BOASTERS BOSS IS FOSS NATION

 

Boasters League finals~~ 

Can you believe it? It’s the end of the league season! 21 weeks of battling it out, and it all comes down to one evening in March. Well, actually, that ‘one’ evening turned into an entire week as most of the matches were rearranged, spread out over 7 days. Only 6 of the 16 matches were played on the scheduled day which was somewhat disappointing since it does take away from the atmosphere that could have been.

Only three subs were needed overall which is not too bad, and each team collected 10 bonus points, which although for the final is very low, makes sure that the overall winner is determined on the squash court rather than who simply rocked up.

The first result came in on Monday. Evan Moore kicked off the Foss Nation campaign with a 2-1 win over Haytham Hermiz. Both Evan and Haytham are scramblers, I can only imagine the amount of running that was achieved in these three games. Evan has only been recording results since end of May last year, and this was his first match against Haytham.

Next in line was Tony Sorgi (Foss Nation) and Andrew Miller (Winky-Dinks) This would be their third meeting with so far one win each. Tony has been on quite the streak lately, winning 10 of his past 11 matches – a lot to do with his consistent lessons with Stu I’m sure – and he kept his streak alive here with a 3-0 victory. We were 2 matches in, and Foss Nation had already opened up a 4 point lead – a buffer that isn’t all that comfortable but would turn out to be consistent.

Two more off-setting scores were entered before Wednesday with each team taking a 3-0 win, allowing Foss Nation to preserve their margin. That lead fluctuated through the official league evening. A couple more 3-0 wins increased the lead to 9 at one point but Winky-Dinks did edge themselves back into contention with Will Owen picking up all of his 3 games against JB Peabody (an opponent he lost 1-2 to in December) and Matt Paradiso taking 2 of 3 games from JC Tibbitts who was subbing for the injured Dane Fossee. By the time Thursday morning rolled around, with 6 matches to play, Foss Nation was still 4 points ahead.

On Thursday, Nick Petcoff (Foss Nation) further helped out his team with a 2-1 victory over Landon Lefler. Nick has also been on quite the run, now winning 9 of his past 10 matches. It was now getting tight for Winky-Dinks. Five points to make up, five matches to play.

A little salvation though for the Winky-Dinks! Bert Donovan closed the gap taking all three games from Jonas Rodger who was kind enough to be subbing for the injured Robert Welch. It was now a 2 point difference and suddenly a very uncomfortable lead for Foss Nation. However, that 3-0 was immediately countered. Iain Prendergast has only lost one match since joining the league in January and he wasn’t about to change that stat on this occasion. His 3-0 win reinstated the 5 point lead once again, but now there was only 3 matches left.

It was possible now for Foss Nation to lock in the win with one more positive result. Standing in their way was Winky-Dink Sandy Selinger having to take on a tough opponent in Shail Arora. These two had played twice before in boasters league, both taking a 2-1 win. The first game was all Sandy – he rolled it 15-5. It was the wake-up call Shail apparently needed and with renewed focus he steadied himself, found his line and length and managed to take the next 2 games. And with that, Foss Nation had achieved their first Boasters League title! With 2 matches to go, they now had a 6 point lead. But even if Winky-Dinks were to win those 2 matches 3-0 and even up the points, the tie break would fall to the team with the most bonus points – which as mentioned above is also tied – so the second tie-break would be the team with the most wins on the day and Foss Nation already had nine of the 16 – an unassailable advantage.

The final two matches were completed over the weekend and Foss Nation cemented the win with Joe Schmidt picking up his team’s 10^th win. The final score: 37-31! Congratulations!

For the record, I picked Winky-Dinks to win last week. Clearly, my predictions are turning into the “kiss of death” but of course that won’t deter me from continuing to do it! I will try to learn from my misdeeds and improve my divination techniques next season… maybe go into witchcraft… or voodoo… black magic…? Can’t be any worse I guess!