NOT A BAD START

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.