Milestone Birthday Pickleball

St. Lucia

Earlier this month my husband joined me in crossing into a new decade of life. As I thought about how I would like to celebrate him on this occasion, I began to look at pickleball vacations. We have done several of these in the past, so I was looking for something that would be different from the other experiences. I came across one that was headed to St. Lucia, and I was immediately interested in it. At this point in our lives we are trying to go to destinations where we haven't traveled before, and St. Lucia fit the bill. The fact that it was being held at a Sandals with ten dedicated pickleball courts had me looking further into the details.

Elite Pickleball Retreats was offering three plus days of pickleball, with the instruction being done by three professional coaches. Their curriculum was combining skill training with drills, coached game play, film review, yoga, instruction on mastering your mindset, tips from a senior pro pickleball player, and game strategy. It was the most comprehensive pickleball training series that I have come across.

When I registered the two of us to attend, I made it clear that this was a surprise for my husband's birthday. I requested that all correspondence come only to me, and I was assured that would be the case. Jim only knew that he was going on a trip that would require his passport, and to pack for warm weather. I knew once we got to the airport he would see that we were going to St. Lucia, but he wouldn't know we were going to a Sandals or that a pickleball event was involved. Since I knew the resort had pickleball courts, I would have told him to pack his pickleball gear.

Well, a week before the event an email from the organizer went to Jim, and not to me. So much for my surprise! I guess he was surprised, just earlier than I anticipated. As it ends up, he has followed the YouTube channel of one of the coaches for several years, so he was excited to get to meet him in person.

When I booked the trip in January there was no shortage of TSA agents. Nor was there a war going on that involved the United States. So we weren't quite sure what to expect as we traveled outside the U.S. Our flight out was at 6:15 in the morning. We had an Uber pick us up at 4:00 and we were at the airport and through TSA by 4:25. Everything went smoothly at both the Charlotte airport as well as the one in Miami, where we had a connecting flight to St. Lucia. We were the only flight in at that time, so going through customs there was a breeze. We had a short wait in the Sandals lounge before taking their shuttle to the resort. Our shuttle contained only people who would be in our pickleball group, which was fun.

view from our room

There are actually three Sandals Resorts on St. Lucia, and we stayed at the Regency La Toc. It took a little over an hour to get from the airport to this resort. The roads were okay, but there was traffic to be dealt with by the driver. Once there, check in took a little longer than expected, but our room was ready. We were on the 7th floor of a seven story building, and had a wonderful ocean view. The room was huge, airy, and most importantly did not smell like mildew. The air conditioner worked very well.

The first night we all got together for a welcome dinner, and it was nice to get to know some of the participants before we began with the clinic the next morning. As it turned out, all of the other participants were from New Jersey, where the coaches have pickleball facilities. We were the only ones who learned of the retreat online. That was a little off-putting at first, but we were able to work around it. I would say most of the attendees were in their 30s-40s. There were maybe 3 couples in their 50s-60s, but Jim and I were definitely the only ones who were 70. But we didn't let that slow us down!

We learned a lot over three full days of the retreat. I tried to write down as many of the drills and tips that I could remember. But pickleball, like many things in life, is something that you have to do over and over again to commit it to your muscle memory. I hope I can put at least a few of the things I learned into practice.

I added two extra nights to our trip so that we would have some time to actually experience the resort. On Sunday we took a shuttle bus to one of the other Sandals resorts, the Grande. It is situated on a narrow strand of land that has the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, which makes it quite unique. We enjoyed being able to see what that resort has to offer.

Monday we stayed at our resort and finally were able to lounge by the pool and also walked the beach and stuck our feet into the ocean for the first time. It was chilly! We had dinner at the Italian restaurant, which is at the top of a hill and offers beautiful sunset views. It was a fantastic way to spend our last night on St. Lucia.

Tuesday morning we had breakfast before putting our luggage out at 9:00. We had to be out of our room by 10:00, and got the airport shuttle at 10:30. Getting through customs and security at the airport was easy, and our flight to Miami went off without a hitch. The Miami airport was quite busy, and there was no TSA pre-check lane due to the shortage of TSA agents right now. That ate up quite a bit of our 1 1/2 hour layover, but we had just enough time to grab a quick bite in the American lounge before boarding our flight back to Charlotte. We got back to our house around 11:30 p.m. It was another long day of travel, and a reminder to try and take vacations where we can get a direct flight out of Charlotte.

The vacation was great, and Jim was very appreciative of his "surprise" present, but it is really wonderful to be home!