With the Presidential Election over, and the near miss of the Nor’easter in the Philly Area, the D1 Paddlers were ready for action. It appears that the D1 teams are reflective of most of the Country. We have our haves (Way, Wall, Aron, & Merion) with four wins each, our have-nots (P-Cricket, Greenville, P-Country, H-Valley, P-Post & Ovb-1) with 2 or less wins each and the middle of the roaders (MD1, MD2).
With the first half of the season past the mid-point, it certainly seems like there is going to be some great matches ahead in the race to make it to the Top-Six at the split.
Merion came into Waynesborough with their undefeated streak on the line and was ready to impress the reigning champions with their retuned squad. Captain Safford shuffled the deck once again, teaming up McAvoy with Beers on Court 1 to take on Pascal and Chip. Safford looks like a genius with this pairing as his duo only dropped 4 games in their three sets. Waynesborough continued their winning ways as they swept the other three courts and handed Merion their first defeat of the season.
In what appears to be a cruel twist of fate, the week that Falatek and Korfmann win their first match, the remaining Martins-1 teams could not muster up another victory on the court and handed H-Valley their second victory of the season. It should be noted that courts 2 – 4 all split sets with the H-Valley squads winning all of the third sets to clinch their two points.
P-Country makes it two in a row as this week they defeat P-Post 3 courts to 1. This victory is certainly impressive as they are still without the services of Patrick Jr. P-Post was on quite an impressive run of their own as they had defeated Way and split courts with both MD1 and Ovb the last three weeks.
Greenville was looking to secure their first 2 point evening as they traveled north to play MD-2. Although they won courts 1 & 2, MD-2’s squads won courts 3 & 4 with the Jamie Stein – Tim Farrell combo only dropping 3 games to secure the tie-breaker victory for Martins-2.
Looking forward on Greenville’s schedule, there are very few opportunities to secure a win and it looks like their streak of Top-6 finishes at the break will end this season. These competitors are going to have to do some heavy lifting to get out of the bottom 2 rungs by the end of the season and face relegation to D2.
Wallingford split courts with Overbrook and won the tie-breaker to place them on the top of D1 with Aronimink with 9 points each. Overbrook has won at least 2 courts in each match this season and looking to be in the running for comeback team of the year with Merion.
Somehow Merion dropping Eger and Overbrook picking him up made both teams better. Looks like Wallingford’s next true test at the top will be against Waynesborough on December 6th.
Aronimink hosted P-Cricket this week in which Aronimink was looking to move to top and P-Cricket was looking to get out of the bottom. Unfortunately for P-Cricket, this was not their night to move off the bottom as they faced a very strong Aronimink team who was determined to claw their way back and enter into a tie for first place with Wallingford. P-Cricket did manage to win two courts to earn an all important point but they too like Greenville are going to have to make a run shortly to stay out of the bottom two.
