League Finals
Posted on September 21, 2020 by Ching under Events, Hobbies.
I’ve been totally slacking on the blog because I’ve been consumed with pickleball. We had our league finals this week at Chicken N Pickle. While I didn’t make my goal of winning all three of my leagues this session, I actually didn’t do too shabby.
So I wrote about how Jimmy H and I won our Nahola league a few weeks ago. I wanted to also win my Wednesday night competitive women’s doubles and Thursday night competitive mixed doubles leagues at Chicken N Pickle. Unlike the Nahola league, you have a permanent partner for the CNP leagues so I actually got team shirts made for us. I found this lady who does amazing customizations through a mutual friend. Her business is called Simply Charming Designs and her work is awesome!
I got matching “Asian Invasion” shirts for me and my mixed partner Tom. I picked this team name since we are both Asian. We’re actually going to continue playing together this next session. Since it’s a Halloween league, we had to modify our team name a bit. Our official team name for this session is “Asian Invasion of the Pickle Snatchers” — so we can get more mileage out of our existing team shirts.
I don’t really like playing in t-shirts so I always turn my shirts into tank tops or muscle shirts. Here’s a pic of me and my partner Tom.
Our team name for women’s doubles is “Backhanded Compliments” so I got matching shirts for Renae and me from the same lady. Both shirts turned out fabulous! Anyway, before our maroon team shirts, we were wearing our tie dye CNP shirts that I’d gotten for us at the beginning of league.
I just love matching outfits! This is a group photo of us after the competitive women’s doubles league tournament championship match. Karen and Jenny (in the pink tanks) won our league. Renae and I came in second.
Even though we didn’t win, I still had a ton of fun.
Karen and Jenny lost their first match so they came out of the opportunity bracket (it was a double elimination tournament format). Since Renae and I were undefeated in the winner’s bracket, even though we lost the best 2 out of 3 championship match, we had to play again. Karen and Jenny had to beat us in a game to 15 to win it all.
The championship match was a bloodbath. Karen and Jenny played amazing and we couldn’t do anything. Here’s a video of that brutal championship match, in case you want to watch it.
The competitive men had their league finals that same night. Patrick Smith and Jamie Lynch won (again). This is their fifth consecutive time winning. The only thing that ever changes is who comes in second. Matt Conrad (aka Dr. Conrad) and Dave Belew took second this time.
There were more men’s teams so their bracket is bigger and messier.
The following night, Tom and I played in the competitive mixed league tournament final and won it. Huyen Nguyen and Michael Harris came in second, defeating lots of higher seeded teams including Undercover Secret Weapon (Jimmy and Fong) and Dropping L’s (Donnie and Tiffany).
Here’s a picture of our bracket on Thursday night.
We actually ended up playing only three matches total that night because we had a bye for being the top seeded team out of the seven teams. There were originally eight teams but Michael Cheung and Jen Reifschneider had to move to Tuesday evenings because of her work schedule.
Our first match was against C&K (Chris Wilson and Kim Knotts) after they won against Barbie & Ken (Amy Jaramillo with Robert Bell subbing for Amy’s husband Todd). After that, we played against Dropping L’s (Donnie and Tiffany) who won against Undercover Secret Weapon (Jimmy and Fong).
Then we had to wait for all of the opportunity bracket matches (one game to 15) to finish to play the championship match. It ended up being Dink, Dink, Goose (Michael Harris and Huyen Nguyen) with us in the finals. They did the hard work of eliminating our toughest competitors so they actually saved us a lot of effort.
In the end, I fell short of my goal of winning all three of my Fall leagues but first in two leagues and second in one is nothing to shake a stick at — I’m actually quite happy with how I did this time around.
The next session is only five weeks long and I’m playing in both mixed and women’s again. Tom and I are going to try to defend our league title in competitive mixed and then I’m playing with my friend Brooke Ayala this time for women’s because my previous partner Renae DeSantis can’t play.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to another fun, succession league session. I hope I have great results to share next month. Until next then. GNG.
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