Summer League round
1~~
For a little while I was a bit worried. There wasn’t much
action going on at 4.30pm – the start of the 2014 Summer League. The weather
looked awfully dodgy – not helped by a tornado warning south of Detroit I’m sure
– but it didn’t take long for the courts to fill and have the steady flow of
matches continue through for a good two and a half hours. Overall, 17 matches
were completed yesterday, a reasonable effort for the first round. And the
matches were spread out amongst the teams pretty evenly, and every team picked
up at least 4 bonus points. Consequently, the standings only have 6 points
separating first from last. Compare that to last year where one of the teams
didn’t score a solitary point in the first week, and we are way ahead of the
curve!
“Point of No Return”
versus “Art of Incompetence”
completed 6 matches, all them ending up 2-1, each team winning 3 of them. It’s
the kind of close competition every league dreams of – let’s hope it stays that
way all summer long! Not that it means an awful lot after one round, but “Point of No Return” do hold the top
spot on the ladder for now. One point back are the “Nick-Knacks”. They could be sharing that honor if Julie VandeVusse managed to convert her
solid third game lead over Colin Bayer
into a win, but from 3-10 down, Colin – who I must admit runs extremely hard on
the court and never gives up on any shot – just put his head down and soldiered
his way back for the unlikely 15-12 comeback victory.
I watched a good portion of the Nick Cinqueranelli (“Drop
Dead Gorgeous”) v. Jon Diewald
(“Lob-Otomies”). Although this was a
tight 2-1 contest, both payers admitted to being rather ‘rusty’ on court.
‘Inconsistent’ would be a good word to use. There were some great rallies –
good lengths, nice angles, but there were also some questionable stuff mixed
in. Deep in the third game, Nick was mounting a mini-comeback but couldn’t pull
it off. Jon walked off the 2-1 winner. Hopefully for both players, the rust
won’t last long!
Some other closely fought contests had Dave Morrison (“Coordination
Zero”) winning the first 2 games against Jay Bonahoom (“Technically
Delinquent”) before coughing up the third; in a clash of the newbies, David DeCew (“Art of Incompetence”) battled out a 2-1 win over Peter Fromm (“Point of No Return”); and Andy
Petcoff (“Lob-Otomies”) squeak a
2-1 victory against Eric Scheible (“Drop Dead Gorgeous”).
So we are off and running. Let’s hope the league stays
competitive all the way through – that means everybody needs to keep up with
their matches… With any luck, all 8 teams will still have a decent chance to
make the finals when round 7 comes around! Remember – only the top 4 teams
advance.
