St. Louis Shock Sweep Home Major League Pickleball Event To Go Top Of The Table
There's no rest for the weary; just a few days after the exciting Mid-Season tournament in Grand Rapids finished up, a handful of Major League Pickleball (MLP)'s teams headed right to St. Louis for the eighth of ten regular season events. The St. Louis Shock played host to the weekend's festivities, which they held at the Chaifetz Arena on the grounds of St. Louis University. The arena is named for the Chaifetz family, who also happen to be the owners of the hosting St. Louis Shock team, and who personally guaranteed this event to be the 'biggest event of the season." One thing is for sure; the setup of the Arena made this look more like a full-on professional sporting event than the league has ever had before; even at our nicest facilities, most pickleball tournaments are held at Country Clubs or parks where temporary stands are built; in St. Louis the arena look and feel really showed what MLP's founders intended; a home-supported team event where tickets are sold and fans show up just to watch, and not also to play in the event.
Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP's YouTube channel and on PickleballTV.com.
Transaction Recap
See my separate story from earlier discussing the massive Ben Johns trade and its implications for the title race and the league in general.
Premier League Recap
Day 1 Observations
Day 2 Observations
Day 3 Observations
Quite the entrance for ST. Louis' captain Anna Bright.
Day 4 Observations
CJ Klinger (L) teamed up with Columbus partner Andre Daescu (R) to help clinch 4th place, for now.
Challenger League Recap
Day 1 Observations
Day 2 Observations
Day 3 Observations
Day 4 Observations
Team Standings Update post Event
Here's the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event.
In Premier
In ChallengerWhat did we learn this weekend?
What were our top three Takeaways from the competition this weekend?
Media Pick' Em Contest Update
MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick'em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating. Here's how we did this week, and where we stand overall.
Summary: I had my worst week predicting matches yet. I missed four matches outright, including both Dallas losses, and took a penalty point as well for missing my 'lock of the week' when Brooklyn shocked Columbus on Sunday afternoon. I maintain a very small lead over Jim Kloss, aka 'the smartest man in pickleball," for the season long competition.
Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, we're right back into Week 9 of MLP, this time heading to Dallas.
The Dallas field is loaded. All three of the league's top teams are there (NJ, STL, Dallas) along with the dangerous Texas Ranchers. Lastly the LA Mad Drops and their new acquisition Johns will be in action for the first time, which should make for a super-interesting weekend.
All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.
Also, a great thanks to The Dink's Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link. Tice's data has proved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present.
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