Pre-Tournament Pickleball Social

So Thursday evening at 6:30 a pre-tournament pickleball social for all the players was being held in Covington, LA. They had rented the education building behind the Trinity Lutheran Church for the get together. But before I take you there, I have to show you this rather unique store that is located just outside our hotel window. Actually we thought it was just a gas station behind us, and then we saw that there was also a Subway Restaruant, Store, Package Store and another called Daiquri Delights.

At first we thought it was just part of the package store, but with closer inspection we noticed we noticed that you could purchase fresh made daiquiris or frozen daiquiris in a large variety of flavors or combination of flavors. What a novel idea..........well until we saw that there was a drive through!!

We could not believe that vehicles could actually drive up to the window, order their favorite frozen beverage and drive away.....We actually had to go over and read the menu's printed at the drive through, thinking there was no way you could buy an alcholic beverage and drive away enjoying your purchase..........But the menu actually says "complete with liquor". Talking on the cell phone while driving is bad enough.......but now you can drink while you're talking!!!! I knew that most of you would not belive this.....so I had to capture the picture of the vehicles making their purchase.

So, - now off to the social. As I mentioned before they were expecting a very large turnout for the tournament and I think the majority of them showed up for the social. When we entered we were greeted and given our tournament t-shirts and goodie bags and tickets for the door prize(s) drawings..........and BEADS! Yes you can't go to LA without getting your beads. If you were a USAPA member ( and I think about 90% of the people there were members) you had the opportunity to purchase raffle tickets for a USAPA portable net system that would be given away on Saturday at the tournament.

We were really looking forward to this evening, where we would have a chance to meet a lot of our fellow USAPA Ambassadors from the Mid Atlantic Area as well as pickleball players from outside of Florida where we tend to play most frequently. We also hoped to meet our mixed doubles partners and me, my doubles partner.

Some of you will recognize this couple. Yes - it's John and Pat Lively! We have not seen these two since TT Orlando, probably three years ago. We've been following their blog and knew that they played in a lot of the big USAPA Sanctioned Tournaments - but we were still pleasantly surprised to see them tonight.

That's Rich with Roxanne Ware and Paul Coletta. We met Roxanne over in Ft. Lauderdale two years ago at the National Senior Games when she played with Rich in the mixed doubles. Roxanne is from Texas. Paul (from North Carolina) played with Rich back in December at the Florida State Senior Games down in Ft. Myers where they took the Silver Medal, and he'll be playing with Rich here at the Mid Atlantic Tournament.

We found Cynthia Boudreau, from LaFayette, LA - who would be playing mixed with Rich, and I located Diane Ramsdale, from AK, who would be my doubles partner. Don't think my mixed doubles partner was there.

We enjoyed a nice dinner of pork and red beans with rice, tossed salad and rolls and butter, and one of the LA pickleball players made this great cake! Rich was not the only "cake" monster at the table tonight. He and another gentleman kept eyeing the cake table to see when everyone had secured their piece and to check and see if there was any left for seconds! And Seconds they did have!

Following dinner and a few speaches from some of the Ambassadors there was the drawing for door prizes.....We had a very luck table. As you can see above Pat holds her prize (can't remember what it was), John won this cuddly little rabbit, Paul a cook book (he said he'd take home to the wife), we won a water bottle, and the couple in the bottom right is John and Virginia Corker who is a couple we met from the Mobile, Al area.

This is a pretty good picture of some of the crowd. We were surprised to hear just how many players had traveled a good distance to play in the touenament. Not sure if I remember all of them, but they arrived from Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida and even as far as New York State.

Tomorrow we would all convene at Pelican Park in Mandeville ......and the games would begin!