YOU HAVE UNTIL DECEMBER 9

Boasters League round 8~~

Everyone enjoy Turkey Day? Everyone enjoy their families, no matter how functional or dysfunctional they may be? Everyone enjoy watching the Detroit Lions showcase why they are the laughing stock of the NFL since forever? Everyone enjoy watching Ohio State throw the Wolverines down the stairs for the 7^th time in a row? Ooooh… too soon?

And I imagine everyone enjoyed having a week off from the league so they could get some much needed make up matches in. Right? At least some of you did, and we are whittling down the number of players who still haven’t reached the magical number of 5. That’s FIVE matches you need in order to secure your second half position in the league. If you don’t, you do risk removal. We still have 52 players yet to achieve the milestone, but from those 52, 35 only need 1 more result with another 9 needing 2 results. The rest need more than that. You have (as of today – November 29) 10 days to do that. So in reality – no excuse. That’s plenty of time.

The Wardogs have taken over top spot. Even though they equal on points with Butter Nutz, they hold the bonus point tie-break. However, bursting their bubble, it will be a short-lived tenure. The Wardogs will have to sit out round 9 with the bye, so unless they have a remarkable amount of make-up matches completed in the next week and a half, they should in all likelihood end up second.

The biggest mover since round 7 was the Nicker Ballers. They picked up 44 points over the past 2 weeks, jumped up one spot to 4^th. Mongoose are third (equal points) based again on the bonus points. And, not willing to change any trend whatsoever, On the Rocks and Foss Nation were way behind the rest of the league picking up a paltry 20 and 24 points respectively. Not surprisingly, those 2 teams also picked up the least amount of bonus points this week.

After a sluggish start to the night, it ended up being fairly decent turnout. I heard of lot of “I’m so fat and unfit” from all the holiday gorging, but what would Thanksgiving be without that extra serving or two of pumpkin pie? And stuffing. And turkey. And yams. And cranberry sauce. And more pie. Plenty of tight (shorts) 2-1 results came in, so I won’t list all of them, but I’m sure the players involved are thankful for the harder contests to burn off those extra calories. (That after match beer probably didn’t help though!)

Now remember, for those of you who qualify for the second half that will start on January 9 – which I hope is all of you – keep in mind that I will be going through your win / loss record of the first half and be shuffling you around based on those results. So, you may move up, or down, or stay put. I will be doing my best to keep you on your current team but that that will be impossible to do with 153 players, and generally, about 20% of the league will be ‘traded’. It’s all in the spirit of making the league as competitive as humanly possible. Also keep in mind, it is not an exact science. Some of you may deserve to move up but do not – it’s nothing personal I assure you, understand, that if I move someone up, I need to move someone down as well and that may not be feasible. You do not need to remind me of your current record (right, Joey Gaylord?) as I do have a spreadsheet of all your results.

The countdown to December 9 begins… tick, tock… tick, tock…

TOP TWO EXTEND THEIR LEAD

Boasters League round 7~~

I’ll probably rate last night as a mixed bag of ‘busyness’ depending on what team you are on. If you are on Wardogs or on Butter Nutz then the evening was quite successful. Considering they played each other, then we shouldn’t be surprised that they were the 2 most active on court. Nor should it be a surprise that they picked up the most bonus points. They undoubtedly also drank the most beer as well… just ask Matt DiDio and Ryan MacVoy who were scheduled to play each other but by the time a court opened up decided that it probably wasn’t a smart idea at that stage to start chasing a ball inside 4 solid walls…

On the other side of the coin, if you were on Mongoose or Nicker Ballers, or even Foss Nation or Nick at Night, then you would hardly be wiping too much sweat of the brow. We had a decent amount of activity on the courts overall last night, but not too many league matches completed. As I have been saying all season so far, match completion is down this half, it needs to pick up. Especially for those who haven’t yet reached their 5 match quota. You have until December 9. No excuse.

On the Rocks had a disaster week even in terms of having the bye. A good chance to get some pick up matches on the books, but they only picked up 3 points and dropped from 3^rd to 8^th. I doubt they will get all the way to 9^th although it looks like they are trying hard to do so, Foss Nation seem content puttering around that area – they again picked up a league lowest for the round with just 19 points.

So who will make the highlight reel this week… well, Fred Fordon (Butter Nutz) does. He was up against Max Franklin (Wardogs) and these 2 were having a reeeally good match. It was tight all the way, the audience was kept enthralled as they split the first 2 games and were continuing the long rallies in the third. But of course, I would be inept in my reporting if I didn’t call out the one stand-out error that overshadowed the high quality of the contest. Timing is everything. Fred was serving at 11-14 (so match-ball for Max) and what does he do? He serves it out. (Face palm!) Yes, even the #1’s in the league can perform the most ill-timed brain-seizures. It was an excellent match, with a memorable ending!

And well done to John Perkins (Wardogs) who somehow managed to win all 3 games against Scott Beals (Butter Nutz) proving to us all that if you stay in the rally long enough, if your opponent refuses to call 5 ‘lets’ (strokes?) per rally, then chances are you will end up winning. I exaggerate (!) of course, but watching a decent amount of this match, Scott had John on a string more times than not, but John ran it all down. Often enough Scott had an open court ‘winner’ but strangely would pound the ball straight back to John’s racquet instead. Just goes to show, dominating the rallies is one thing, ending them is another! After the match, John could not get off the court fast enough to find the bench and collapse. Scott couldn’t off the court at all.

In other attention-grabbing news, Jay Bonahoom (Mongoose) picks up his second win of the season with a 2-1 win over Andy Adamo (Nicker Ballers); Brien Baker (Nick at Night) gets his first victory with a 2-1 beat down of Dane Fossee (Foss Nation); and Colin Bayer (Vivio’s) now sits with 3 wins and 1 loss after his 2-1 battle over Greg Allare (Winky-Dinks) who is now 2 and 2 this half.

Next week is Thanksgiving. So the league has a rest. That doesn’t mean you all have to stop playing. It does mean that you have a chance to get your make-up matches in and reach the 5 match threshold. Most of you only have 1 or 2 matches to get there, so it aint that hard! Round 8 is scheduled for November 28. So as you chew on your turkey leg and stuffing and pumpkin pie next week, just think… what’s the over / under on how many time Matthew Stafford will get sacked? I’m thinking 6. If Australia celebrated Thanksgiving, would we be dining with Vegemite sandwiches? Or shrimps on the barbie? And rumor has it that there was a 15-0 handed out on the doubles court in a league match last night… and since I have been on the receiving end of such a humiliation in the past, I’m happy to see that I am no longer the Detroit Lion of the doubles world. We have a couple of Cleveland Browns as well.