Beyond the Blaze: How Pickleball Fuels Partnership for First Responders

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How does pickleball help firefighters manage stress, build teamwork, and improve relationships—both on and off the court? Find out in Part 2 of Brent Kelley’s inspiring story!

In this episode of Pickleball and Partnership, host Charlotte Jukes welcomes back Brent Kelley, a 17-year firefighter, who shares how pickleball became a lifeline for him and his fellow first responders while battling the intense Los Angeles wildfires.

🏓 What You’ll Learn:
✅ How pickleball supports mental health and stress relief for firefighters
✅ Why the sport’s low barrier to entry makes it accessible to anyone
✅ How first responders use pickleball to strengthen team connections
✅ The importance of performing under pressure—both in emergencies and on the court
✅ How couples can use pickleball to build stronger relationships

Whether you're a first responder, pickleball enthusiast, or looking to deepen your connections, this episode is packed with insights on teamwork, resilience, and the power of play.

Listen now and discover how pickleball is more than just a game—it’s a tool for connection, growth, and partnership!

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Music: Purple Planet Music
Thanks to Purple Planet Music for Pickleball & Partnership Intro and Outro music Purple Planet Music is a collection of music written and performed by Chris Martyn and Geoff Harvey.

Transcript

Charlotte Jukes: 0:10

This the pickleball and partnership podcast, the place to talk. Talk about building better connections with your partner. Learning how to communicate with each other and how to inject fun. Into your relationship all through the game of pickleball. If that sounds like your cup of tea. Pull up a chair grab your paddle and join me. Your host, Charlotte Jukes. For pickleball and partnership.

0:44

Hey pickleball partners. If you miss last week's episode, go back and listen because Brent Kelly's story is one you do not want to miss. A 17 year firefighter who spent 12 days battling the Los Angeles fires, Brent shared a raw unfiltered look into the life of a first responder. But here's the twist. How does pickleball fit into this intense world of firefighting? In part two, we're uncovering the surprising ways. Pickleball became a lifeline for Brent and his fellow firefighters. How does a simple paddle sport help first responders process trauma? Build team connection and stay mentally sharp. You'll hear about fire station parking lot, pickleball courts, why pickleball is now almost mandatory for firefighters and how this game is about so much more than just winning points. If you haven't listened to part one, no worries. Jump back and catch up or dive right into this episode. Trust me, this is a story you won't want to miss. Here we go.

Speaker 2: 1:55

One of the things that makes pickleball so cool is there's a very low barrier to entry. Like someone could show up who's never played pickleball in their life and within a few minutes they're playing pickleball and they're actually like contributing. You know what I mean? I played tennis in high school and I think I might've been the worst player on the team. Like I was not a good tennis player, but I did play tennis. And one thing that I found with tennis is if you don't hit the ball, like exactly right, if you don't have the tennis racket angle at the right angle, you will just launch it. Completely out of the court without even trying you don't have to hit the ball very hard where it's gone. So if you get a bunch of non tennis players together and try to play tennis, the chances of someone hitting the ball and it actually being in bounds, and then the opponents actually hitting the ball back to you, like slim to none chance. You know what I mean? So it's one of those things where if everyone tried to play tennis instead of pickleball, nobody would get a workout because they would just be like, I just, I can't play this game. You know what I mean? But pickleball is something where even if you have no experience, just the paddle and the wiffle ball nature of the pickle ball itself it really it lends itself to being able to play even if you've never played before. Which is really good in our job because a lot of times one guy or girl is not there. So there's an overtime person. So somebody shows up who doesn't normally work with us, and maybe they've played pickleball before, maybe they haven't. So because of the nature of pickleball and that low barrier to entry, you can get a complete novice and it's okay, no problem. We'll just go out, we'll just rally a little bit. We'll hit the ball back and forth so you get the feel of the racket, of the paddle, and then we'll play. So it's a small hindrance. It's easily overcome as opposed to, trying to play like ice hockey or something where it's if you've never ice skated, like you're not gonna be playing ice hockey on day one.

Speaker: 3:58

That's not going to work out well. That's a great point, isn't it? That yes, if you have a bat and that crazy little wiffle ball you can actually, feel like you have really got involved with the game if you've never played before. One of our favorites, if we are playing with somebody who's. Perhaps not quite at in the same level or, they've just picked up the battle, what have you, as the kitchen game. So, it's a smaller court anyway, but let's shrink it even more and let's just dink in the kitchen back and forth.

Speaker 3: 4:32

Yeah.

Speaker: 4:33

It's very easy for, I would say most people, if not, yeah, 99%. In fact, that's funny. I saw a video,'cause of course all these pickleball videos come up now when I'm looking. But there was actually somebody on the court was playing, he was playing with his wife, and his wife was the other side of the net in a wheelchair and they were dinking back and forth,

Speaker 2: 4:57

yeah, totally doable.

Speaker: 4:59

How would you say, if at all, pickleball has helped you to become more self-aware and how has it improved your ability to perform under pressure

Speaker 2: 5:12

that's a big one too in our job. One of the things that when people get into the fire service and they're not successful, so they either they don't pass the fire academy or during their first year as a firefighter you're on probation they call it. Which means that you're under a microscope for your first year and they can fire you at any time. It's actually it's a very stressful year and a half process.'cause you have a few months in the academy and then a year on probation where if you do not perform or if they feel like you are not performing, then they can just fire you at any moment. In fact, that happened to me in my first fire department that I worked for. I got let go in my 12th month of probation. So I was almost done. And they were just like, we're firing you, They don't even have to have a reason. They can just be like, we don't think that you belong here. We don't think that you can do the job. We don't think that you can perform under pressure, like you said. And I think that is one of the biggest challenges for people getting into the fire service is you have to find a way to be able to perform under pressure. So even if it's a simple task you have to be able to do it with, these guys watching you, waiting for you to make a mistake. And if you do, just knowing that they can fire you, so that, that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on you, and it really is difficult. I can remember in the academy, they had a Ropes and Knots section, which you'd think that would be the mellow part because you're not physically, you're just tying knots with rope, but they make you wear these big, clunky gloves and it's hard to, it's hard to tie these knots, but what makes it really hard is they would time you and each particular knot had a certain amount of time. So if you're tying a figure eight on a bite or a fire department bowling, or a clove hitch or whatever, like each of these knots had a certain amount of time where maybe you get 30 seconds, maybe you get 15 seconds, maybe you get a minute. But if you go over the time, they would give you one chance to do it again. But if you failed again, you would literally, you would lose your job. A knot.

Speaker: 7:21

Wow.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Yeah. So it's the knot itself, maybe you've tied it a hundred times, a thousand times, but on that day, when it's test day and you have a group of people watching you with a stopwatch and you know that they have the power to fire you. And if you get all up in your head and you're like, oh, no, I hope I don't make'em. Oh, I hope I, oh man, I made a mistake. That could be it. You could lose your job. There are people who have been fired because of a knot, which is horrible. Just because considering how long it takes you to get hired in the fires, at least here in Southern California, it's a very popular job. So even just getting hired is really hard because if they're gonna put an Academy of 30 people through, like 2000 people will interview for it. And if you are one of the ones selected, it is really something to be celebrated. But that's actually that's not the hard part. What's hard is keeping it once you get it, because you have to go through, that's

Speaker: 8:22

acceptable pressure.

Speaker 2: 8:23

It's insane. I have never felt the amount of pressure that I have in the fire service and even not to relate, special forces military to the fire service. I'm sure that it is way harder to be in the special forces of the military. But I was talking to someone who had been in special forces in the Navy and he was with the SEAL teams and so I was talking to him and I was just like, gosh, this must be just, a cakewalk for you being a firefighter after what you've gone through.'cause he was brand new, so he had just gone through the academy and he just finished probation. So I was like, yeah I can remember being really stressed out. In the academy and on probation. But you must not have been stressed out at all because you've already done this thing, which is way harder. And he was just, his response, I'll never forget it, he was just like, believe it or not, it actually was really difficult, but in a different way. Because in the military, for the most part, you don't have that constant pressure of getting kicked out in the military, it's almost the opposite. It's like you can't get out, if you fail this, then we'll find a place for you somewhere else, but you're not leaving. You're not going home. But with us it's that constant threat of getting kicked out. So that's one thing that he shared with me that I really took to heart because, and also he said that when he was in the military, he was single, so it was just like it. He just had to worry about himself. But he said in the fire academy and probation, now he has a wife and multiple kids. So he can't blow this because if he does, what's he gonna do? So there was a pressure, a different kind of pressure and a lot of it boils down to the pressure to be able to perform un under pressure, like you were saying. So, yeah, I think that, going back to your original question of does pickleball help? Yeah, I think it does because there are a lot of times when you're on the pickle ball court, and if it's a high stakes game hey, we've already played, this is the seventh game and it's tied. So whoever gets this next point is gonna win the whole thing. And the ball's coming to you. It's okay, now this is my time to perform under pressure. And a lot of times it's not that big a deal'cause you're playing with just mellow people who don't care. But in the fire service there's a lot of, there alpha, there mentalities, there's a lot of type A people who. Just thrive on winning. Maybe they were the captain of their football team 20 years ago, and now they're taking that same championship mentality to the pickleball court at the fire station. And if that guy is your partner and the ball's coming to you and if you blow it, you lose, like maybe you don't really care that much, but you definitely feel the pressure.'cause it's I do not want this guy to be mad and he's gonna be pretty mad if I hit the ball into the net right now. So really, he's

Speaker: 11:22

not gonna let you forget that, is he?

Speaker 2: 11:24

Yeah. I've definitely played with those types of personalities before

Speaker: 11:29

how do you find the best way to handle that situation?

Speaker 2: 11:34

I think that just doing whatever you can do to just stay present and just be in the moment and not think, just try to get back to that flow state because when you think too much, you're gonna hit the ball into the net. It's I can remember getting my motorcycle license years ago, and I remember I was in the classroom and it was like, okay, if you're on the motorcycle and you're coming around a turn and you see a big rock in the road and you don't wanna hit the rock, don't focus on the rock.'cause if you are gonna go wherever you're focusing on. So if you focus on not hitting the rock, you're gonna ride right into the rock. So what you do is you see the rock, you acknowledge that it's there, and then you focus on where you wanna go and that's where you're gonna go. So in the same way, if the ball's coming at you and you're just like. Do not hit it into the net. Do not hit it into, this guy's gonna be really mad at me. If I hit it into the net, you're gonna hit it into the net. So whatever you can do to just let go of thinking, just get beyond that analytical mind of trying to process everything and think, and just let go and just play and just be in that present moment. Then you're gonna hit the ball over the net, hopefully.

Speaker: 12:49

What an amazing analogy for life as well, right? Yes. What an amazing mindset to have for life. And I think, this is another reason I love pickleball so much, is because you can equate so many situations on the court. Like in that moment, get out of your head, get into your body, let it flow. Don't focus on the awful thing that you're anticipating is going to happen. You're right where your focus goes, your energy flows. So focus on getting it over the net and into a space where your opponents aren't. And then yes and then sort of transcribing that into life as well. What an amazing lesson for us to all hang onto every day, yeah. Totally. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, that's amazing. So what advice would you give to couples because you play, it sounds like, you probably play with lots of different partners and I don't know if your wife Ashley plays and if you ever play with her, but what advice would you give to couples or partners looking to use pickleball as a way to strengthen their relationship?

Speaker 2: 14:07

So Ashley, I think she has played she doesn't play very much, but right now we have two daughters. They're seven and four years old, and we got them some pickleball stuff for Christmas.

Speaker 4: 14:17

Oh, love it. So

Speaker 2: 14:18

we now have four paddles and a few balls. So, we might start playing one of these days, like as a family. I would say the biggest advice would be just make it fun. Basically don't be that guy who's just what are you doing? You have to hit it over the net, not into the net, make it a good time. That's one thing I've found, especially with kids. You have to make things fun or else they're not gonna want to do it, so just have fun with it and yeah, I think o only good things can come of it for sure.

Speaker: 14:46

Tell my husband that one all the time. Don't be that guy.

Speaker 2: 14:51

It's hard, especially if you're predisposed to that. Because that is a personality type where it's hey, we're gonna win. And there, there's a benefit to that. You see people who win championships and they usually have that type of I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but personality types like me, I don't know if they're the ones who, win the World Series.'cause I'm more just ah, maybe we win, maybe we won't. It's all good. No problem. I don't know if you can have that mentality and go win a gold medal in the Olympics. But I think that. For the most part, like if you can just be mellow about it and hey, we're just having a good time, no big deal. You hit the ball into the net as many times as you want. It's okay.

Speaker: 15:32

Oh, okay. I want to come and play with you now. And I'm curious, do you play outside of the fire service as well? Have you found that pickleball has translated into your life outside of that, or not really?

Speaker 2: 15:47

Not too much, to be honest. Really it's just hitting the ball around with the kids, but no, I think I get enough of it at work to where, there's almost too much of it at work. If that. Possible. I know that sounds crazy'cause we're not supposed to be playing pickleball. We're, we're getting paid to do a job. But the reality is there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot of time where we don't have downtime and there's a lot of crazy things that happen. Our job is less like a marathon and more like a CrossFit workout. Are you familiar with CrossFit? Just like intense circuit training, so that's how,'cause my wife and I talk about this all the time, like being a mom for little kids is just a relentless never ending, slow burn of, at no point are you ever doing something for the most part, like super crazy. But it is like a 16 hour day where then you get to sleep and then it starts all over again, and there's very few breaks. Whereas our job is. Not like that at all. Our job is we might have five hours where we don't even have a call. We might have eight hours without a call where you're just, there are points where I'm just like, I forgot I was at work. The tones go off and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I'm a firefighter and I'm at, I'm on duty right now. I have to go respond to, I forgot'cause I've been just doing my own thing. But then maybe you go to just the craziest thing you've ever seen. So it's more like a CrossFit workout where it's 20 minutes of really intense stuff followed by a. Taking a really long break as opposed to a marathon where you're just like, just sort of running. At no point are you ever doing a super crazy, sprint, but you're running the entire time and there's no break.

Speaker 4: 17:34

So,

Speaker 2: 17:34

yeah. I think that our job is like that. So getting back to what you said there's enough downtime on a given 48 hour shift to where you can get all the pickleball you want outta your system. So for me at least, like it's I don't really play outside of work. Like it, honestly, you almost have to be careful where you work these days because if you don't want to play a lot of pickleball, there are certain stations where you probably shouldn't go there.

Speaker: 18:01

Oh, interesting. Because they play so much, they're so intense and addicted to pickleball that it has any downtime. That's what you're doing. Totally. They

Speaker 2: 18:13

exact And it's never been a thing before, but,'cause we can choose where we work. Like I work in Los Alamitos right now, but I could change stations if I wanted to. It's a bid system where a few times a year it's up for grabs and any station that's open for my position, which is I'm the engineer, so I drive the engine. If there is an engineer position open at another station, I can put a bid in for it. And as long as I have the seniority, if I have the highest seniority out of everyone else that did it, I'm gonna get it. And that will be my new home for at least a year. And then however long beyond that I want. But, so there's a lot of things to consider. When you're thinking of changing stations, like you wanna consider the call volume. Like, all right, is this a really busy station or is this a slow station? And there are benefits to both, do I want to be busy?'cause that helps the day go by fast. And I also get a lot of experience, but I'm also waking up a lot at night. You don't get a lot of sleep. It's really di it's physically taxing. So there are stations you can go to that, typically don't run as many calls. So you have to make that decision. And then one of the biggest things is what's the crew? Who are the people that I'm gonna be working with? Do I know these people? Are they my friends? Do I get along with them? And then there's a whole bunch of like, how far away from my house is this station? Am I gonna be driving? What am I doing to my commute in the morning? But one of the things that you have to consider is how into pickleball are these people because. If you show up and you're planning on maybe I'm starting a podcast, and it's okay, I'm gonna try to do all the work for starting my podcast while I'm on duty. If I can, obviously I have to go run the calls and we have to train, we have to do inspections, we have to do all the things that come with the job. But when you have a 48 hour shift, you're just gonna have downtime. It just you can't work for 48 hours straight. So if you show up and you're like, okay, I'm gonna plan out my podcast. I'm gonna do all that at work. And then you show up to your new station and they're like, we're so glad you're here. All we do is play pickleball and you're the fourth guy. It's oh my gosh. There went all my free time. Because any time where we're not running calls or training or doing whatever we have to do, we're playing pickleball. And it could be the opposite too. If you are just an avid pickleball addict and you show up to a station where they do not play pickleball, you're bummed because now you're out there just hitting the ball against the wall by yourself, That. Am I going to a station where we go work out in the gym and then every day for 20 minutes we play a couple games of pickleball? Is, if that's the amount of pickleball you're going for, then choose your station accordingly. But if you wanna play eight hours of pickleball a day, or if you don't wanna play pickleball at all, like you, you have to think about it.

Speaker: 21:01

Giving back to your question, become one of the criteria then for picking where you work. That's incredible. That's fascinating to me.

Speaker 2: 21:10

Yeah and I don't know if there are Canadian firefighters out there who are listening to this right now. Maybe they're saying like, I don't know what you're talking about, man. We're not even allowed to play a pickleball. That might be the case. But in our department, for whatever reason, this is another benefit of pickleball is management has not squashed it like they are allowing us to play pickle ball. This is like the first team sport where they're actually allowing people to play because all those other sports like basketball and soccer, too many people were getting hurt.'cause you, again, the type A personality, you get a bunch of 40-year-old type A guys who 25 years ago were just. Like the captain of their team and they're used to just going hard and winning. You get a bunch of those people out on a basketball court and now maybe they don't work out as much. They're not in like tip top physical shape and they try to just go hard with this sport. If you're management, you're just like, how do we have 200 people on work comp because of a sprained ankle? Right now it's be, it's'cause everyone's playing basketball. Okay, guess what? No more basketball. So they shut it down entirely. So that's what was happening to all the team sports, they just kept getting shut down because people were hurting themselves. That pickleball is the one thing where people, it, it's just more of a gentle game. Like you're not as predisposed to getting hurt playing pickleball. So because of that, management has allowed, our department has allowed us to play. So that's another benefit of pickleball is you're actually allowed to play. But I don't know, maybe there's listeners who are just like, we don't play pickleball. What do you, what kind of program are you guys doing in Southern California playing pickleball? They're

Speaker: 22:55

all going to want to move there, aren't they? The pickleball addicts, that's for sure. Yes. And that's interesting. I don't know if that's the same up here in Canada or if it's the same in the UK or, anywhere around the world. That's something I would have to Look into. And maybe I'll contact our local fire station, see what their take is on it. But and I would imagine, your climate is very different from ours. We're a lot further north. Yeah. It would be a lot more challenging because we have so much snow and ice on the ground for so many months, I would imagine. Yeah. Being in Southern California, you can probably play outside every day.

Speaker 2: 23:39

Yeah there's two weeks outta the year where it's like a little bit cold and raining. For the most part it's almost like summer here all year round. It just gets a little colder in winter. But yeah, you can, my wife always laughs what do you mean winter? This is not winter.'cause she's from Alabama, like northern Alabama and so she's used to like actual seasons and I'm like, yeah, of course we have seasons. Like it's winter now. It's a little, it's 10 degrees colder. It rains a few times and it's 50 degrees instead of 65 degrees. That's funny.

Speaker: 24:09

So Brent what advice would you give to anybody who has never picked up a pickleball paddle and they're thinking about it and they're just not sure whether it's for them or not. What would you say to them? Yeah,

Speaker 2: 24:21

I would give it a try because it's not a it's not a massive investment of time or money. Like I mentioned, we just got our kids some pickleball stuff. For Christmas, it was 20 bucks. On Amazon, I bought a pack of, it was four paddles and like two balls, and it was like$19. So it's really not much money. You don't even need a net. Just get a few paddles, get a couple balls, and just get out there on your driveway or some flat piece of concrete and just hit the ball back and forth and just see if you like it or not, and then from there, maybe you can get a net or maybe like a local rec center near, near you guys or, there maybe there's some type of place where you can go and actually play, but it really doesn't take much. As opposed to, like I mentioned like ice hockey earlier. Like I used to play ice hockey in high school too. And my goodness. What an investment of money to begin with. Just the gear, the amount of gear that you need to play and then you have to go learn how to ice skate. Which is not easy. That just gets you ready to learn how to play the game. And in order to play ice hockey, at least in Southern California, it is prohibitively expensive'cause you're paying for ice time in a desert community, a desert climate, like ice time is not very prevalent. It's not like up in Canada, I assume, where you can in the winter go out and it's probably not very hard to find a piece of ice to play ice hockey on. But in California it's very hard. So you're paying a lot of money to play, but pickleball is not that at all. Again, low barrier to entry on every level, It's something that you can pick up in an afternoon and be playing. And for$20 on Amazon, you can outfit your entire family with gear. And then just decide from there is this something we wanna play or not? So for 20 bucks and a little bit of time, I would say just give it a try. If you don't like it, then no big deal at all. Exactly.

Speaker: 26:21

Yeah. Yeah. But go and give it a go. You never know. It looks crazy. It sounds even more crazy when all you can hear is that pop. And then laughter. But yeah, go and give it a go. Yeah. I have one more question for you. Yeah. It's been so great chatting with you, but just curious if there was a future episode of Pickleball and Partnership podcast, what would you like to see it about?

Speaker 3: 26:48

Oh man, that's a good

Speaker 2: 26:50

question. I'm really fascinated with the approach that you've taken playing with your husband and then. Relating it to your marriage and having it actually strengthen your marriage. I think there's a lot there that I didn't really even think about that. I was more thinking like, okay, the benefits of firefighters playing pickleball together, but like a couple who are trying to strengthen their relationship, like taking the experiences from pickleball and talking about that and how it strengthens your relationship. I think that's something that everybody could really benefit from. I think that's really cool. So I would love to learn more about that.

Speaker: 27:28

Thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. We've sort of touched on that in, in previous episodes. It's challenging for me to get Neil to jump on with me, so I've done some single episodes too, but I think we've learned so much from playing together. And I think, I have a friend, actually she and her husband just took it up because they heard a couple of our episodes and thought, okay, we are going to get off the couch and we are going to go and play. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that is amazing. And I think, that's what I love about pickleball. Like you say, it's so easy, it's so cheap. It's go buy Yeah. A 10$20 pad or go out there and try it,

Speaker 3: 28:13

yeah.

Speaker: 28:13

I did look up, actually I just had a quick look'cause I wanted to see where Los Alamitos was, and I noticed that you have an open house?

Speaker 3: 28:24

We do have open h

Speaker: 28:25

Yes. Participate in junior firefighter activities, watch live demos, ride in a fire engine and more.

Speaker 2: 28:35

Yeah, they do. So our department, every year, they have an open house and usually what they do is I think there's a big to-do over at our headquarters, which is in Irvine. And that's probably where like the junior firefighter stuff and all those things happen, I think. And then some stations will have an open house. So you can go to your local station if you're in Orange County and chances are they're having the open house. And if not, like you just, you can always just knock on the door of a fire station and unless they're on a call or training or something there's probably someone there so just head down there and then you can go in and you can see the fire engine and you can talk to the people and it. It's really a cool thing because our job, a lot of people don't know much about it. Like they think, what time is your break? And it's I don't know if you understand, like there's no break. Like we do have downtime, but at no point am I gonna be leaving on like a clock out lunch break type of thing. This is just not that type of job. So the cool thing about an open house is you can go and you can see the engine, you can see the living area, you can see the kitchen. It's Hey, look at this. Like we, we cook together. We're like a family that's like a second family, and you can really expose yourself to that. And it's an education tool for us to just be like, all right, yeah, this is not a normal job. If you see us cooking and you say to yourself like, oh, that's so cool that you get to cook at your job. It's no, this is a different type of job. We don't work eight hours and then go home. Like we work 48 hours, sometimes 96 hours, sometimes 120 hours. So it's a totally different type of job. And the open house is really a good tool for exposing people to that. So definitely go down. Or just go down any day and just knock on the door and just be like, Hey, I just wanna say hi, firefighters are friendly, they're friendly people.

Speaker: 30:31

Super friendly. I, would contest to that. Oh, they are absolutely. I know, our son is 21 now, but he was little and we took him to the fire station and it was such a cool experience.

Speaker 2: 30:44

And if you wanna win them over, just show up with a little thing of ice cream. Okay. Just be like, Hey, I was wondering if I could just check out the fire engine. I've got my son here. he just wants to see the engine. I brought you guys some ice cream.

Speaker: 30:57

Thank you so much Brent. It was absolute pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 2: 31:02

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. Like I said, this is my first podcast, so I am really stoked to be a part of it. Thank you.

Speaker: 31:10

Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Anything mentioned, including links, notes, and a full episode list, will be over on our website at pickleballandpartnership. buzzsprout. com. Com. If you got something outta this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe to Pickleball and Partnership on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so that you are notified of new and upcoming episodes. And if you're finding value in this podcast, a free way to support us is to leave a five. It truly means the world to us. This will help more people access these real conversations. And if you haven't connected with myself or Neil personally, we would love to meet you and say hi over on our Facebook page. Thanks again for listening. Please tune in next week for another exciting episode of Pickleball and partnership. Remember, we're all learning, growing, and showing up in our own ways. And that's what matters most.