A Visit to Hawthorne at Leesburg

There are so many active adult communities around The Villages, either in Lady Lake or Summerfield, or Leesburg where pickleball is enjoyed everyday on some pretty nice pickleball courts. Since we've been in the area, we've been to the "indoor pickleball arena" at Highland Lakes, did a pickleball clinic at Legacy of Leesburg, and just yesterday headed down to a new one - Hawthorne at Leesburg.

This community, like Higland Lakes, and Legacy is located in Lake County, in the heart of central Florida, a county famous for its hundreds of lakes. Both Rich and I enjoy boating and fishing, and our interest was peaked when we learned that their Marina is situated on the river, just a short 1/2 mile ride to Lake Harris - the 6th largest lake in Florida. And in talking with some of the pickleball playing residents, Rich learned that the fishing is quite good.

Like most active adult communities they have an abundance of social and physical activites, crafts and hobbies. There are people who travel from The Villages to Hawthorn to particpate with some of the best ballroom dancing groups in the area.

We had met Ed and Carolyn Stein earlier in the year while playing picklebll at Highland Lakes. They asked Rich to come down and do a pickleball skills clinic for some of their players and so yesterday we headed that way.

We arrived, parked and were immediately greeted by Ed and Caroline who escorted us personally via the back seat of their golf cart, to the pickleball courts. They have three dedicated pickleball courts. Not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but the three courts are situated side by side, with a fence between each court, which is great for keeping your balls on your own courts!

The guys outnumbers the ladies - but everyone seemed to have a good time. We started at 6:00 in the evening - which was great. The weather was great...........low humidity and no hot sun!!!

Here's Rich with the the group that attended. What a great group of people. They made us feel very welcome and we had a great time meeting everyone.

A lot of the communities in the area get together and play - they call it Inter-Community Play, during the summer months, until all the snow birds return. So Rich and I are thinking of heading down to Highland Lakes on Monday night. Hopefully we'll meet up with some of these Hawthorne players there.