So I wanted to book a tennis court at Acalanes yesterday for my Sunday match. Total pain in the butt figuring this out the first time, but turns out it’s stupid simple once you know the tricks. Let me walk you through my circus act step by step.
Getting Started
First off, I googled “Acalanes tennis court booking” like a dummy. Big mistake. Got buried under useless park department pages and third-party booking sites trying to charge extra fees. Finally remembered the official school district site might have answers.
The Registration Hassle
Found their community booking portal after clicking around. Needed to create an account – typical name/email/phone stuff. Password rules were ridiculous though:
- Must have uppercase AND lowercase
- Threw in a number obviously
- Demanded special characters – used @ because why not
Took three tries before the system stopped yelling at me. Then sat there refreshing inbox for the activation email like an idiot. Checked spam folder? Boom. There it was.
Court Hunting
Logged in and got slapped by their calendar interface. Looked like airplane scheduling software. Found the filter option for tennis courts – total lifesaver. Scrolled through time slots seeing solid blocks of “RESERVED”. Kept sliding that calendar right like my life depended on it until I spotted green “AVAILABLE” boxes for Sunday morning.
The Final Stretch
Clicked my desired 9-11am slot. Popped up a form asking for:
- Player names (just typed “Me +3”)
- Activity type (picked “recreation” from dropdown)
Double-checked dates because last month I booked for Tuesday instead of Thursday like a genius. Hit submit and held my breath. That spinning loading icon took five years before the confirmation screen finally appeared. Got both email and text confirmations instantly though, gotta give them that.
Whole process probably took 15 minutes once I stopped messing up passwords and dates. Key things I learned? Book exactly when slots open (heard that’s 7 days out), triple-check calendar dates, and have caffeine ready for password creation wars.