Go Team Go
Sunday, May 14, 2023

A rare spring scheduled event, but a unique one at that, as a new team tourney format was adopted by co-hosts Vincent and Jason at your service. It was an uncharacteristically hot day but also worked in our favour to free up the public courts from the randos on site beforehand. The tree-lined venue at Cariboo Hill afforded some shade, and Steve's best friend Fanny (the water fueled mister fan) helped too. Four color-adorned teams were assembled with mostly familiar dog faces and a few rookies making their debuts including Bree, Michelle, Jihe and Caroline.

The combo roles in mens, womens, mixed and singles games added a spicy flavour to the matches and having mates to cheer (or jeer) each other was a treat too. Prelim round 1 looked great for Team White as mens pair Ray/Jason went undefeated, and womens pair Ani/Michelle went 2-1 to claim the early top seed. Meanwhile, Team Blue's women pair saw Bree/Cindy going 0-3 all via razor thin 20-22 defeats under the rally point scoring system (adopted for time management reasons) but mens' pair Vincent/Sherman dropped just one match by a 2-point margin, which kept them tied in third position.

The next prelim stage introduced mixed and singles matches and Team Red's powerful duo of Don/Jihe mowed down their opponents, while Henry and Caroline were also on fire in the singles portions, all en route to a collective 8-1 team record, coupled with Team White's 0-3 singles flops, suddenly Team Red were the top seeds heading into the medal round. Thankfully spouse/superfans Richard and Chris showed up by this time and volunteered to fire up the BBQ so our hungry competitors could be fed in time (as we ran later than expected).

So all teams juggled rankings in each of the prelim stages and still the final four seedings were turned on its head as 4th seeded Team Black delivered upsets in both the semis and finals, captained by UK import, Leanne with her dutiful foot soldiers (May, Steve and Greg), collecting $100 in GC glory besting each of their opponents in third game tie-break fashion!

Hollywood could not have scripted this any better (for one team) while it was a fun way to spend a hot sunny day of pickleball for all. Many thanks to all the volunteers that helped make this one possible... now get back to practice!

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