly rearing head is this, that not everyone appreciates what it took to get courts or not having courts. And everyone appreciates also the reality that everyone should be allowed to sort of play the way they want to play. So there's a lot to be figured out still in pickleball and. [00:23:36] Speaker B: And take care of your cords. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, please. Take care of your cords. Take care of your nets, take care of your cords. Don't leave crap out there. I think always somebody leaves something behind. I have a friend who has basically written a pickleball theorem. It basically sounds like something like this. Oh, anywhere there are four people playing pickleball, there's guaranteed to be one thing. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Left behind, usually a water bottle. Yeah, that makes me remember every time. [00:23:57] Speaker A: His name is Eddie, by the way. Eddie Spencer. He's the best. [00:23:59] Speaker B: He is. We have a funny story about that. [00:24:02] Speaker A: Oh, hit it. [00:24:03] Speaker B: So one of my co workers is a, he just retired, but he was a firefighter, and he, they would go out to the park and play. So firefighters are also getting in. They're using this for their PT trainer in many stations, and so they go out to a park not far from here, a different county. But he ended up buying a paddle from you, and it was a nice, expensive paddle, but you gave him, it was used so you didn't have to pay full price, obviously. And he loved it, and he left it. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Oh, he did. At a park. At one of the bigger parks. [00:24:38] Speaker B: At one of the bigger parks, Cynthia park, which is in fishers eight quarts. And so he came to work and he was distressed about it. And he was like, I just got it last week from Kevin. Does he have another one? Does he, is he able to communicate with anybody at the park? And I said, as a matter of fact, that park has their own pickleball Facebook group. And Kevin reached out to them and posted the need for the paddle and that it was a firefighter that was missing it. And it was. It was found or communicated. [00:25:13] Speaker A: It was in the lost and found box. He just didn't know that existed. Yeah. [00:25:16] Speaker B: And so it got back to him. [00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:19] Speaker B: And he was so grateful. But that is that also community. It's that community. People taking care of people. Yep. And, you know, they could have walked off with a nice paddle. [00:25:28] Speaker A: Yep. There's always a bad here and there, but for the most part, man, we're just the most watching out for each other group there is. It's so cool. [00:25:37] Speaker B: And I just love that the fact that firefighters are using this as time to, you know, for fitness as well as fun and team building with their own. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:46] Speaker B: Their own departments. [00:25:48] Speaker A: I don't know if we're going to get back to beginner pickleball at another podcast or not, so I want to make two more thank yous real quick. Paul McKinney used to. He's been a lot more busy on the coaching side these days, which is great. He's in. He's in the pickleball world. Love it. But he used to be my partner in crime for beginner class. [00:26:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:06] Speaker A: And he was a great helper and I have always been grateful to him for that. Yes. And then Joe drown, who really did some of it when Paul was there as well. We each would have our own court, but Joe down really picked up the slack as well after Paul left. Although, Joe, I'm calling you out because you've gone out to Florida every year for half a year and I miss you for two of my sessions, but he's been a great help. And then we just had a new guy join us this last time, Greg. [00:26:31] Speaker B: I kept calling Gary. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry about that, Greg. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:26:36] Speaker A: And also Luke. Luke has been. Luke and Mike Gibson have been very helpful in the pickleball world for us. Running Tuesday night intermediate open play at our church, helping with leagues and helping with beginners. And they're just really. They're great people and they're into the sport and they're very helpful, too. [00:26:52] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing, is this community I know has produced a ton of volunteers who put in a ton of volunteer hours. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Saw one this morning while I was playing. [00:27:01] Speaker B: They love the game. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yep. Amy. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Amy Arbansky. [00:27:05] Speaker A: Amy Urbanski. I saw her this morning. She came into play right when I was leaving, and she was. She was and has been a great, you know, volunteer. And speaking of which, our tournaments, we have a big one coming up next month, ends up being our state tournament. We always have a ton of wonderful people volunteering. I've never seen us short of volunteers at a tournament in our county. [00:27:26] Speaker B: We're gonna actually power the people, baby. We're gonna live podcast there. [00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we're live streaming. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Live streaming, yes. [00:27:33] Speaker A: But we'll record it as a podcast, right? Yeah, I'm not sure. Is there such a thing as a live podcast, or is it just a live stream that turns into a podcast? See, back to the noob thing. [00:27:43] Speaker B: We're too new. So I didn't progress as fast as you did. [00:27:48] Speaker A: No, we already said that. [00:27:49] Speaker B: We know, but the funny thing is, even though I didn't advance as fast as you did, or I'm still in that, I would say newer stage people, because of you, I think. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:28:04] Speaker B: I'm as good as you. [00:28:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:28:06] Speaker B: And so until they played with me, they're like, oh, she's not. She's not his level. [00:28:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker B: But they still accepted me, of course, because they, they appreciate you. Which I want to just say thank you to the community for accepting me and letting me play with the big kids when I would show up to the court. [00:28:28] Speaker A: We're going to finish today's podcast with this comment. So last night we said, hey, let's go in the morning, we'll record, we'll go it over. Go over at 11:00 a.m. You have some things to do. It's a Saturday, so. Okay, we'll go to 11:00 a.m. I get home from pickleball this morning around nine, and you are dressed and ready to go, and you're like, let's go, let's go. [00:28:44] Speaker B: I was ready. This is one of my favorite things now. [00:28:47] Speaker A: I love it. Well, we do this in many ways just to spend extra time with each other, doing something fun together. Of course, you know this, beyond the dancing, beyond the pickleballing, beyond the going on date nights, this is one more thing we get to do together, and we love it. And so whether anyone listens or not, we're gonna keep doing these podcasts, aren't we, babe? [00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Still over 53 listens within the first three days. [00:29:14] Speaker B: I am amazed for you and me. [00:29:15] Speaker A: That's amazing. I'll take it. And that's our friends. That's our community. That's our community showing up. [00:29:21] Speaker B: It is. And please, like share and follow. Subscribe. [00:29:25] Speaker A: We're now on all the great RSS feeds out there, so you can get it on whatever you listen to it on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, you name it, we're out there. Or you can just go to our link on Castos, which is sweetlobs dot castos.com. C a s t o s. We appreciate you. We do. Are we done? Yeah, we're done. We will see you guys next week when we talk about our duper bean in the pooper. [00:29:50] Speaker B: Goodbye. Oh, I'm only about slinging I'm working over time singer the melody, the vibe I'm a prodigy logically I'm impossibly wanted and they'll remember my name don't remember my name.