Week 1 welcomed back Huntindon Valley after their short stint in D2 and Picket Post who is making their Maiden Voyage with the Big Boys. The weather was perfect for the start to the season. We lost some great players to injury and conficts for the season which throws the league title completely up for grabs. Many players defected from last seasons clubs as they must have received bigger offers from their new clubs. Two of the biggest question marks of the season are (1) Can Waynesborough defend their title and (2) can Picket Post win a match?
H-Valley welcomed Waynesborough for their inaugural trip to their Northern Confines. At first glance, you would have though the H-Valley players staged some sort of traffic snarl, as all of the players were 30 minutes late for the first matches. Nonetheless, H-Valley put up a gallant effort on Court’s 1 and 2 but could only muster up a single set on Court 2. Rodney and Tripp (Come on and Challenge me to 100 pushups and 100 situps) Davis did their best to upset the HOF’er Tim McAvoy and Captain Tom in a 2+ hour match that went to two tie breakers and a 7-5 middle set. Captain Safford seems to be using his Magic 8 Ball line-up maker, as this week’s line-up was completely new from last season in which the team saw 19 different line ups. Rumor has it that Tom is working with NASA to see exactly how many combinations (or was that permutations) he can come up with this season. H-Valley will not have it easy next week either as they take on Wallingford in their first of 5 consecutive road trips.
With their acquisition of Eger by Overbrook and the untimely injury to Pat Nolan from P-Country, Overbook takes all 4 courts. On Court 1, Pat Nowlan saddled up with Tomas “Speedy” Gonzalez and lost in a third set tie-breaker to John Adams and T-Burt. Eger showed up on Court 2 with the 2011/12 MAPTA Most Improved Player of the Year award Steven Hall and took all three sets from Gardner and Peter Hill. On Courts 3 and 4, P-Country managed to win the first set in both matches but ultimately dropped the second and third sets, sealing the victory for Overbook. MAPTA’s records do no have any recordings of Overbrook being tied for 1st place at any point in the season but they are happy to be there.
Martin-2 got the pleasure of welcoming Picket Post to their first match in the Big’s. Captain Dan “was not going to give PP their first point” and held PP to only 3 sets in the contest. Captain Dan went on to state, “After last seasons complete collapse of this squad, I am happy to see the 2x per week mandatory summer paddle paid off in this early season match”. After the match, Captain Rob Medal was heard murmuring “Who the F$%k created this schedule? In the first three weeks, we have to play both Martin’s teams and then Waynesborough. We are going to have to step up our games if we don’t want to play with those scrubs next season!”
With the loss of Greg Frigerio and Mr. Pickle ball, everyone has been counting out Martins-1 to fall apart. This week’s match-up of this new squad against Wallingford appeared to be cruel under the circumstances. As predicted, Martin’s dropped all six sets on Courts 1 and 2 as Korfmann is no Frigerio and Aguilar is no Wheeler and Wallingford was loaded for bear. But something miraculous happened in courts 3 & 4 as the Dam squad was able to pull out the third set in both matches, after splitting the first two to earn a point. Only time will tell how crucial this point will turn out to be in the final standings. Next up for Martins-1 is Picket Post and there seems to be some rivalry developing between the two squads, which are kinda hard to figure out as they have never played each other. Wallingford is going to have to do a better job on courts 3 & 4 if they want to make a run at their first title.
Merion gets off to a good start as they took on the P-Cricket squad whom will be without the services of Bruce Redpath for the season due to a pre-season ACL Tear. Bruce’s absence will certainly make it for a difficult season for the P-Cricket men and week 1 was clearly a signal of things to come. Jeff Lyon and Jonathon Moyer took all three sets form John Sabia III and Ted Manges on Court 2. Courts 3 and 4 had split sets but Merion was able to pull out both in the third set to secure the victory for Merion. It may take weeks to determine what the loss of an Eger will do to this Merion Squad.
The details of the Aronimink vs. Greenville match were not posted but our scouts have indicated that Aronimink won the match. More details to follow next week.
