You’ve heard it before, if it wasn’t for pickleball, I wouldn’t have met this incredible community and made the countless friends I’ve made over the 3+ years of running the King Kong Tournament.
Many of you have asked why am I giving this up and, believe me, it’s not because I’ve gotten tired of the sport, but because I want to complete some long deferred travel while I am still able to do so. I’ve traveled the world during the prime of my work career but then needed to stop to care for my mom before she passed and then immediately got sucked into this vortex known as pickleball. While my health is still reasonable good, I’ve run into some issues that forced me to recognize that even though I’m doing plenty to stay healthy, some thing like my recent diagnosis of herniated disks and arthritis in my spine has caused me to re-evaluate my priorities. Among those travel plans include a return to the Far East, the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, and, to a lesser degree, Western Europe. And running tournaments on Sundays make those travels difficult. Who knows, if enough people twist my arm hard enough, maybe I’ll do another cruise but that is definitely not high on my to-do list!
While I may no longer be running these tournaments, don’t you worry, the torch is being passed to Fred Veenstra, a long time volunteer with the tournament and I’ll let him do his own intro in the near future.
There will be a cutover to a “new” website. The address will remain the same, kingkongtournaments.com, however, it will be managed by a new team led by Fred and you may need to re-register to participate in the future tournaments. I did not want to transfer the existing website as is as there are some technical idiosyncrasies that would benefit from designing from anew. I leave those updates for Fred to communicate.
Special thanks to Nan Summers and Mo Plainfield who were responsible for christening these Sunday tournaments, “The King Kong Tournaments.” And along the way, there have been a number of volunteers who graciously volunteered their Sunday mornings to assist: Diane Fuleky, Chas Popplestone, Dan Ryan, Julie Ferron, Kathleen Banashak, Kaylene Engel, Ilene Greenberg, Tina Rosenquist, Eric Green, Curtis Black, Tony Chiravolo, Ted Kegeris, Sue Reich, Miriam Bernstein. and Fred Veenstra. I’m sure I missed a few names and I apologize, after all, I am a senior!
Cheers!