Work Party, then play: final drainage fix at entrance

Kenny, Gregg, Dave, Chris, Renae, George, Brad, and Eric sacrificed another morning to cover the dirt piles with tarp and lay drain pipe from the wet spot near the entrance to the ample drainage beneath the courts.

With years of experience working on his own property, Chris (left) has what it takes to lead the drainage effort. Meanwhile, Kenny (right) provides youth and muscle.




Andrea and 3 of her girls look on.



Afterwards, most hung around for 5 good games of 3-on-3.

Dave sequence...



Kenny sequence...

We love our new courts

After a rousing best of 5 3-on-3 match on Friday (no photos), regulars Dave, George, Chris, JohnV, Slade and Michael were joined by Tim for a couple games of doubles on a dry, but not so clear Sunday afternoon.

Low light and poor photography provided just a glimpse of the decent play.


Good scramble...


George can't pass...


...but when he does, he can hit


JohnV uses tape a la Scotty


See Chris chip to open court.


See Chris hit


See Chris hit hard!


Nice pass, Mark.


Dave hits


Mike hits

Play resumes after 2 full days of work

Yep, after two more days of hard work by contractors and volunteers, the nets and lines are back in place, so play can resume.

On Friday, Bill Winchester of Wauna Tractor returned to work his magic. After filling in the drain rock from Purdy Topsoil behind the two walls, fine tuning the east embankment, and spreading a couple truck loads of wonderful fine screened sand from Lloyds Enterprises, the courts and surrounding area were lookin good. He also regraded the court surface to make it nice and level again. Gregg, Chris, Eric, Andrea, Stephan, and George pitched in with another 32 hours of hard work laying drain pipe, raking gravel, digging dirt, and spreading sand.





On Saturday, another large work party consisting of Ana, Bill, Vicki, Andrea, Toni, Michael, Scott, Eric, JohnV, Dave, George, and Gregg spent another 50 hours grooming dirt piles and putting up the new boundary netting and reinstalling court equipment.




Maybe there's good reason that the City forced us to sign hold-harmless agreements. Actually, the guys were very safety conscious in strapping ladders to the fence and balancing against the poles.

Another Big Volunteer Work Day

The objectives for the day were to finish the concrete walls, dig holes for netting poles, and install all poles in concrete. Mission accomplished and more.

You can see the extent of this improvement project from these two photos. 330 feet of concrete border or wall around the entire edge of the sand to form a nice border plus poles installed outside the fence around 2 sides of the court.

The poles will be used to hang netting...a crucial improvement necessary to keep the ball inside the court when George pounds a spike down the line off of an unsuspecting digger.


Expert concrete contractors Ron Miller and son Matthew of Universe Construction gave us a great discount on their labor. Thanks to rain and landslides, the east wall turned into a real bear, but as you can see here, the Millers had it under control by week end.




Bill Miller provided not just hard work, but expertise from his experience creating other beautiful parks around the harbor. Here Vicki takes a short break from chipping away the slag to observe Bill pulling off some forms.


The poles around the entrance to the courts took a bit of extra figuring by (from left) Eric, Ana, Chris, and Evan.


Hard workers Scott, Gregg, and Vicki wrestled with the other entrance pole...

...while 6 others, including George's twin, Evan, Dave, Andrea, and Chris offered advice from on high.

2009 Park Improvements Begin

Halloween day was chosen as the first volunteer work day for the 2009 park improvements. With of lots of promised volunteer labor, donated material and services, and a $7700 PenMet Parks Grant, we're putting a concrete border around the entire sand area and adding netting on the west and north sides so that balls don't get away from us so much. As Dave said today, we won't be holding back on the hard spikes any more.

Today was focused on moving sand out of the way so that our favorite dirt guy Bill Winchester can excavate this coming Tuesday before Ron Miller puts in the concrete. Both are great guys we've worked with before and who are donating some of their labor to our cause.

Moving sand away from the borders are Renae and Gregg, Scott and Tim, Kenny, Stephan, JohnV and George.







Chris, Eric, Dave, George, and Jeff Cochran took on the biggest job...digging deep to find the corner of the existing drain pipe so we could insert a T-coupler to which we'll tie in all the drain pipe we'll be adding outside the concrete wall.


The City asked us to put up some caution tape to keep the public aware that the courts are under construction for the next several weeks, and we found that it served another purpose as a make-shift net. Here are some pictures of us pretending to play a game in our work clothes after finishing all the digging. Names withheld to protect the innocent.

Bryan provided some photos of doubles game

Bryan and Gregg against Scott and George.

George soars...


Scott in action...



Bryan gots game...