BUTTER NUTZ BACK TO BEST

Boasters League round 4~~

 

Election hangover? Could it be that everybody is still getting over the recent results of who got voted in? I am of course not talking about the national election – after all, who cares about that…? (!) – but Tuesday’s vastly more important DAC election! I heard that the celebratory activities went on into the wee hours of the morning, a complete disregard of it being a work night and not exactly the perfect preparation of one’s immensely significant league match. That being said, congratulations to all the election winners, commensurations to the non-winners, and searching parties have now been sent out to locate some walkabout squash players.

Another quiet night in the boasters league halls, it wasn’t as if the courts were empty, but we certainly haven’t experienced the buzzing atmosphere of what a league night should be over the past few weeks. The biggest sufferer this week was Foss Nation, but they did have the bye so we can excuse them somewhat for only picking up 5 points. However, the bye weeks are a golden opportunity to get make up matches in, and so far it seems that people are mostly missing the mark. The Butter Nutz put in the best performance this week with 32 points and are once again in their familiar position of leading the pack, Winky Dinks close on their tails, just 4 points back. Second best performer of the round goes to Mongoose with 30 points, but it didn’t help their position on the standings at all – they are still 7^th.

Bonus points last night were apparently difficult to come by. Only one team reached doubles figures in that column – Nick at Night – with 10. Six of the other seven teams that were playing didn’t even get half of their team to turn up. Ugh.

Stand outs for the round: Sante. (Butter Nutz). I watched Sante play Fred Fordon (Nick at Night) in an especially entertaining match. Inconsistency plagues many of us, and Sante is no different – but a couple of weeks ago he upset Robin Basil and proved yesterday that it was no flash in the pan. I was impressed with his game, steady, volleying, moving the ball around well, great boasts, the occasional well timed cross court from the back… and Fred is no slouch. Sante won 2-1, probably the best I’ve seen him play – well done, mate!

Brien Baker (Space Geckos) and Bret Williams (Mongoose). Another notable encounter, these two have contrasting styles but put somehow it also synchronized together well. They pretty much exhausted themselves – although Brien did look worse than Bret in the end! – and it’s always fun to watch when rallies are finished off more with great shots rather than an error. Brien edged the 2-1 win, thankful for the 12 inch walk to the bench after the game.

There were of course other exciting results – John Perkins’ (Winky-Dinks) 2-1, 15-14 in the 3^rd win over Justin Jacobs (Wardogs); Blake Roller (Vivio’s) flaunting his youthfulness much to the chagrin of Jeff Gierlach (Nicker Ballers) for a 2-1 victory – to name a couple, but I couldn’t possibly list them all.

Round 5 next week. Half way of the season. Already. Yes. Time is running away. How many matches do you have to make up?

SLOW STARTS CONTINUE

Boasters League round 2~

 

The New Year hangover seems to be lingering as players still haven’t found their stride. The way things are trending after 2 rounds of the league, we’ll have a very low percentage of matches completed compared to the first half. Just to give you an idea, The Nicker Ballers are leading the ‘sluggish’ charge with 49 points which would have been good for just 5^th place after 2 rounds in the first half. I’m sure things will pick up significantly as everyone will want to sharpen up their skills for the upcoming Classic, Farris Cup, and Club Championships, but that moment couldn’t come too soon.

Biggest point getter this week was Vivio’s with 30 which moved them from 8^th to 3^rd… sounds like a huge move but in reality they were only 5 points off 3^rd anyway. Six of the teams picked up at least 24 points for the week, so there wasn’t any significant shaking up of the standings. Wardogs have given themselves an uphill battle early picking up only 7 points and Mongoose didn’t help their status either even though they had the bye week and managed only 1 point in makeup matches.

A couple individual on court results were rather eye-brow raising this week. It shows that just because someone is ranked higher than you, the result is not a foregone conclusion. In one of the biggest upsets of the season, Fred Fordon (Nick at Night) shocked the squash community with a 2-1 win over Jed Elley (Vivio’s). Two of those games were 15-14 I believe, and from the few rallies I witnessed of the match, Fred really, really worked hard for that win! Jed is ranked 120 points higher than Fred and it was Jed’s first loss since the club championship final last May.

Another ‘major’ upset of the week was Sante Fratarcangeli (Butter Nutz) taking down Robin Basil (Winky-Dinks) 2-1. Robin is (was) over 200 points higher on the ranking, so it does prove to all of us that anything can (and clearly) does happen. It’s why you play! But that wasn’t the biggest upset either. That honor goes to Ryan MacVoy (Vivio’s). He made a statement winning 2-1 over John Roarty (Nick at Night) - the difference in their rankings is (was) over 300 points! Sporty HQ still hasn’t calculated the new rankings of these as of this morning, it’s probably not used to dealing with such unpredictable results!

Round 3 see the Vivio’s with the bye so their short-lived momentum will come to an abrupt halt. There are a ton of makeup matches to be done already, there are still a ton of players that haven’t even picked up any points at all yet, but there isn’t a ton of time to waste. Courts need filling and games need playing, and matches need winning. Go.