RESULTS - The Quick and The Dirty - Team Event - 15 Oct

Team Jeff Wins!

The Quick and The Dirty

The first ever EvenSquash team event

Team Anjo			Team Jeff
Anjo G.	5.0		Jeff D	3.0
Jim Cotter	3.5		Jorge	4.0
Todd Hollosi	3.0		Yoann Brugiere	3.0
Luis	3.0		Frank Gary	2.5
Cat G.	2.5		Wayne J.	4.5

This is the first ever EvenSquash Team Event and just a recap on how this works: This is not your typical squash team match up where the captain builds the player line up and then both teams play their line ups and every player plays... this is not baseball. This is more like football, the captain needs to decide who to put in the game and when based on what the other team does. It gets even harder because you only play 3 of the 5 players on the team and those 3 that play cannot have their handicaps add up to more than 11.0. It is going to require some thinking, strategy, and cool hands.

So - Starting off with Team Anjo winning the racket spin and electing to receive. Team Jeff now had to post their first player and they chose Wayne J., a solid 4.5 level player. Team Anjo thought their best chance at beating Wayne was with Todd H., their solid 3.0 player. Using the EvenSquash handicap system, the games in the match would be a 15 to 5 race (Wayne to Todd respectively) and both teams were confident their player could get the points they needed to win.

Match 1 - It was tight! It started looking pretty grim for Wayne because Todd came out of the gate with two wins (5 - 8) and (5-9). But that just seemed to wake Wayne up. Anjo used both of his timeouts to both help Todd and to slow Wayne's building momentum. It went the full 5 games, right down to the last game where both players needed 1 point to win the match (5 - 14). Match 1 goes to Team Anjo.

Match 2 - Equally tough but with more pressure. It was Team Anjo's turn to post a player and they picked Jim C. (3.5) to play their second match. Team Jeff, planning to recover from the first loss, thought that a good counter to Jim would be to post Jeff D. (3.0). From the EvenSquash handicap system, this made a 11-8 race, Jim - Jeff. Jeff came out serious and made sure he got to every ball, winning the first game 8-5. Jim was not having that and the second game went to the wire with 11-7. There was tension, lots of lets called, controversial calls, and timeouts and tense times. The last two games were 8-8 and 3-8. Match 2 goes to Team Jeff, 3 games to 1.

Match 3 - It's one match each.... this is how the pot boils. Team Jeff's turn to post and they chose Yoann B. (3.0) to anchor their team. Team Anjo was sure Luis P. (3.0) could handle Yoann in an even match up. This was a fierce game with long rallies, great gets, and lots of fun for the spectators. The final scores went Yoann to Luis, 11 - 9, 11 - 6, 7-11, and 11 - 6. Match 3 goes to Team Jeff.

Team Jeff splits the box of balls by winning with 2 of 3 matches and 8 games to 5.

Team Anjo splits the warm can of Fosters that sat in the sun during the event (about 90 min).

Thanks again to everyone that helped and played in the first ever EvenSquash Team Event. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about the format. The next event will have an 11.5 max handicap to allow a bit more freedom in player selection. The event lasted about an hour and a half so next time we'll have sudden death play start at 90 min into the event to keep things moving quickly.

On that note: I am working on another team event - bigger, better, with 6-8 teams! I'm shooting for Saturday Dec 3 and a $25 entry fee. If you think you want to play or want to form your own team, let me know and start building your team now.

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