Stories From The Deadest Fox

Barry Snyder, aka The Deadest Fox
November 21, 2016
Wilmington, DE

We love hearing from our members. Especially fun reports. One of our favorite APTA Volunteers of the Month, Barry Snyder, writes a weekly summary of his team matches, and signs them “The Deadest Fox.” Here is one of his stories.

“I'm a member of the Vicmead Hunt Club. One year our men's paddle team had a particularly bad season. We won only one match and were demoted from the top division. We had Cindy Prendergast make us t-shirts emblazoned with "ONE AND DONE" and "GOIN' DOWN.” We wore them all the next year. We also named our team the Dead Foxes, since our club was formed to hunt and kill foxes, and since we had played about as well as a bunch of dead foxes. I started writing the weekly summary of our matches. It was mostly poking fun at ourselves and our foibles. And so, The Deadest Fox. Since Fox Meadow is the home of paddle, I thought it gave it extra meaning.”

In addition to hunting and playing paddle, The Deadest Fox has an eye for a good craft project. This is how he recommends resurrecting a “dead” paddle:

“If you have an old paddle in the garage, here’s a fun project (though not as fun as playing paddle). Turn that paddle into a reading lamp. Using a vintage Marcraft Graphite paddle from the 1980's, Delaware paddle player, Randy Singer, created this fully functional reading lamp. Notice that the blue base matches the color of the bottom of the hitting surface. Also, the black lampshade matches the color of the rest of the paddle.”

The Deadest Fox has some other ideas up his sleeve; look out for his byline in the future.