3 Biggest Challenger Division Storylines for Major League Pickleball (MLP) Season 1

📸 @breakers.pb

We put out our Challenger division draft grades but we already have more information since those grades came out. There will be more pickleball than any reasonable human can consume at each event this year at MLP so we’re spending the week giving our 3 biggest storylines from Challenger, Premier and MLP as a whole. We start off the week with our top Challenger storylines.

1. Which Challenger Division Players Will Make Their Case to Go Premier in Season 2?

One of the most unique aspects of 2023 is that we will see some flip-flopping between Premier and Challenger players. It is inevitable that there will be at least a few breakout performers in the Challenger division who will make their case to be drafted in Premier for season 2 of this year. There may even be a couple of players that will bust onto the scene that are not on anyone’s radar right now.

The obvious breakout candidates are players like Hunter Johnson, Christian Alshon and Connor Garnett. All very high upside singles players who are working on their doubles games and have the raw ability to take over matches. Hunter Johnson is coming off of a double gold weekend at the APP in Punta Gorda and another gold medal with Parris Todd in Boca Raton.

You have your more proven talent like Rob Nunnery, Susannah Barr, Spencer Smith, Wes Burrows, Cierra Gaytan-Leach and Megan Fudge. Is anyone from that group going to be able to show that they are more deserving of a spot than any current Premier player?

There are other players, who are getting their first chance to shine on an MLP stage. Stefan Auvergne, Alix Truong, Emily Ackerman, Ewa Radzikowska and Yates Johnson. Then you have wild cards like Andreas Siljestrom and Sam Querrey.

It would be silly to list 75% of the names in the Challenger division, but you get the idea. One of the things we saw in 2022 was a shift in mindset to teams choosing upside over proven talent. However, with a 2024 spot in Premier on the line, there is going to be a lot more to lose for teams finishing in the bottom of the Premier division for season 2. We may see draft strategy shift based on where a team finishes in season 1 as it won’t be as straightforward as going for broke with nothing to lose.

The other wrinkle is that one lucky loser will get a shot to play Premier with Riley Newman missing from the Hard Eights for the first event. It will be a massive opportunity for one player in this indefinite tryout period for these players with their most important showcase being these MLP events.

2. What Value Can Sam Querrey Provide as a Number 1 Overall Pick?

We already went in-depth about Sam after his first Masters event, but we would be remiss not to mention him as one of the biggest storylines going into the weekend.

Sam Querrey is lucky he has Stefan Auvergne by his side as a borderline Premier level talent. Querrey joked on the Inside MLP podcast that he’ll be playing mixed with Stefan and taking only a sliver of the court. If their practice clips are any indication, it would appear that Querrey will be playing as the #2 mixed team with Monica Paolicelli.

With their group, we’ll be surprised if this team finds it’s way past the group stage of the first event. if this team gets a win in the first event, Stefan Auvergne will have to play like a number 1 overall pick and Shelby Bates will have to play like a first round Challenger pick. If this team does find its way to a Dreambreaker, Querrey’s singles was competent enough, as awkward as it looked. He should hold up well enough in men’s to be competitive as well as to play 4 points at a time in a Dreambreaker.

Querrey is going to see a lot of balls this weekend in men’s and, despite his accomplishments in tennis, we have to believe he’s feeling some heat after his expectedly underwhelming pro debut. As we have said before, Querrey’s desire to skip steps in the process has seemingly put him in a far tougher position than he needs to be. The team construction around him as a number 1 overall pick puts a target squarely on his back and will likely leave his teammates in the precarious position of having to carry the number 1 overall pick on their back if they want any chance to compete.

3. How Much Will the Groups Matter for Each Event?

There is no real group of death for event 1. The fact that DC (Sam Querrey’s team) and Miami (Matt Manasse’s team) find themselves in 2 separate groups already should make things easier for the other teams in their respective groups.

Group A features DC, Columbus, Bay Area and Utah. There are two clear top teams in this group and that is Bay Area and Utah. We have talked extensively about Querrey, but Columbus looks to be a troubling roster more so since the draft with Milan Rane, Becky Ryan, Yates Johnson and CJ Klinger. It is becoming more apparent Yates is the inferior Johnson twin and it will be surprising if he can lead a team well. Milan Rane as a number 1 female does not inspire confidence either. As long as chemistry stuff stays in check for Utah, this should be the most straightforward group in terms of teams advancing.

Group B features a solid 3 team with Chicago, Orlando and Texas with the awful looking Miami rounding out the 4 teams. None of the 3 top teams in this group are world beating on paper, but there isn’t a clear top 2 either. The Texas Ranchers have a veteran stable of players with Genie Erokhina as a good upside fit. Orlando is steady with Callan Dawson, Rachel Rettger and Bobbi Oshiro while Chicago features solid veterans mixed with upside new talent.

Group C will likely come down to Brooklyn and the others vying for 2nd. Brooklyn has 2 Premier level players in Cierra Gaytan-Leach and Rob Nunnery. Atlanta has Hunter Johnson who is looking like he could be the top Challenger male after these past two weeks. Arizona is weird with Wes Burrows and Andreas Siljestrom as well as Dallas with Brandon French. All 3 of those teams have flaws and we’re going to learn a lot about the wildcards like Brandon French.

The groups are relatively even and it will be interesting to see if there are the free wins to be had for all of season 1.

Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook too!

20 thoughts on “3 Biggest Challenger Division Storylines for Major League Pickleball (MLP) Season 1

  • January 23, 2023 at 12:14 am
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    Thank you for the information. Okay, enough about what’s his name?… Oh… Querrey. Thanks. 🙂 I don’t know most of these players, but my bet is on Christian Alshon to move to the premier. I’ll be there all four days, should be a lot of fun. No rain is predicted for the rest of the week.

    Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 7:22 pm
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      We’ll have more Querrey talk probably. Sorry, David! We are so fascinated by him. Alshon could definitely be a premier guy. It’ll be fun to see.

      Reply
  • January 23, 2023 at 4:08 am
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    SQ drafted number 1 makes you wonder about management. Just watching him last week you can see he s slow and relatively immobile but i guess bragging fooled them but if you see him play he s no threat at all but JACK SOCK sure as hell is

    Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 7:22 pm
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      We continue to think it was a publicity play rather than a wanting to win play.

      Reply
  • January 23, 2023 at 5:02 am
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    Why are you guys so high on Hunter Johnson? What is one good doubles / mixed result he has had other than last two weeks when he’s been playing w PT, who is light years better than other unsigned females? I could be crazy but do not see it w the twins outside of singles

    Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 6:32 am
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      Hunter was also getting results last year in APP when there were still a lot of good players playing.

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      • January 23, 2023 at 7:34 pm
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        Hunter been playing well to start the year even if it is lower end competition. You want to see players beat lower level competition and that’s what he is doing right now.

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    • January 23, 2023 at 7:26 pm
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      We weren’t as high on him before the draft but his early 2023 results have us in on him. He wasn’t playing mixed before and getting a result with Yates in Punta Gorda is good considering how they have done. He was supposed to win with Parris and they won. We are coming around to the fact that Yates may simply be not as good and that shows in his mixed results.

      Reply
  • January 23, 2023 at 6:03 am
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    “more pickleball than any reasonable human can consume”
    Absolutely agree. I am not even going to try to watch it all. Mediocre players with mediocre announcers – why waste time. And they seemed to have announced 2 new teams. But I wasn’t interested enough to even try to figure out where they fit in.

    “one lucky loser will get a shot to play Premier”.
    I understand Riley needs a replacement. But what do you mean by “lucky loser”? What do/did you have to lose to be a replacement for Riley?

    “3 biggest storylines”
    You will probably be covering this later. But 3 things that turn me off of MLP are how “close to the chest” they are playing it this year. Storylines like we read on NML is what keeps me interested. If they hide everything like PPA does, then I lose interest. James on his podcast hinted at a trade that was either attempted or accomplished for the first MLP. Why not tell the “fans” more about this. And I think it was Nunnery who mentioned how hard it was even for him to figure out what was going on.

    Then it’s the way MLP goes about publishing any “news” they do release. Sometimes it’s on myDUPR blog, sometimes on social media, rarely on MLP website. So you have to hunt all over for it or hope Jack’s facebook page or NML let us know.

    Then finally, it’s never clear when/where the finals will be shown. Maybe it’ll change each event depending on the paywall’s scheduling. In the past, of course, many could never see the finals without being a subscriber to something. I wouldn’t be surprised to see they also move semi-finals to a paywall. Hard to invest all that time watching a team then not see the final result.

    Also, investing your time following a team but then have to switch to watching them in the Challenger division later in the year seems very odd. And having no interest in a Challenger team, am I suddenly going to want to watch them just because they are now in Premier? I don’t think so.

    Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 9:11 am
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      Nicely put Waggish. Thank you. Remember last year they changed the rules. IMO, they haven’t given all the rules out because they don’t even know what the rules are and will make them up as they go. MLP is really too complicated now, but I’m going to the Mesa MLP, in person, should be a blast. I’m also dropping all PPA tours (really tired of their announcers) and really hoping APP makes better quality videos this year, 720P and one stream are unacceptable. And thank you very much for all of the work you put into this blog.

      Reply
      • January 23, 2023 at 3:10 pm
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        Thank you, David J. From all I’ve heard you will enjoy your time at the MLP event. I hope NML blog hears from you on your first person experience — you’ll have some valuable insight.

        PPA seems to be lining up some new streaming so maybe that means we’ll get a change-up in announcers — badly needed for sure.

        Reply
      • January 23, 2023 at 7:35 pm
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        They have posted rules. Not sure if they are on the website yet, but hopefully it simplifies going forward.

        The APP stream in PG was not great. Thanks as always David

        Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 7:33 pm
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      The Hard Eights will have to choose a player from one of the 6 teams that do not make it to the playoff round, which will be known by the end of Thursday.

      A lot of the stuff about hiding comes from the hurried nature of getting this all done so fast. They need to figure out a way now that things should be settled to improve on this going forward. However, regarding the trade stuff, that would be information players and team owners do not want to come out. We’re pretty sure we know what James is referring to but this is information that typically would only come out through reporters covering the sport. When no one is covering the sport, this type of information does not come out unfortunately. We have to balance some of these things when we get information but others are generally not keen to bring these things to light.

      Ultimately, we have made it very clear they need to be better publishing news and results. You still can’t find the team owners for MLP outside of the news release. It should be on the teams you click on but it’s not. Just another example. We’ll see how it goes this weekend for finding results, but we’re expecting it will not be user friendly at this stage. We don’t know where the finals are going to be broadcast either, and that’s another good example.

      Hopefully the team investment will be sorted out by next year. It’s an infancy stage league and this is what we’re all getting sorted out for 2024. They need to have some continuity at some point but there does need to be some patience in this.

      Reply
  • January 23, 2023 at 9:23 am
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    I wish MLP would have two separate weekends for the Challenger and Premier league. Too much Pickleball for one weekend. It is hard to care about the Challenger league when the Premier League is on.

    Reply
    • January 23, 2023 at 7:35 pm
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      It would probably be more ideal but logistics just don’t allow for it.

      Reply
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  • January 24, 2023 at 10:36 am
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    I am here for the manufactured Sam Querry drama, and you didn’t disappoint!

    Reply
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