The Coachella Valley Scorpions nearly pulled off a clean sweep of all three divisions of the MLP Champions Series Pickleball at the Center Courts in Glendale, Arizona, but tied their final match of the 4-day
competition to fall out of first place in the Premier (50’s) Division for the long weekend.
It all began on Thursday when the Masters (60’s) took on the 5th ranked Phoenix Firebirds. It was all tied throughout the gender divisions and into the first of the two mixed matches. With only two remaining mixed matches, local partners Kim Jagd (Indian Wells) and Glenn Erickson (Desert Hot Springs) took control of their match (11-7,11-6) to put the Scorpions into a one game lead with one final match in progress. Yvonne Ting (a sub for the weekend) and Howard Mendel notched the final win (8-11,11-4,11-4) to gain the Scorpions their first Team Battle win, 5-3.
Because many of the regular rostered players in the league chose to participate in the World Championships held in Vietnam this past weekend, the uncertainty of team pairings was even greater providing for greater intrigue in both the Masters and the Premier Divisions.
Thursday afternoon pitted the Scorpions against the LAXtreme who were holding down second place in the rankings. A similar pattern was developing as in the morning when both the gender matches were split again with Team Battle at 2-2. The Scorp Squad took control winning three of the four mixed matches resulting in another 5-3 win.
Friday morning saw the Scorpions play to near perfection as they defeated the Kansas City Stingers convincingly 8-0. Because of heavy attrition to the event in Vietnam, the Stingers were severely short-handed and could only muster four winning games for the match.
Going into the final team battle with a 3-0 record gave the Scorpions a lot of confidence against the third-ranked Denver Iconics. Again, the gender matches were split, and it stood at 2-2 to start the mixed round. This time Denver claimed the first two mixed matches to put the battle almost out of reach unless Coachella Valley could win both final mixed matches. Ting and Mendel won their match 11-10, 11-1, while Jagd and Scott Burr (La Quinta) needed to go three games (11-1, 5-11, 11-5) to get the win and force a tie at 4-4.
The winner is determined by a “Team-breaker” where partners play a 2-point segment and then rotate in new partners. The Scorpions were able to control late in the game, with Barbara Dunne hitting a decisive corner to corner forehand winner for an 11-7 win.
Finishing with a 4-0 record for the two days, the Scorpions moved into a 3-way tie for second in the overall standings and walked away with a winner’s check for $3,000. Howard Mendel led the way for the men with a 7-1 record, while Scott Burr followed closely with a 6-2 record. Kim Jagd and Barbara Dunne led the women with identical 6-2 outings.
Saturday morning saw both the Prime (40’s) and Premier (50’s) energized by the Masters’ victories and prize money.
In the 40’s, Nor-Cal stalwarts A.C. Myer and Annie Tichenor began the day against the LAXtreme with a three-game win as the team rolled to a 5-1 win losing only one match 15-14 (in the Prime competitions, the mixed matches are played one game to 15, win by one).
In the afternoon battle, the Scorps pitched a shutout, despite an extremely close men’s gender match where Kyle McMakin and Bret Bucher went the distance to win 10-11, 11-9, 11-10.
On Sunday against the Denver Iconics, the Scorpions began another dominating day with a 6-0 win. And in their final battle of the weekend, they repeated their 6-0 performance to give them an amazing 23-1 record for the weekend for first place and a winner’s check of $1,600.
The Scorpion Premier team (50+) was tasked with matching the performance of their fellow teams to complete the sweep, and they came ever so close.
Starting out against Denver Saturday morning, the Masters had a 4-2 lead at the end of the gender play and turned it on in the mixed play with a 5-1 advantage to win the team battle 9-3. Unfortunately, Keith Jain strained a glute muscle at the end of his mixed match, winning 2-1 in games, but retiring for the rest of the weekend.
With Howard Mendel, from the 60’s team, subbing in for Jain, the Scorp Squad took on the Detroit Disruptors in the second match of the day. Lines 1 and 3 took their matches in both genders to spot the team a 4-2 lead. Despite losing the first three lines of mixed matches, falling behind 4-5, the Scorpion stalwarts came back to win the final 3 mixed matches to secure a 7-5 battle win. All three mixed pairs won in two games, highlighted by the double sub team of Keri Cruz (subbing for Keri Olson) and Howard Mendel (subbing for Keith Jain) picking up their first 2-0 match wins.
Sunday began sunny and bright and HOT on the verge of a total team sweep with two team battles to play. First, it was the LAXtreme to present a formidable challenge to the Scorpions dominance. The gender matches were again split to a 3-3 tie so the mixed matches would determine the Scorpions perfection – or not. After the first round of 3 mixed battles, the Extreme eked out a slight 2-1 advantage to make it 4-5 with 3 to go. However, the Scorpions swept the final three mixed matches to clinch the team battle 7-5 and continue their drive for a spot in the history books.
The final team in the way was the Phoenix Firebirds who were ranked just behind the Scorpions in the standings prior to the weekend. It was undoubtedly going to be a close match. Again, after the gender matches it was tied at 3-3, and the Scorpions took a lead after the first three mixed matches making the score 5-4.
With the Prime Scorpions cheering their teammates on having already completed their overwhelming weekend performance, the Premier team could only muster one win of the three, thus ending their drive for perfection with a tie.
Normally this results in a “team-breaker” to determine the winner but due to the league’s travel rule prohibiting tiebreakers on Sunday afternoon, the winner was to be determined by games won in the match. It was 16-15 win for the Phoenix Firebirds, preventing a Scorpion weekend sweep.
Nevertheless, the team continues to improve and impress with outstanding performances from the pairings of Cord Robbins/Piet Aldrich and Scott Burr/Dhruv Manchanda who went both went 4-0 in the gender matches for the weekend. Robbins also went 3-1 in mixed with Sabrina Guilebeaux to finish 7-1 for the weekend. However, this pales in comparison to the 3.5 million views that his father-daughter wedding dance got just a few weeks ago.
The Scorpions will have four weeks to continue improving for the next event in Columbus, OH on Oct. 8-11. This will be the final event of the season before the MLP Champions Series Pickleball Championships to be held in Dallas Oct. 28-Nov 1.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Scorpions nearly pull off rare clean sweep in successful Arizona trip
