Ginny Sher loves creating mosaic art, studying its history, and tracing it back to ancient times. Her attention to detail is an asset she tries to apply in whatever she pursues. She came across pickleball during the Covid pandemic and since then the 68-year-old has become a student of the game.
With her art, she chooses soft stones like sandstone and marble over more rigid materials, which would be difficult to shape when creating an art piece. She likes to cut into a type of glass from Italy called smalti that dates back to the 5th century Byzantine period of art. The uneven reflection inside the glass creates a shiny, irregular beauty and contrast next to the stones.
It is that same type of contrast she sought a year after she began playing pickleball. Her husband, who has played racquetball for years, was far ahead of her. She knew her game had weaknesses and rough edges and had to find a way to overcome them to become a higher level player.
“I finally decided, well, I’m going to take a lesson. Somebody at my club recommended a coach, and I signed up for a package. Her coach, Ivan and she, became very connected immediately. He helped me with my serve because that was the reason I initially hired him. But then he noticed all these other bad habits I had and how I was unaware of certain things. And so I started on this journey with him where I took a lesson from him every week for a year and continue to do so today,” she said.
She is still his student to this day. They have sliced her game apart and looked at it from every angle. He has encouraged her to overcome anxiety about tournament play, set goals, and build confidence. She is less nervous about tournament play, participating in 10 tournaments in 2022.
She obtained her first gold medal last year and a bronze in the national championships at Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Similar to her art, where the smalti opaque Italian glass enhances the other rocks when they lie next to them, her pickleball lessons have done the same for her game by taking her beyond basic skills.
“One of the reasons that I concluded that I want to be a student of the game is because my coach is a student of the game. He likens it to chess. There are skills you have to learn. The basic, fundamental skills. How do you get a dink? How do you serve? How do you create topspin, backspin, and all that stuff? Those are mechanics, and everybody has to learn those. And some skills take longer than others to master, but eventually, you hopefully get better over time. But to play the game at higher levels, you must use strategy. And that’s where the student of the game comes in, that if I hit this ball over there, what kind of ball is coming back to me? Will it be a dink, a drive, a lob? The strategies aren’t complex, but they are hard to master. Because especially at my level, I’m a 3.5 player. I’m constantly working to get better,” she said.
She watches pickleball, reads about it, drills often, and attends lessons. It was her work ethic that excited her coach to want to continue working with her.
She had a total knee replacement, but now her other knee is causing pain, and she suspects it is headed in that same direction. She works to avoid injuries; loves the community and friendships that surround the sport.
Her dedication to pickleball is time-consuming and has, for the most part, replaced the time she would work on mosaics. When she is sore or does need to escape the court, she turns to another passion, baking. Despite never attending an accredited pastry school, Sher has become quite accomplished and has many private customers.
“I did take an intensive 6 month baking course through a local cooking school where I live. When we lived in Los Angeles and before we moved here, I was a real estate broker for 35 years and I didn’t have the time to indulge that interest. I didn’t know much about baking, but I enjoyed it. So when I took the course here, I learned about bread making, cake decorating, making pies, pastries, croissants, laminated dough and all this stuff that I knew nothing about,” she said.
The school where they offered the course also had an attached small restaurant. Sher approached the owner when the course ended and told her she’d like to apply to make desserts for their special wine pairing events. She not only got that work, but the owner later expanded into other locations, and she became the pastry chef for 3 other restaurants.
Like pickleball and art, she studied, watched, and practiced and is now a freelance baker.
“I have about as much business as I want through word of mouth. And there are two favorite things I like to make. The first one is sculpted cakes, specialty cakes. Cakes that look like a Gucci handbag, cakes that look like your little pet cocker spaniel, or even a cheeseburger and fries, an especially popular cake for the guys. I’ve made a lot of desert themed cakes. I get requests for that because it’s a specialty skill that not many people have in my area,” she said. The other baking passion is to make French macarons, those finicky almond cookies that look so simple, but are actually quite challenging to get just right.
The artist, pastry creator, and pickleball player is happy. She is healthier and stronger because of the sport. She can’t imagine pickleball not being a part of her life and hopes to grow and improve, remaining a student of the game.
Photo provided by Ginny Sher.
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