I Heart 5th

Clear your schedules, This one is gonna take a while.

First off I'd like to say that it was a great season. We were able to compete and beat every team but one. That one team is the one that gets to take our place in fourth. Fitting and Upsetting at the same time.

All season we were battling scheduling conflicts, injuries, surgeries, day care, antique shopping, work, wives, lost keys, and more vacations than state employees get in a lifetime. But somehow we were able to position ourselves for a playoff birth. With only one week left (a make up week at that). We needed a team win to play in May. But you know what? Playing in May, indoors. Sucks!! And somehow that seemed to translate to the match.

This week being like a majority of the weeks this year, saw us having to improvise with the lineups. Unlike the past though it didn't work. Playing a split-time schedule didn't help us either.

Not having a legit 9:30 #1 team, Todd and a "Michael Scott Gps guided" Eric, drove their "Sherman" over to Lynnfield to lose first position. The good news in that loss is that they did get free Bagels for Breakfast.

Playing at the normal 11am time, This years rookie(?) of the Year Arnie and his new partner Courtney cruised to the only victory we saw this week winning in straights on court 2.

Now things got really funky. The $ team of Chad and Mike saw their first loss ever outside of position #1. I mean really their first loss. They have never lost outside of first position. EVER! Vegas had them at 200 to 1. Big guys named Pauly and Sal with bats are looking for them right now.I lost a mortgage payment on that match.

Tony and George? Yeah they got to eat Brunch for free. Seriously! Twice. Luckily I didn't buy a lottery ticket this week. This never happens. Tony has played insanely good this year. George coming off of Hip surgery has been just lights out. I saw it, but I don't believe it.

Pretty much our only Set Team of the whole year was Mickey and Frank. Playing at the Anchor position for the majority of the year. They are the reason we were as close to the playoffs as we were. Posting a win % of 70+ this season they won Matches for us and really made my life easier on Tuesday and Saturdays. What they lacked in Youth they made up for in experience and Skill. Having a perpensity for late match dramatics I thought that they had won the 3rd. I swear they got that last point. But of course since we were having one of those weird end of the Year days they lost it by only a break at 6-4 or 7-5. I didn't get the score sheet. I'm gonna kinda pull a "I don't really remember" type of a thing.

So That's how we lost 4-1 on a week where we could have gotten to that elusive 4th position at the end of the year. This is the Third year that we finish in 5th place*. *(Last year we skipped our final match cause we were 7 points out of 4th, but only 1 point out of 5th. so I assume we could've gotten 1 point.)

I'd like to Thank everyone for not giving me to much crap. Seriously, I know that some of the lineups were weird and maybe I stuck you to low or put you to high in the lineup. Made you play with me. But week in and week out I tried to put a team on the court that could pull out a match win. It almost worked out. Hey We spooked Newburyport to the point they didn't want to play us in the playoffs. I'd like to say that next year is our year but after 3 years of 5th place...... Well you know......

Remember.. If you need someone to play just let me know!!!! Let's keep playing thru the summer.. but I'm not setting it up. I'm on Vacation. 8-)