ONE HOT, LAZY SUMMER

2019 Summer League Breakdown

Don’t take it that I am accusing you of being lazy, I am sure you all kept yourself brimming with activity through this sweltering hot summer, right? Just not particularly on the squash courts… I myself spent a couple of weeks down south this year and experienced first-hand what 100+ degrees with high humidity can do to the psyche, liquefy your inner organs, char the outer ones, and consider that the greatest human that ever lived in the history of this planet was the one that invented air conditioning. Playing squash on those days was not overly high on my wish list.

Play was down across the board for the summer, which I hope is only a small glitch in the matrix. If all goes to plan, by the time you are reading this, our new squash pro has arrived, is up and running, and is already making a positive effect on the usage totals. But, it wouldn’t be normal if a meticulously laid strategy went exactly as we expect it to, so naturally our new squash pro isn’t yet here as we have no choice but to wait for his visa papers to come through. Nothing like governmental red tape! Of course, none of this can change the stats of the 2019 summer leagues which were, regrettably to say, not the prettiest we have seen…

Let’s start with the doubles league that ran for 11 weeks (or just 10 for the Monday crowd as that had the Memorial Day holiday). Registrations have been holding steady over the past 4 years. We had 47 this summer, the same as 2016 and 2017. Last year had 48. But, the distribution of the players allowed us to add on an extra hour of play for the Tuesday group. Summer doubles is tougher to run, we do get more late cancellations, and there is simply less interest in subbing. The numbers don’t lie:

• There were 77 matches scheduled across the 4 levels. 67 of those matches were played, or 87%. Last summer, we had 93.75% of matches completed.
• Of the 10 matches not played, 7 were due to not being able to secure a sub, 2 were no-shows, and 1 of the matches vowed to rearrange the match time and (not surprisingly) never got around to doing that.
• The Wednesday C group were the worst offenders this summer. Of the 11 matches, only 6 were played. No one reached the 5 match minimum threshold to qualify for the best average for the season. They only managed to play 1 match out of the last 5 weeks. This is the complete opposite of the 2018 season where they were the most committed.
• Monday A group only had 1 match not completed. They required a sub 29% of the time. (Not terrible, but not great either). 4 of the 20 matches did not require any subs. Nine of the 19 matches played were 3-0. 
• Tuesday B group had 19 players (record number for the summer) so we added a 4pm time slot. Four matches from the 33 scheduled were not played. Three of those were at the 4pm time slot (!!) because we no one was willing to sub in. Only one 4pm match didn’t need any subs at all. Four 5pm matches didn’t need any subs, and all but one 6pm match needed at least one sub. Overall, a sub was required 36% of the time. 51% of the match played ended up 3-0. 
• The Wednesday Open group had the least amount of registrations (7), but completed all of their matches. They were the most responsive to sub, even though they required the most – 48% of the time. (Very high!). Every match required at least 1 sub, 8 of the 11 matches required at least 2. Only 2 of the matches ended up 3-0, so it was the most competitive group of the summer by far.
• On an individual level, Shail Arora (Monday A) played the most – 14 matches. He obviously ended up with the most points overall (52). Bruce Shaw (Tuesday B) was the next most active with 10 matches. Four other players had 9.
• 28 players played the 5 match minimum to qualify for the best average. That’s 59.5% of the league. That means that 40% of the league played less than what they were scheduled. Kyle Keppen (Tuesday B) had the best average of the summer with 5.60 points per match.

Looking to the singles league, the numbers in comparison to 2018 were not even close. In fact, they were down from 2017 as well. Given, we did have only 90 players this year, 10 less than the previous 2 seasons.

Summer soldiers Paul Gormley and Jon Diewald

• Only 445 matches were played this summer. Waaay down from the 636 in 2018 and still significantly lower than the 502 in 2017. I do not know what caused this.
• The “Court Junkies” easily played the most matches of all the teams with 130, making up 29% of the overall total. Sounds like a lot but the best team in 2018 played 224 matches (!). 
• Paul Gormley played 59 of those 130 matches. He also played everyone on his team at least 3 times.
• Paul Gormley obviously also scored the most points of anyone in the league with 277.
• The next best team was “Backhanded Compliments” with 60 completed matches.
• The “Sultans of Swing” played the least amount of matches with 20. That’s actually not too bad considering the worst team last summer played only 6.
• Six players did not play any matches at all. Smh. There were 16 last year, so this is an improvement, but this seriously should be zero.
• The summer league is 16 weeks long. The 15^th week produced the fewest matches with just 7. 
• The 4^th week was the most productive with 44 matches.
• Three teams did not play a single match in the final three weeks.
• The pair that played the most? That honor goes to Adam McDowell and Andrew Miller of the “Sweetspots”. Of their 15 matches, Adam won 12 of them.

 So there you have it. Another summer league behind us, another school year starting today, and another squash season bearing down upon us with either giddy excitement or anxious trepidation depending on which side of the argument you feel you are on. Congratulations to the summer soldiers who kept belting that rubber ball through the hot months, you will all be grateful once we get things cranking very soon!