MLP New York 2025 – 5 Takeaways – No Surprise

We had some reservations about having pickleball over the Independence Day long weekend, and the anecdotal situation with MLP in New York indicates that it is not the best time to get people locked into pro pickleball. The APP had an event over the weekend as well, which seems especially odd given that they are only holding events about once per month.

The Brooklyn franchise (formerly DC) has done a fantastic job of building roots for their organization. The Washington D.C. event last year was arguably the best regular season event purely in terms of fan energy and attendance throughout the weekend. Unfortunately, with the unprecedented franchise city trade, Brooklyn was left with only a short period of time to get butts in seats for a difficult weekend as well as a difficult location for fans to get to. The lineup of teams was also not the best from a viewership interest perspective.

It was a lot of obstacles for Brooklyn to overcome, and they did a decent job, all things considered, but it might have been the lowest energy MLP event of 2025 so far.

1. No Surprise – The predictability of outcomes remains the overriding theme of 2025. Orlando was a nice little story to begin the season, but their hot start was propped up by a soft schedule that has become much more difficult. Although there have been some good storylines this season, we have not had a single team outside of the preseason top 7 find a way to break into that upper echelon grouping.

Brooklyn, despite requiring on-site alternates for the past two events, has been able to keep the ship afloat amidst a rather forgiving schedule. A similarly forgiving schedule allowed the Columbus Sliders to solidify their playoff position.

Carolina was undoubtedly friskier in NYC with the additions of Etta Tuionetoa and Roscoe Bellamy but, unsurprisingly, they couldn’t find a win against either Brooklyn or Columbus in NYC.

Anything can happen in a given game or match. Miami’s women upset Columbus’s women before dropping the next 3 games of the match. Roscoe Bellamy/Tammy Emmrich had wins against Jackie Kawamoto/Riley Newman as well as Lacy Schneemann/Federico Staksrud, but one game is far different than an entire match, including the Dreambreaker.

The template remains in MLP that, if you don’t have two strong women that fit as a left/right pairing, you are basically SOL. In 2024, there was a clear dividing line between the teams that had two quality women that fit together well and those that did not. The same story continues in 2025 as we patiently wait for the depth of the female talent pool to catch up to the depth on the men’s side.

Until that changes, we are unlikely to see any major surprises in the 2025 season.

2. Revisiting the Revamped Hogs – The good news for this team is that Roscoe Bellamy and Tammy Emmrich showed they may be able to get some unexpected wins. In one game to 11, Bellamy has the ability to go full hog on opponents and take over the entire court to create chaos, which led to a couple of surprise wins for the Carolina #2 mixed duo.

The bad news for this team is that Etta and Ben looked vulnerable. They lost to Koller/Rohrabacher after being up 8-4 and then they also lost to Parris/Andrei, although that Columbus loss may have been more due to a less than fully engaged Ben.

Speaking of a fully engaged Ben, we got a very strong effort from Ben for most of the weekend, which is another piece of good news for Carolina.

This Hogs team as currently constructed is maybe as good as the 8th team in the league with the capability to knock off better teams on the right day given that Ben is still capable of winning two matches on his own. Over the course of the season, we don’t expect this team can compete consistently and they are vulnerable to lose to lesser teams with their female situation along with Ben no longer being a sure-fire bet in any game.

Tuionetoa/Emmrich’s wins over the Orlando and Miami women could have gone either way and the momentum of those wins propelled them to being able to find 10 points on the weekend. Losses in either of those games could have been quite harmful to the energy and engagement of Ben heading into the rest of the match.

For the time being, Carolina is far from a free win for anyone in MLP.

3. Speaking of Free Wins – The New York Hustlers currently represent as close to a free win as any team has ever been in MLP. Leaving aside the Donald Young injury, the team looked abysmal in NYC.

They spent a little bit of money to shore up their men in the draft but neither Zane Ford nor Donald Young have progressed nearly as much as they must have hoped. Not spending any money on women and then using those slots to select two women with little to no upside (Dominique Schaefer and Ling Wei Kong, traded for Danna Funaro) and one very green woman (Helena Spiridis) has gone about as badly as expected.

The Hustlers and the SoCal Hard Eights were the obvious bottom-feeding teams to start off the season, but they have gone in two different directions as the season has progressed. The Hard Eights have used both waiver periods effectively to identify young, exciting female talent, and they were the most exciting team to watch in San Clemente.

Getting some cash and Helena Jansen was a fine move on its face by the Hustlers, but the play of Jansen for the Hustlers was not encouraging from a future potential perspective. The loss of Donald Young made things tougher as the “hometown hero,” Erik Forsythe, who was not UPA signed as of the 2nd waiver period on June 24th but was somehow one of the on-site alternates, stepped in to cover for Young in bizarrely made-for-TV-like circumstances.

They have secured a lot of cash from other teams and that appears to be all that matters to the Hustlers now.

4. Yuta Funemizu – Miami was put in a daunting position this weekend as Jay Devilliers was out with his wife having a baby. However, it did give us a close look at the former soft tennis champion, Yuta Funemizu.

Yuta was a good story early on Friday as he actually won the matches he played in. He went 2-0 against the hapless Hustlers to secure the win there and then won his men’s game with Noe Khlif against Koller/Newman.

Funemizu is a fun watch because he is so unique. He has an extreme grip on his paddle that allows him to sit heavy on his forehand while still protecting his body with that same forehand side of the paddle. He’s also somehow able to hit a backhand flick with his grip. It seems impossible that he can do these things, but he makes it work.

We can’t say we’re all that bullish on the long-term prospects of Funemizu. He is still early in his development and has very fast hands, but we are not huge believers that his unique grip can work at the highest level of the game.

Nevertheless, he’s a fascinating player to watch and appears to be a good guy to root for. He’s definitely worth monitoring.

5. Camera Glitch – How is it possible that we spent 4 days watching matches where the side camera angle was half a second to one second ahead of the camera angle from behind the court?

How could someone not figure out how to resolve this incredibly basic issue that we have never seen before watching pro pickleball, much less pro sports in general?

Bonus APP Takeaway – We don’t really cover the APP at all since we have fired the blog back up this year. There’s not enough time, the competition isn’t good enough, and we don’t get access to ESPN+ up here in Canada. Sidebar: why do the pro tours have something against making their product easily accessible to the masses?

We are getting some funkier results as the year has gone on at APP events and thought it was worth noting. It highlights the increasing level of depth we are seeing across the sport, which we wrote about fairly recently.

The 2025 APP results have generally featured a few of the best teams winning a high percentage of the time in doubles, not unlike what we have seen at PPAs in the past. However, the early to middle rounds have generally had more parity because you have a lot of solid players, but not many who are good enough to separate from the pack.

Earlier in the year, we had a steady diet of Jack Munro/Will Howells beating Erik Lange/Max Manthou. At the APP Newport event over the weekend, Howells/Munro lost to Patrick Kawka/Kyle Koszuta in 3 games and Lange/Manthou lost to Richard Livornese/Tanner Tomassi, both in the semi-finals – Tomassi/Livornese went on to win.

The Australian duo, Emilia Schmidt/Danni-Elle Townsend, barely lost in the finals, 11-8 in the third, to Megan Fudge/Jillan Braverman, who are not a lock to win APPs these days. Nicole Eugenio/Christine Maddox took down Emily Cederquist/Yana Newell in two games – Cederquist and Newell both won MLP Challenger titles back in 2023.

In Mixed, Megan Fudge/Jack Munro lost in 3 games to Sofia Sewing/Casey Diamond while Bobbi Oshiro/Will Howells lost to Max Manthou/Christine Maddox in 3 games.

It is only one tournament, but these are some of the APP’s best teams losing to players that they weren’t losing to in 2024 or earlier in 2025. Bobbi Oshiro won a Challenger title with Miami in 2024, and Will Howells has been balling out with the New Jersey 5’s.

There was a time not too long ago when UPA CEO, Connor Pardoe, stated that “Challenger is superior” in response to a question posed by Anna Bright of how the talent at PPA Challengers compared to APP events. There may come a time when PPA Challenger events have more depth, but it is laughable to compare the two right now. There are teams at PPA Challenger events that can compete with some of the best APP teams, but there are so many more players of a certain level of quality at APP events currently.

It is easier than it ever has been to forget about the APP, but it would be interesting to see how the APP players stacked up compared to the UPA talent pool. Once you get outside of the top 25 or so in each gender of the UPA signed players, the line starts to become real thin when comparing the APP versus UPA level of play.

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