4th Place:
(11) Navratil/Young is a combo we saw on the APP tour in 2022. They were having a blast playing together as they sped it up early and dared teams to test their hand speed. They took out (6) Devilliers/Daescu and (14) Hewett/Tardio before falling in a heartbreaker to (7) Arnold/Wilson. With no Matt Wright to team with Riley Newman and no Callan Dawson to team with Tyler Loong, DJ/Zane made a nice run falling just short of championship Sunday.
Seattle Pioneer MLP teammates (4) Wright/Dizon defeated the Florida Smash combo of (5) Irvine/Johnson in a minor quarter final upset. Wright was impressive on the left, aggressively dinking at Johnson’s outside foot with consistent success as she forced multiple pops up and unforced errors. Wright needed to take that aggression up a notch vs (1) Waters/Parenteau in order to be competitive but did not as they lost 11-0, 11-2.
3rd Place:
(2) Jansen/Jones are one of the most successful new partnerships of 2023 as their chemistry looks like a match made in heaven. They are both warriors and clearly love to battle together (Jones was seen crying in a post-match interview when talking about Jansen after their quarterfinal victory). They earned their 4th medal of the year together but won’t be happy with their semifinal performance losing to (6) Schneemann/Kawamoto 8&1.
(4) Frazier/Johnson handily beat (6) McGuffin/Ignatowich in the quarterfinals. Frazier continued to show his right-side dominance, often handcuffing and surprising Ignatowich on speed ups. They eventually lost to (1) Johns/Johns 3&8 in the semifinals. JW has to take more court and add a speed up off the bounce if they want to compete with the Johns’ boys as his shot selection is becoming too predictable.
2nd Place:
(7) Arnold/Wilson finally made it to a championship Sunday taking out (11) Navratil/Young in an 11-9 third set thriller in the semifinals. We thought this partnership would take off after all their MLP success together but it took them some time to find their rhythm. They take home a well-deserved silver medal losing to the Johns’ 8,6 & 9.
(6) Kawamoto/Schneemann upset both (3) Bright/Todd and (2) Jansen/Jones en route to championship Sunday before meeting their match in (1) Parenteau/Waters losing 9,3, & 8 in the final. Schneemann’s ability to hold her own on the left vs top tier female talent was extremely eye opening as she was one of the last picks in the MLP premier league draft. The lefty Jade Kawamoto played the right and was sporting a new paddle, the Selkirk Power Invikta Air, giving her game some much needed firepower on speed ups and counters. Great run by these two to earn a silver.