Welcome & Book Announcement

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Shelly Mauer. And I'm Cher Emmerich. Welcome to Life Lessons from Pickleball, where we engage with pickleball players from around the world about life on and off the court.

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Thanks for joining us.

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Before we get started, we have something really exciting to share. Our book, Life Lessons from Pickleball, is now available on Amazon, and a portion of every sale is donated to Operation PaddleLift. Your purchase helps deliver paddles, nets, and resources to underserved communities around the world. Thank you for being a part of Growing the Game We All Love. Now let's jump into today's

Introducing Thomas Yellow Eyes

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episode. Welcome everyone to Life Lessons from Pickleball. Today's guest brings a story of resilience, reinvention, and rediscovered purpose that we know is going to resonate deeply with each of you and our entire community. We're honored to welcome Thomas Yellow Eyes, founder and head coach of Night Train Pickleball.

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Thomas, you are an IPTPA and PPR certified coach who has led more than 250 clinics across the country. You've built the Night Train Method, a five-tier coaching system designed to transform everyday rec players into confident, resilient, and tournament-ready competitors. Wow. Wow.

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But you know what stands out to us most isn't necessarily the system as much as it's your belief that coaching isn't just about mechanics and we love this. It's about helping people build confidence, resilience, and identity on and off the court.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Thomas, before we talk about the night train and the coaching philosophy behind it, we'd love to start with you. We know you have quite a life story to tell. Tell us what was happening in your life when you were introduced to Pickleball?

Childhood Trauma And Foster Care

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Wow, what a great question. Um to put it the best way, it was one of the many rock bottom moments that I've I've had as an adult. Um just really trying to, I think, just find my place in this world. You know, I grew up um from the age of three. I grew up in the foster care system with my three other siblings. And um, you know, we we'd come from a pretty traumatic uh experience. You know, my sister was two, and my my brother was newborn and had a half-brother that was a couple years older than I was. So from five down, it was actually my sister had twin that were twins. Um but so by the age of three, we had experienced uh some loss. It was it was pretty traumatic. And and so we were thrown into this world because my mom, she was taken away, and my dad uh he just kind of disappeared. And so next thing you know, we're in this just around all these adults telling us how we're gonna, what we're gonna do, when we're gonna do it, you know, living out of, you know, kind of take your trash bag and you put all your clothes in and you move to the next place into the next place. And you know, we're just trying to figure out what like, you know, and then on top of that, you have people you have adults saying, Well, I'm gonna be the person in charge, and then a month later it's another person. Well, I'm not going anywhere, I'm gonna be the next person. And and it was just like, you know, it was it was craziness. And so um it's not a far reach to say that when I became an adult, that I had a few things to work through, and I had a few uh some lessons that I was gonna have to learn the hard way. And and you know, whether it was because I was stubborn or just because I hadn't learned them,

Injuries, Burnout, And Hitting Bottom

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I I had to learn them. And and uh when I found pickleball, I was so I was essentially living out of my car. And um I had just so I had played Ultimate Frisbee for 15 years, and 13 of those years I had played like high level. And during that time, I had started my own fitness business um as a corrective exercise coach. So I was in the personal training world, but as a corrective exercise coach, and I think that that plays a lot to what how my success today, but I was really good at breaking down the mechanics of players or of my my clients and and being able to find movement patterns that were not working and then putting a program together to help them. So I was doing that, and then I was playing Ultimate Frisbee. I was competing for 13 years at the highest level, and then um I started coaching and actually really enjoyed the coaching and had a lot of success coaching a couple teams. Um, one taking them from like 288th in the country when there's only 288 teams to 75th in the country over a couple of seasons, and you know, and and uh winning, going to regionals and team hadn't been to regionals in years, and so we've gone to regionals, and but that cost me the price I I was willing to pay, I was paying it. And it cost me uh personally and professionally to to do those things, and so you know, choices I made. And I I was lit, I was, you know, closed down the fitness business. I had to retire from uh ultimate frisbee. I'd broken my ankle twice in the same year and between all the other injuries I was having. I had already actually just played past my prime anyway, so it was time. It was time for me to either go full-time coaching, but the thing about Ultimate Frisbee at the time is coaches don't get paid. So that wasn't really a viable um, you know, thing to do. So I was kind of just, what do I do? What am I, you know, what do I what do I do? So I'm living in my car and there's a I wanted to move to Redding, California. There was a community I wanted to be a part of there, a big church community, and and it just needed some time. So I I was reaching out, I found a room to to um rent. Well, I was reaching out, I was trying to find this room, and I actually had moved to Missouri and I was there for like two weeks.

Stumbling Onto Pickleball Community

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And then the guy called me and said, Hey, I have this room. So I'm driving cross-country from Missouri to Redding, California to uh take this room. And and essentially for a year, I just, you know, I was a volunteer. I was just trying to take a sabbatical from life, if you will, trying to figure out what do I do next? You know, is life done with me? What where do I go? What do I do? I was not looking for any more competition. I wasn't looking for anything in fitness, I wasn't looking for any more comp, you know, any more sports. Like I just gotta figure this out. So I'm volunteering at the local mission and I'm volunteering at the church and just trying to help people. And one day I walk out into Enterprise Park. We live right next to a park and could walk right out in the park. And if you know me, you know I drink copious amounts of coffee, just my thing. And so I had this big mug of coffee, and I'm walking out, and I thought I look over and I said, Man, I think they're playing tennis. And I walk over there and I'm and it's kind of in a skating, outdoor skate, uh like hockey, uh-you know, enclosed. But they have four courts there, and I'm I'm looking in and I go, What are they doing? So I open the door and I walk in, and you know, I know nothing about pickleball players and even know what this was, but the only thing I could tell you was they all had a smile on their face. And I'm like, okay, this is pretty cool. So I walk in, and as you know, they're very social, and I just kind of wanted to be left alone. I kind of just wanted to stand there and no, no, grab a paddle, come play. I'm like, don't want anything to do with this. I'm just here to spectate. Um, and it and I stood there, maybe 45 minutes. I was standing there drinking coffee, just totally lost in the moment, just watching all these people have fun, not any urge to play. And uh I had stood there too long because there was one court where there were three players hitting the ball, and they were saying just loud enough, if we don't get a fourth, we gotta go home. No. So I took, I went over where the paddles were and I sat my my mug down and I grabbed this paddle and I said to myself, if this ever doesn't become fun, like it quits being fun, I am so done. I put this paddle down, I walk away. You know, I was totally expecting to do that the first time anyway. And so I did, and then they gave me this crash course of five minutes of how to play, and I'm like, okay, so just hit the ball. Basically, just hit the ball. And then I know I'm supposed to run to the line, but that seems like a lot of work, so I'm just gonna hit the ball. And we won 11 to 1 the first game. And it was like, wow, this is so they will you want to play again? Because they knew they had me hooked, and I'm like, Well, yeah, I won the first one, you gotta play again. And two hours later, I'm like, where has this been my whole life? And it wasn't even about like the sport,

Finding Belonging And Support

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right? It was about these people because there were, you know, I started playing, and then if I didn't make it and I came back like the next week, they were all asking, you know, if everything was okay and if I was all right, and they missed me. You know, it was a bunch of older ladies, so they kind of started mothering me when they realized I was just the single guy that you know was living in a room, and and they were all just, you know, and they would bring me like muffins and you know, different things, like and coffee, uh bags of coffee. It was it was awesome, and I was like, this is this is kind of what I needed, right? This is yes, this community. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

What occurs to me is you kind of got the mothering with this first group of pickleball players that you had been missing so much of your life, and they were just kind of taking you in like their son, and they're bringing you these muffins and saying, How are you? and we missed you. And oh, that's really very touching. And that pickleball was that link to this new experience for you. Oh, that's very sweet, very sweet. So sweet.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Oh my gosh. I know. I just I first I just want to say, you know, your story is just so touched my heart. And I just sending so much love to your you as a child and you now. I mean, it's just we've got to get a Kleenex. Yeah. Um and I'm so happy you found Pickleball.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, thank you. I I am too. So my uh I and I was writing something about it today.

Processing Loss And Healing

SPEAKER_00 11:11

My foster mother, she passed away in October last year. And I've kind of been sitting on it because I I like to be busy, which also sometimes means you don't process things right away. And I and I'm not a I was for a long time was not a good processor. Like you, that's just the best way to avoid having to deal with all of the trauma from the past. But I've in the last like nine years, I've really owned that. I've really stepped into some healing and going through the process of of walking this out. And so part of it was I've spent so many years being angry with my foster parents. And you know, the last nine years, uh, I've slowly been able to start seeing things from a different perspective. And, you know, and the the one with my the one with my mom has been hard because she's my mom. But I would say majority of the time we didn't see it eye to eye. And you know, we didn't get treated like the other kids. And I was angry about all that for years, and I realized, you know, now, like, how can you treat us the same? Because, you know, it it first of all, you had no idea what you're walking into. Like, you don't know what you were saying yes to. They just said these people these kids have been through a lot. We just don't know how much. And they said yes anyway. And my mom said, you know, I'm still gonna be a mom to these four. And and I realize now she did the best she could. But you know, I I would just came out angry and I was angry at her about it. And I realized though, you know, she may not have look like she cared a lot on the outside, but I bet she was rooting so hard for me on the inside. Yeah. And you know, I never said it enough. In fact, I did I didn't say it probably once or twice is that you know, that I loved her.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

The the work that you've done over these nine years, then, of finding this new perspective, which is what changes our lives, isn't it? Finding that new perspective and being able to see things from the other person's point of view. But I can so appreciate that you having gone through so much loss and wanting so much to belong in the same way as the other kids be seemed to belong. I can so appreciate that anger that would be in anyone that I can imagine having that experience.

Becoming A Healer Not A Wounder

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And so often we who are wounded become the wounders in our lives. And you became the healer, the the walking wounded healer, and you turned it around. So in in all the work that you've been doing, and even in your coaching with the ultimate Frisbee and all that, you've you found ways to not be the wounder, which would have been so understandable, but so admiring that you didn't do that, you know, that uh foster care is something I think our country just has never really understood or valued in the way it needs to be valued, that childhood is priceless and needs to be valued by everyone, you know, the entire community. So I so appreciate you sharing your story. And I know that there are thousands and thousands of children, and some families do know what they're saying yes to, and they can manage it well, and many want to, but they're not equipped and they don't have the support. So, Thomas, uh, heart goes out to you and really feel great gratitude that you have found a way to be a healer and to bring that love and joy through your night train. Can tell

The Birth Of Night Train Pickleball

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us about tell us about night train, how that came about and what it is.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

So night train pickleball is so when I when I moved to Reading and I was there for a year, um, so it I was I played pickleball in January and then in October I taught my first clinic completely by accident. Um, but I had met my wife on eHarmony of all places. Oh in in Oregon. So I had come up to Oregon for a long weekend, and um and we had a long weekend, and I stayed with her parents, and and uh you know, we just knew like this was it. And within 30 days of meeting, we were married, and that was almost eight years ago.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

And oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

That's a great reason why I'm where I am today, just because she's I don't know. I I would have never guessed uh a young lady like her, as you know, sweet and as quiet as she is, was also the strength that was needed to to help me walk this, you know, walk this out. But I I moved up here and um I was looking for people to drill with because I was like, I'm trying to get better. And I'd been playing at this club and and uh there was a I was always the first one there and I was the last one to leave. And during the time I was trying to go on interviews and figure out what I was gonna do, because you know, I've got this beautiful wife now, and I gotta, you know, step up and do my part. And and uh so I asked them, I had found this indoor place to drill, and I had asked them if they wanted to come join me. And so they did. They uh this the one lady did, and I said, So if you have any friends that want to come, bring them, we're gonna drill. And so that she showed up with six other people, and I'm like, okay, great. I got these two course, this is a drill we're gonna do. And they go, Thomas, we have no idea how to do that drill. And so, okay, here's an easier drill. We can do that. And they go, Thomas, we don't even know how to play. Just teach us how to play. I said, Okay, today I will teach you. But then Thursday we're drilling, and so I taught them, and then when we got done, they said, Oh, by the way, we're not letting you teach us for free. Here's some money. And I was like, What is happening here? I said, Okay, we're gonna do this again Thursday. We're drilling though. If you have any friends, bring them. We'll all drill together and get better. And they said, Great, we'll do it. So Thursday came along. I'm getting the course all set up, I'm ready to go, got the drills all planned out, and 15 players walk in the door. And I thought, man, that's a lot of people for two courts. I guess we're gonna figure this out. And they said, Oh, Thomas, we're not here to drill. We want you to teach us. We heard from the other six how good you were, so we want you to teach us. And I said, Are you kidding me? And they said, No. And so I taught them, and they said, Oh, by the way, you're not teaching us for free. Here's some money. And I'm like, so like this went on for like two weeks, and I finally was like looking at my wife one day. I said, Is this really happening? And she goes, I think it's really happening. And I said, I guess I better organize this thing or or do something. And the lady that was at the club that I was was at, um, she heard they they had a church and they had three pickleball courts indoor and they had been trying to run this pickleball program that hadn't been going as well. She goes, You need to come here and teach three days a week. You teach clinics. And so I'm like, Are you kidding? She goes, No, me for next week. We'll Monday, Wednesday,

Accidental Clinics And Early Growth

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Friday, we'll teach. You'll teach for the first hour, hour and a half, and then we'll play after that. And so at first I I couldn't like I couldn't charge because of the the church. They just like I was donating my time. So I did like majority of those 200 clinics, you know, for free. But I didn't because nobody knew who I was, and I'm trying to build credibility, and I'm also trying to get certified during that time. And um, so three days a week, and I had like 20 people showing up, 25 people showing up. We had to finally cap it at like 25, I think, or 24. And and people were like, if you don't get in here, you can't come till Wednesday. And I'm teaching all these people, and I, you know, and and that's how so when we were getting organized, um I well, when I first came up and played, my my future father-in-law at the time said, when he saw me play and I finished up, he said, You're like the night train of pickleball. I was like, Who in the world is night train? And what does that have to do with pickleball? And you know, and he's so, but apparently he's a big NFL fan. And there's this guy in the 70s named Richard Lane. Um, yeah, Richard, yeah, Richard Lane. Um, and his nickname was Night Train, and he was a great defensive back. I think he's in the Hall of Fame or something, and so I'm like, oh, so this is a big compliment. Like, you're complimenting me, you know. I'm not a big NFL fan, like apparently I'm really good. I wasn't, but to him, I was I was good, and I'm like, okay. So when I was going to come up with a name for the the the business, um, I was gonna go with dark horse pickleball because my whole life, like I was the dark horse, like nobody saw me coming, but it sports is what kind of saved my life, yeah. And so I was always the one on the all-star team, always like the starter and like the guy you never expected, but here I am. And so I was gonna do dark horse pickleball, and then my wife was like, Well, you better go ahead and try night train too and see what people think. And when it came back, everybody wanted night train pickleball. So that's that's what it became. And you know, that's what we are today.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

When you were coming up with the night train method, what problem were you trying to solve? Or what what were you trying to accomplish? What were your initial thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 21:45

There there's a huge issue with uh self rating in the game of pickleball. And it's not even like I'm I'm really focused on the person who's self rated themselves too high. Like I think that's a bigger problem than pickleball. What I think is the problem is a lot of players don't realize where they really are. And I think I've had

Naming Night Train And Identity

SPEAKER_00 22:05

more people, more students come to me asking me, where should I be? Instead of, hey, I think I'm just I'm winning all my games. I think I'm just gonna put myself here. Um, and so I did. I I I got also rating certified. But um one of the things I was really good at in fitness, and I think I like I trained, I got trained this way, and I realized later nobody gets trained this way. So the the my mentor I had was just over the top, amazing, uh, teaching me, even though at the time I just like, man, you're really killing me with all this stuff. I had to analyze people from the time they walked from the door to the to the desk to check in, to work out. I had to analyze their movement and say, this is what all the pattern movements are. These are all the muscle deviations. And then once I started getting those right, then I had to go and here's all the underactive muscles that are not working because of those muscle pattern movements. And then I had to start writing out how I would release all those muscles all the way to this is the full program I wrote for this person from start to finish. Here's the program. And then you go, great. Now go up there and tell that guy you have his program and you go sell his sessions. And I ended up becoming one of the top sales or the top sales trainer at the time. But that's how you taught me. So one of the things I learned in all this was first, I thought I was always going to be this high performance coach that was going to work with like the NFL players and stuff. And really, what I ended up being was a corrective exercise coach because I loved the movement patterns. I loved how the muscles just you broke it down to simple. And so um I got really good at program design. I got really good at here's where you are, here's your progressions, muscle uh exercises, and here's your regressions. And so, based on how you were going, I could progress you or regress you so your body would respond and start getting the right results we wanted. And I, you know, I worked with a lot of runners, I worked with a lot of athletes, I worked

The Five-Tier Method Problem To Solve

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with a lot of high performers, and we were getting this. And so when I came to uh pickleball, um, you know, and everybody's still trying to figure out how this thing works. Like, how do you how do you do lessons? How do you do this? And I'm like, I need to do a program because this is what I'm good at. Like I started figuring out what a lot of my best students were struggling with, which was like, I don't know where I am, or because I don't know where I am, I don't, I'm being beat by players I think I should be beating. Why? And I go, okay, great, let's figure out where you are. Let's figure out what skills you you you have that are great. Let's figure out the ones you still need, and let's figure out how to start putting a plan together to get all of that into your game. And you know what we call that? So this is awesome. I love this. So when we take a lesson, we take a lesson and we're learning new skills, we're working on our ceiling. Like we're trying to get that ceiling to raise up, right? So we have all this amazing tools. But very few of us work on the floor. Our foundational shots that we can hit nine out of 10 times on a bad day. Can you still survive? Kane, do you have shots you can fall back on? And so this is what I started creating. We're gonna build your floor first, and it's gonna be tedious, is some days it's gonna be boring, but you're gonna hit like 500 shots in this one drill. And when you leave, you're gonna be hot, sweaty, tired, where you're like, I can hit that shot. And then we're gonna do a new skill that's gonna raise your ceiling. So then what we want to do is take your ceiling and your floor, and right when you're like up to like four zero, your gap is like this big. Yeah, what we want to do is make that gap right here. So the difference between your floor and your ceiling are so short that it's not that big a difference, and you're just tweaking your ceiling to get it to go bigger, but our gaps a lot of times are this

Ratings, Assessment, And Program Design

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big, and most of us don't know where our floor is, so we got to figure out where our floor is so we can start building it and then figure out where our ceiling is, and then we can start figuring out how to raise them, but also close that gap. And so this is like, and this is and to be on, like to be fair, I'm not reinventing the wheel with all of this knowledge. Like, I have spent so much money on lessons from anybody who will give me a lesson to try to take what they have done and figure out how to fit it into if I like it, and I can break it down and it makes sense how it goes into this system.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Thomas, I just love how you have brought your background, your experiences, your heart, your ability to organize and inspire, and you're noticing the details, all these qualities that you have and that your your willingness to learn and then incorporate that into teaching, really inspiring. And when we think about the life you've had and the way you have become this healer through so many ways, and in pickleball and have this amazing wife of yours and all that, what are some life lessons that you can share with us?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah, so that is that's I think this is probably something I spent some time thinking about as as we're preparing for this. And I think the first one I want to share is like life is not done with you. Life needs you where you are right now, and you have so much to give. Um and it's like the person who's like given up, you know, that's what I would tell them. Like, I would rather listen to your life story for eight hours than the alternative, just because

Build The Floor Then Raise The Ceiling

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in that process, you're going, we're gonna find what the world needs from you.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

That, my friend, is one of the most profound life lessons I've heard, and I am really grateful that you shared that one. Wow. So, how can people find you and night train?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So, night train, pickleball. Um, Instagram, Facebook. I actually am on like everything, Twitter, our X now. Uh, I'm on I'm really big on Instagram and TikTok, uh, and and Facebook, and then, but I'm also on the other platforms as well. We're just trying to be, you know, let everybody, let the world know that this is out there and it's it's not for everybody, but it's for the people it needs to be, for the people who need to win in life, this is for you.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Oh, oh, oh. Winning life. Oh, yes. I love that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Thomas. Thank you so much for being on our show. Thank you for everything you're doing to make this world a better place and touching and changing lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Thank you for having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

And thank you all for tuning in. Oh, you definitely want to share this episode. Thank you for all the subscriptions and the likes and the for the sharing. That's what this is all about. And uh wow, we look forward to a new conversation next week. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Bye. If you love our podcast, we'd be so grateful if you'd take a few seconds to follow or subscribe to Life Lessons from Pickleball. This ensures you'll never miss an episode and helps us continue these wonderful conversations.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, go to the show page and tap the follow button in the top right corner. And on YouTube, click the subscribe button under any of the episodes. Thanks so much. Hope to see you on the court.