12/29/2008

F.F. SuperBowl.


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In the Battle between "Numbers Girl and Lucky Boy", it looks like the luck continued one more week! Living up to his #1 ranking, Team Toad pulled out the victory. Toad was able to best Team Mary by 40+ points thanks to that insane beat down that the Eagles delivered to the Cowboys. Both Teams had to rely on some backup RB's and hunches to get points in the tough week 17 conditions. Props go out to Team Mary who made it to the superbowl. It was tough representing the weak division 2, but she did pull out a win over the #2 seed in the semi's to get to the Final.
Team Meaney had himself another 140+ point week and is seriously going to think about making this a points league next year, as he ends the season #1 in points. Now I'm going to have to go into the r&d department to figure out next years 8th place draft pick.



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12/22/2008

Fantasy Update!



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Team TennisToad has Just Beat Team Meaney to make it to the FF Superbowl.
Thanks in no small part to the NFL instant replay challenge system.

Now it's on to the FF Superbowl. Where Team TennisToad will be playing against Team Mary. She will be looking for revenge after losing twice to Team TennisToad in the regular season by less than 5 points each time. Mary's hoping that the third time is the Charm.

12/13/2008

We Win

Ok I'm going to make it short and sweet this week since I'm going to be humping Poles restoring phone service in the Merrimack valley for the better part of the rest of this month.

Courts 1 thru 3 won easily this week with Arnie and Andy taking care of business in straight sets on court 1. Tony and Don didn't play games winning in straights also and on court 3 Mike E made his first appearance of the year teaming up with Dave to Win in straight sets yet again..

Now I don't really know what happened to the rest of us but. Todd and Frank lost in straight sets with Todd Chocking the only Set point they had. Mickey and George also lost in straights against a 5 team that really wasn't a 5 team.

Next week is a tough one. We need to travel to Lynnfield which is only 7 minutes further than Northeast... Hopefully if I get some time I'll do our Holiday Version of our Blog.

4th place here we come!

12/07/2008

Old Time Tennis

Ah the Willows. The warmth of the blue courts, the dimness of the lights, the 4 to 1 beating that was delivered. Such good memories. No one has seen a win like this since the rivalry was formed way back in the Heyday. Not since 1974 when such veterans as Bouncing Bob and Lightning Mickey wielded their rackets like Flynn and Fairbanks, pirating their way to riches and Victories. When King George played this great game he could not imagine the moxie and stratagem that the Cedardale team would use to gain the upperhand. Not since 1926 when a certain Sir Walter........ "HEY WTF"

"Bud get the hell away from my computer"

"I told you before, go back to the Globe. And get some new pants you look like a clown"



Last time I do this in the special collections room in the library.

Ok to follow up. We only lost 3 sets this week. Unfortunately 2 of them were on the same court. Our only loss this week came way down in the 5th position where Lightning Mickey and Zeke lost a close one in two sets.

Jumping over to the Winning courts we find. Prince Adam and Armie Arnie taking an easy first position win, giving up only 3 games in the process.

On court 2, Toad and Dancing Dave had a tight first set and an easy second set, But the real news from court 2 will happen later on Sunday when Team TennisToad Beats up on Team Meaney in FF.

Court 3 Saw Dangerous Don aka Double D and TwoKnees Tonee win in three sets after having a let down in the second set. Ok only one more bad pun to go.
On court 4 The Blur and The Rock won a straight set victory. Ok that's it, stop grinning in disgust. And get ready because we play The Willows again next week at home and when they read this their gonna want revenge, or Dramamine.

Now on to important matters... As some of you know The Holiday season is upon us. As some of you also know we have to get gifts for the signif others. Well here is a Warning and safety video for all us Men. Watch and Be safe out there, We need you on the Court. as always don't forget to turn up the volume.

11/17/2008

Use the Force Toad

Well we are back on track after a 3-2 victory over a road weary Lexington team. We were missing some big guns this week, but everyone stepped up and took care of business this week.

I could only see one match this week due to the Cedardale on Cedardale action taking place on courts 1-3. So I'm going to meditate and give you my best psychic recollection of the events of the day.

In Position 1 the Team of Dave and Todd managed to get 2 sets before their opponents got even 1 set. Does that make sense? meditation is hard.

Over in 2, Tony and Don used the Force to overcome their noisy opponents. They were blowhards, and sounded alot like the bubble blower.

In 3rd Chad and Charlie, aka the Double C's, were able to best lexington by using Charlies speed and Chad's volleys. Chad actually was returning from the Lotus position.

Over on 4, Mickey and Frank ran out of time and somehow didn't win enough games to win. Frank was still acting like he was on vacation and was wasting time in the third set trying to get Chad to show him how to return in the Lotus position. See what happens when you go away on non-team approved vacations.

Now way over on 5 it's just a hazy fog of optic yellow lines, my head is starting to hurt and from what I can see George and Mike are discussing Concerts while the two guys from Lexington are hitting aces and high-fiving their way to victory.

Now while I'm floating around outside here, let me tell you tonight's lottery numbers which will be yellow,blue,28 and 7. Also as a true test of my powers where you left the car keys. On the Kitchen Table.

We now get two weeks off to rest and recoup. Don't forget to Eat alot of Turkey, although it might be cannibalism for some on this team. ;-)

Oh yeah Wilson not happy "only 3 wins this week."







He's a tough one.

Make him happy again.. Sweep a team after the Holidays.

11/09/2008

Ouch!




The Streak has been derailed, and this picture sums up the week. We managed to only win one match this week.

In summary / I'm lazy fashion / here are the results

1)Adam and Andy = Loss
2)Dave and Todd =WIN
3)Don and Tony =Loss
4)Chad and George = Loss
5)Mickey and Eric =Loss

The good news from this week is that George is off the disabled list and back to playing, and Adam didn't forget his keys. The Bad is that we have fallen out of a playoff spot again. But we should be able to get ourselves back there.

Next week we play a Lexington team that should be stiff and sore and have jet-lag after the long drive to Cedardale. So Let's start another Sweep Streak.

10/27/2008

Bye Bye Bye



Yep that's what happened this week.. Two weeks in a row.. A quick recap of the Matches is in order so let's see what happened.

1: Adam and Todd = Straight set Win
2: Courteny and Bob = Straight set Win (only gave up 3 games)
3: Chad and Arnie = Straight set Win (only gave up 3 games)
5: Frank and Mickey = Straight set Win

4: Tony and Don = Not a straight set Win.. What Happened?


You know it was a good week when the only thing you can complain about is a 3 set victory.

So What do we get for all of our hard work these past 6 weeks? Beer?, Women?, Beer+Women? Nope, Just a Week off. Now I know that there are some members of the Team that have taken other weeks off. Some have been approved, others haven't. You know who you are! But for the Cal Ripkens, our day has come. So Next Saturday rake some leaves, sleep late, Buy one of those rock things you can hide a key in, And get ready to continue the streak. We are in a playoff spot and this year let's not let it get swept away from us.

10/22/2008

Breaking News!!!

There is a Woot-off going on right now.. And We are in 4th place...

10/21/2008

We got a Puppy!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die



A puppy is the First Step

10/18/2008

Win...Baby...Win...and then get Married..

Boy are the Cedardale courts looking clean... Cause we just Swept em of the Northeast invasion that picked the wrong week to show up...

We have officially started our first win streak of the Year... As an update to last weeks win, we beat last years 2nd place(regular season) Winchester team 3-2 in a game of positional chess with Dave and Chad getting the Check-Mate on court 2.

Now this week we just dominated a depleted and out of sync Northeast team. All Matches were decided in straight sets and in only a couple of sets did we let our opponents get 4 games. So in no particular order , just numerical order are the results.

1.) Tony and Chad = Win
2.) Bob and Dave =Win
3.) Todd and Andy =Win
4.) Mickey and Frank = Win
5.) Adam and Courtney= Win

Can you believe that Adam and Courtney picked up a win in 5? Considering that they were at a Wedding? Well thanks to the power of Love they did..... Congrats to Ryan on hooking up for Life!!


First photo from wedding.


Well next week we are at Bass River... The good news is that we can keep the Streak alive, and their best players are going to be in Arizona for the Nationals!!! Prime time to get some more points...

10/12/2008

We Win!

Hey we finally got our first team win of the season.... Updates Soon... Right now I'm watching the Pats game hoping they score only 4 touchdowns with no fieldgoals.

10/04/2008

Spare Key is in the fake Rock

Well we are off to the Best start we have ever had...NOT...

This week we traveled all the way to Westford to get our first team win. But it didn't happen. With the help of a default we lost 3-2. Positions 2 and 4 came thru with great 3 set victories. On court 2 Chad and Dave(both 2-1 now), gave up the first set in a tie-breaker and then steamrolled losing only one other game in the final two sets. Over on court 4 Mickey and Frank came through with another see-saw match, winning in the third set by a couple of breaks.

The odd numbered positions were just that this week. Tony and Don playing in 1 got beat in straights in a hard hitting affair. While over on the other Odd court 3. Bob and Todd lost a very winnable match by games when they were pressed on time in the third set. Todd played like poop.

Next week we are against Last years playoff Winchester team at home. Lets try to stop the bleeding. Ice pack for my Head... STAT..

9/29/2008

Won One

Ok I was waiting for the Bailout to come to some sort of agreement before I posted the Horror of Saturday's matches.

Let's just get this out of the way as quick as possible. Chad and Tony won in 3rd position playing against a hung-over college kid who got lost going to a club he has played at before. ;-) I'm not really bitter

The rest of us Lost to people who went to bed early , ate well,warmed up for an hour before the match and had professional coaching between sets. Adam and Courtney (Loss), Todd and Dave(loss), Bob and Don(loss), Frank and Mickey(loss).

Ok it wasn't really like that, but that sounds better to 8 of us.

That was the bad news.. The good news is that it's early in the season, and how many weeks in a row can we play last years playoff teams? Next week we take on Westford at that ungodly time of 9:30. I've been told that the sun is up at that time and you won't need to use your headlights to get there.

Anyone have any lineup suggestions?? We are going with the same 10 people as of now.

9/21/2008

Deja-Vu

Well week one didn't exactly go as planned. But what does? This year we started our first week off the same way we started last year. With a 3-2 loss at the hands of Newburyport. Not to bad considering that Newburyport is projected to be this years a1 division champs, After losing in the finals last year 3-2 to the insanely good Manchester team.

So what happened this week? Well let us take a look.

Starting things off at the ungodly time of 9:30am. Positions 1 and 2 faced some tough competition. On court 1 Adam and Courtney picked the wrong side of the court to start the match on. Seeing as how anyone on the north side of the court couldn't miss and everyone on the south side looked as if they hadn't ever held a racquet before. They lost in the streaky (6-1,1-6,6-1) kind of way. On Court 2 Chad and Tony didn't have much luck either as they started out slow. Once they got it together they were in a position to push the match to 3 sets but ended up losing the 5 point tie breaker.(6-1,7-6)

Now for the teams that got to eat brunch. We almost stunned em. But didn't. On court 3, Dave and Todd needed a 3rd set to put away a veteran team.(6-3,2-6,6-2). Court 4 saw the match of the day as Mike and Eric facing certain defeat, down 2 breaks in the 2nd set, and after losing the 1st set. Came back and won the 2nd set and continued their momentum to pull to a big lead in the 3rd. Winning the match by one game.(3-6,7-5,5-3) On court 5 Mickey and Frank had some bad luck having to play a team that was just playing great. (6-4,6-3)

Last year we started off the same way, Ended the first half 1 point behind this team for first place. This year lets end the 1st half 1 point or more ahead of them. Next up is one of the Willows teams. Dave says the willows are push-overs. So lets beat em.

9/08/2008

Season 3.. Coming Soon

And by soon I mean less than 2 weeks. Get ready because you are going to play. This year we are looking to improve on our 5th place finish from last year. We have drafted well this year and haven't lost many veterans to free agency. We have 4 less matches this year and we don't have to drive to Winchester 3 times. Also if I forget to add your name to the e-mail, that I will send out after the Men's final on monday night, then e-mail me. (i'm getting forgetful in my old age).

4/14/2008

There is always next year.

Well It's done. Not officially, but done none the less. See there is this little matter of a make-up match against the 1-24 Winchester team. But we won't worry about that.

Finishing up the Season this week we were able to take 4 out of 5 from a Lynnfield team that looked like they had already packed it in for the season. Defaulting positions 4 and 5 they had a tough task ahead of them trying to sweep our top 3 positions. Which they couldn't do. They loaded up their 1st position and won a close match in 1 against Jason and Courtney. Thus ending their season high, 3 match Win Streak. Then over on 2 they tried again and almost pulled out another improbable win. But Tony and Don pulled out a dramatic Match tie-break in overtime to finish up their season with a win. On 3 Lynnfield tried once more to get one last victory in their season. But they really had no chance against Dean and George.

With this weeks win our season totals are pretty much set. We will finish in 5th place!!! With only 25 of 26 matches played we own 5th. Our season Match wins are 17-8... Better than 2 to 1, and our individual matches put us at 72-53. Not to shabby, we will finish with 90 points and after taking into account the 6 points we won't get for the 26th match we will only miss the playoffs by about 4-5 points.

This season was a Tale of Two Halves.. In the First half we had set teams almost every week and everyone was available to play. We rolled through a 10 week win streak and put ourselves in 2nd place, 1 point behind 1st at the Break.

We should've made the playoffs but then the 2nd half was Brutal. We lost a bunch of key players in the 2nd half. The Schedule did not help us out any either. It seemed that every week was an away match that was 100 miles away. Set teams weren't able to play together and New players were thrown into the fire without any opportunity to practice with us.

Thanks to Everyone who Played and Helped out this year. It was a long season and now we can relax play outdoors and not have to drive to Winchester and Lexington for another year!!
Like the Red Sox of Old... "We'll get em next year"

-Todd

Oh Yeah!

Congrats to whomever picked us finishing outside the top 4 in the poll to the right... The rest of us, who incandescently picked us making the playoffs. Will be waiting for you by the Dumpster to give you your Prize.

4/07/2008

5th place and a 4-1 Victory.

Ok it looks like we are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. But we are firmly in 5th and should end the season minus one match, only 8-10 points out of the playoffs. And considering that we would probably get 5 or 6 points against the canceled match(winchester-bads) .That means we will have missed the playoffs by only 3-4 real points. Not to shabby considering the 2nd half saw our team struggle with injuries and Vacations. More on this after next weeks match..

This week we traveled to the dimly lit courts of The Willows. Where we put on our night vision goggles and took 4 out of the 5 matches. It was almost a perfect sweep. But we ran out of time on court 3. Dean and Bob took it all the way into extended overtime, losing by the way of a tiebreaker at 6-5 in the third. They got their moneys worth of court time this weekend.

Court one saw Courtney and Jason extended their win streak up to 3, with a straight set victory. Court 2 had Todd and Andy playing a let-down set and winning in 3. Court 4 had Don and George pull out a good win. And over on 5 Mickey and Frank are looking to strong for their opponents lately with another win in straight sets.

We have just one match left!! We actually have a make up match for a "snow out" but I think we can cancel that one since neither team has any chance of the playoffs. Plus who wants to go to Winchester again??? Not me.

4/01/2008

Vacation Over.

I'm Back! Thank the Lord.. Because I don't think I could have taken one more day of abuse. I mean how many 80 degree and sunny days can you stand. How many drop shots can you run down on the clay before you say, enough is enough I'm going home. How many times can you fire in a big serve only to have it lobbed back over your head. How many times do you have to scramble all over the court to make a few gets in a row, only to watch your partner laughing so hard he can't hit the next ball. (Yeah Paul I'm talking to you) I'll tell you one thing. Clay is evil, and slow. But it wasn't all fun and games. We went to the Sony Ericson Tournament where I did my best to recruit some new blood for the team. Unfortunately Cedardale doesn't pay enough for any of them to sign with us. Although I did steal their souls in the form of some pictures so maybe we can have a voodoo practice and get better. and thanks to Mr. GPS we didn't get lost in the bad section of town.

I know all you really care about is what happened in the matches.. Well I wasn't here so I don't really know. All I know is that somehow we lost to Westford. Westford.. I mean they are like the furthest team out on 495. It was a bad week. We lost 4-1. 4-1 can you believe it? Mike D got his first win against a cedardale team ever. But it wasn't all bad news. Jason got his first win of the season. When asked about Jason's first win Chad had this to say "Usually we all win and Jason loses, but this week he won and we lost".

Not to let Winning get him down Jason, came back earlier this week and Won again. This time his teammates also won. Beating a road weary Willows team at home 4-1. Making it a .500 win loss record during my vacation. We didn't lose ground and we didn't make up ground. With 2 scheduled weeks left in the season and one more if we need it, It's looking like we might have to buy tickets to watch the playoffs. But like Dean said earlier in the week "We are shooting for 5th place. The best place you can be in and not have to play in May"

3/15/2008

Quick update

Ok, Here are the results. Yes these are from this week. In fact they are from just a little over 2 hours ago. Really I'm not kidding. Ok here we go.

We won this weeks match 3-2 with the swing match coming on court 2. Courts 1 and 5 lost this week in straights. Jason and Courtney had a tough match losing by a break in each set(7-5,6-4). While Mickey playing with a sub Tom lost (6-2,6-2).

The middle of the lineup did the damage this week. George and Frank playing in 4. pulled out a first set tie break and then rolled in the second(7-6,6-2). Todd and Chad in 3 cruised to a straight setter(6-1,6-2). And the Swing match was won by Don and Tony in 2. Playing a tough fought battle, they were able to win by time. After losing the first and then winning the second they took a commanding 4 game lead with no time left(6-7,7-5,3-0).

Next week we are away again!! In Westford this time for a 9:30 drubbing.. I mean match victory.

3/10/2008

What Blog?

Ok let's see.. Where was I.. Oh yeah I remember, I was ready to jump off the mast, when we turned the ship around and won our last two matches.. 3 weeks ago we pulled off a 3-2 victory over the Bass River team. Then we had a snow out over the defaulting winchester team. And just 3 days ago we Beat one of the other Winchester teams 3-2 to continue our 2nd half win streak.

Now it's onto a mega roadtrip.. This week we travel to Lexington, Just like the Minutemen we are going there to kick some A$$. Then in the following week we are going to Westford. We are not in a playoff spot yet. But a couple of more weeks in the W column and we should be right there. Let's not be the only mens team to not make the playoffs this year..

2/09/2008

2 for 1

Ok this week you get a two for one update. Not because your special but because I'm lazy. Here we go.

Last week we played our third match of the second half against Winchester. It didn't go the way we wanted. We lost another close 3-2 match against another top 4 team. The quick wrap-up. The wins came on courts 3 and 4. Todd and Andy pulled out a great 3 setter and Don and Tony won two very tight sets, with the second in a tie break. The losses started on court one where Double J, Jeff and Jason lost by a game running out of time in the third set. Court 2 saw Dan and Bob have a rare loss. And over on 5 Mickey and New east coast transplant Frank lost in 3 sets, running out of gas having to play the young guys.

Fast forward to this week and we lost again. This time against a Weak Northeast team. This makes 4 in a row. This is not the streak we were trying for. We lost 3-2 again and Had a default. If not for the default we probably would have won 3-2. On to the results.... In first, Jason and Bob lost by two games with no time left on the clock. They just weren't able to pull ahead in the third set. On court 2 Adam and Todd pulled out a straight set win with Todd carrying Adam for most of the first set. ed: "That might not be acurate" Over on court 3 Don and Tony continued their great season winning a decisive match 1 and 1. At court 4 Mickey and Dean had a close 3 setter, with their opponents picking up the level at the right time in the end. Court 5 saw a Default, which would've been a very winnable match.

Oh well hopefully next week we can stop the bleeding with a Home match against Bass river.

1/27/2008

1 point Again :-(

Well that didn't work out the way we would've liked it this week. For the Third week in a row we came away with a team loss. It's been a tough start to the 2nd half so far. We are 0 for 3. We have played 3 of the 4 other top teams in the top 5. Next week we play the other top 5 team. We are sliding fast.

This week we got a solo victory from Dean and Mickey. Playing in the 5 spot they took out the rest of the teams frustrations on their opponents winning easily 6-1,6-2.

Then it went a little different on the other courts. Court one saw Bob and Todd lose 6-3,6-3. Mike and Chad on two had their unbeaten streak broken losing 6-2,6-4. Over on 3 Don and Tony also lost in straights 6-2,6-3. Court 4 saw our only set taken in the top 4 with Gary and George losing 6-2,0-6,6-1.

We are not out of it yet though. We are only 2 points behind our point total from the first half. So that basically means if we kick some butts for the next 10 matches we should make the top 4.

1/20/2008

Ouch

This week we hit a big speed bump in the road to the playoffs. Facing our 2nd top 5 team in two weeks we weren't able to field a team with set partners and paid the price. Our list of Injuries and Vacations were to large to overcome against a strong Willows team. It's not going to get easier next week either. We host Manchester who is in 2nd place and swept us in late september 6-0. It's not all bad news though. We can even our point total from the first 3 weeks with at least 3 points this weekend.

This week we Had a lone victory in 2nd. Chad and Mike continued their unbeaten ever streak, winning a well played 2 setter against a veteran team. Every one else lost in straights. Andy and Jason in one had a tough one. Todd and Richie in 3 had a tough one. Tony and George in 4 had a tough one. And Mickey and Dean in 5 had an easy one! Only kidding theirs was tough also. This was not our week. The stars were not aligned plus they were all on vacation or other things.

Time to start our 2nd half win streak. We won the last 10 matches of the first half. Let's win the last 11 in the 2nd Half.

1/12/2008

The Streak is Over!

Ok the streak is over. We lost this week to the still #1 team of Newburyport. It was a close contest with the home team losing 3-2. This week was almost a mirror image of our week one loss to Newburport.

This week The teams of Mike and Chad, and Don and Tony were our only points. Playing in 3 Mike and Chad cruised to a quick 2 set win. On 4 Don and Tony had it a little closer winning by a couple of games as time ran out. That was the good news..

The Bad news was that positions 1,2&5 put up a loss. Position 1 saw the New guy Jason, and his partner Evan fall behind in the third set for the loss. Court 2 Saw Dan and Bob have an off day losing in 2 sets, And way down on five saw Todd and Mickey lose a winnable match. They just didn't execute when they needed to.

Not all is lost though. This is the same way we started the first half. We are only 3 points back from first and next week we Travel to the Willows for an away match. 11:00 to 12:30.

1/06/2008

Halftime!

The first half of the season is over. We wrapped it up with a 5-0 win over the Ritzy club in Lynnfield. The Streak continues! It is now up to 10 straight team wins.

We shook off the rust without dropping a match. Just a Few sets.

The Only team playing at 9:00AM was Dan and Bob. After losing the First set they bounced back to win the match in 3 sets by time.

A funny thing happened to the court 2 team of Andy and Courtney. They showed up for 9AM when they weren't playing till 10:30. Congratulations to Those guys for showing up early to support their fellow teammates. Just kidding I screwed up and didn't read a change of Time e-mail correctly. Anyways it just gave them more time to come up with a plan to win. Which they did after dropping the first set, before taking the next two sets 2 and 2. Over on court 3 Don and Tony were the only team to wrap up a victory in straight sets. (where was the rust?). On court 4 Todd and Chad used every second and then some to blow leads in the first and third sets. Thus leading to a 9 point tiebreaker to decide things. Luck prevailed as our opponents said and we won. Now on court 5 Mickey and Dean decided that they would like to copy the team in 2nd position by also losing the first set and then ramping it up and winning the next two for the victory. Although it might have just been a little rust in the first set.

That gives us 54 points for the first half. Not to shabby. It should put us in second place only a maximum of 6 points behind the #1 team of Newburyport. And guess who we play next week? The #1 team Newburyport. So let's keep the streak going and close the gap!

1/02/2008

"Keep the Streak in 08 Tour"

Coming to a Tennis club near you

Ok last year is History. The poll has closed and it looks like most of the votes were for us to finish inside the top 4 with only 1 vote putting us outside of a playoff spot. We have 14 matches scheduled for the first half of 2008. That means alot of playing. Get ready because I hear that some people on our team actually take vacations. Also don't forget usta season is also coming up in just 4 short months. SuperTeam? Anyone?