MLP New York 2025 – EOD Musings

We are running it back for another event to give some end of day thoughts throughout the weekend. What better way to end your long weekend days?

Sunday, July 6th

We got one very good match today as the revamped Hogs faced off against the hometown Brooklyn squad. It was a fun 22-20 Dreambreaker win for Brooklyn that gave us some real drama. The women’s was not close, the Hogs won a close men’s and it looked like it was over after Ben/Etta lost to AJ/Rachel. However, Roscoe Bellamy and Tammy Emmrich steamrolled Jackie/Riley en route to another win for them on the weekend and it is clear Roscoe can be a load to handle at times in one game to 11 in mixed. Neither the Hogs nor Brooklyn are good Dreambreaker teams and it was ultimately Brooklyn that prevailed. The Hogs come away with 10 out of a possible 15 points on the weekend, which is pretty solid, all things considered.

The Erik Forsythe thing skews things a bit this weekend but it appears the Hustlers are somehow worse than we thought they would be heading into the season. They win one game all weekend, going 0-6, and outside of the one meaningless game win they had, they didn’t get closer to getting another one than 8-11.

Columbus and Brooklyn handled business with a soft schedule. Super impressive for Brooklyn to do it with a sub for two consecutive weekends. Columbus remains scarier on paper, but we’ll have to see when Dekel gets back with Brooklyn.

Tough weekends again for Miami and Orlando. They are who we thought they were.

Saturday, July 5th

This event is highlighting as much as any event so far the importance of having two higher calibre females on a team. Life is a crap shoot for teams with only one higher end Premier female and one female who wouldn’t have been sniffing Premier in 2024. The Miami vs. Carolina matchup came down to Tammy Emmrich/Etta Tuionetoa finding a way against Lacy Schneemann/Samantha Parker. The Sliders and Brooklyn keep winning as they both have higher level female partnerships.

Brooklyn got the men’s match against Orlando, which really can’t happen if you are Orlando. It is game over at that point because the lower end female in mixed is close to an auto loss if the guy is capable at all. Jackie Kawamoto and Riley Newman almost dropped one yesterday to Noe Khlif and Milan Rane, but Rane doesn’t fall into the category we are seeing with the Samantha Parker, Helena Jansen, Tammy Emmrich and even Mya Bui type players – at least Bui has some real firepower and hands.

You can see the discrepancy in the teams this weekend by the fact we haven’t seen a single Dreambreaker across the 3 days. The Hustlers finally won a game, albeit a meaningless one against Dylan Frazier/Samantha Parker in mixed. Miami was close to a Dreambreaker against Brooklyn and Orlando could have easily found themselves in a Dreambreaker if their men find a way to pull out an 11-9 loss. The point is that the better teams remain the better teams and there are 7 good teams, which is pretty much what we expected heading into the year.

The Challenger stories of the weekend are the Nashville Chefs and Las Vegas Night Owls. As the Nashville Chefs continue to roll, the Las Vegas Night Owls look shakier than they have all year. They barely squeaked out a Dreambreaker over California today and already suffered a loss to Bay Area in their first match of the weekend. Things are shaping up in Challenger with Las Vegas then Nashville, California and DC, and then Bay Area and Florida pulling up the rear.

Friday, July 4th

Not shockingly, the crowds have been light in the Big Apple. They also aren’t being treated to a great weekend of pickleball.

It is official that the NY Hustlers are the worst team in MLP. Carolina got the big win today against Orlando with their revamped squad and SoCal was electric in San Clemente last week. The Hustlers have been anything but electric in their home state. They have been swept in convincing fashion twice by Columbus and then also by Miami this morning. The Helena Jansen upside situation does not look promising and there has been limited progression from their men since the time of the free agency draft. They have Orlando, Carolina and Brooklyn to finish out the weekend. What’s the line on a 0.5 over/under for total points in this event? 

The Hustlers also had a very odd situation in their meaningless final mixed match. Donald Young hurt his shoulder so Erik Forsythe, apparently an on-site alternate, subbed in for him down 0-6. Forsythe lives in the New York area and has some ties to the ownership group. Apparently he’s in for the Hustlers the rest of the weekend.

Carolina looked solid in their match against Orlando. The Hogs women prevailed over Orlando, but it was more surprising to see Bellamy/Emmrich take down the Squeeze #1 mixed team, Staksrud/Schneemann. This felt like a bit of a lucky win for the Hogs. Tuionetoa/Emmrich are going to have trouble against any team with two solid Premier women, Roscoe cannot play any hotter than he did against the Squeeze and Ben/Roscoe might have trouble finding wins as well. Regardless, the Hogs are much better and are no longer a laughing stock, at least for the time being. 

Yuta Funemizu has been a good story today. He played well against the Hustlers and Brooklyn. He and Khlif beat Newman/Koller and he and Mya Bui had game points against Koller/Rohrabacher to push it to a Dreambreaker. Brooklyn looks vulnerable as the AJ Koller sustainability train is heading in the wrong direction, so it was big for them to secure 3 points against Miami. 

Speaking of sustainable, the Nashville Chefs continue to roll. They won their 3^rd consecutive Dreambreaker in NYC over DC. They look to be the best Dreambreaker team outside of Las Vegas as they feature 4 players who are all very comfortable on the singles court. The only other non-Vegas team that features 4 regular singles players in Challenger is California. We underestimated Nashville’s ability to win enough games to get to Dreambreakers, and we’ll see how long this train can keep chugging down the tracks. Typically, Dreambreaker luck does not hold steady for a team that isn’t dominating them.

Thursday, July 3rd

It was a pretty uneventful day. The 3rd Premier match of the day got cancelled due to rain and the first two matches were 4-0 sweeps.

Parris Todd was out for Columbus and Dominique Schaefer was out for New York. It meant that we got Marcelo Hones (in for Todd) and Luana Stanciu (in for Schaefer) provided us with some of the worst pickleball we have seen all year in the first women’s match of the day. Thankfully, the crowds were light. Hard to take anything away from it, other than Stanciu needs to work on her right side kitchen game.

Yuta Funemizu subbed in for Jay Devilliers for Miami, as Jay’s wife is due to have a baby. It put Miami in a very tough spot and they end up getting swept. Bui was on the left and the tools remain high end, but there also remain some things that need to be cleaned up.

The Nashville Chefs are a Dreambreaker machine. They go 2-0 with 2 unsustainably tight Dreambreaker wins. They have 4 players that know how to play pickleball and can all play singles. Nothing free.

Las Vegas lost to Collin Johns and the Bay Area Breakers. Collin played the left in men’s getting a win and squeaked out a win with Angie Walker in mixed against the Night Owls #2 mixed team. It’s amazing at Challenger was an engaged Collin Johns can do. He’s so consistent and that’s the biggest difference in Challenger.