Pork Chops poked

8.0 Mixed in Philly is alive and well.  In years past it’s been the top two teams (typically my team and the Pirates) who compete for the right to represent our flight at Districts and often the Pirates or PCA is the strongest team at Districts with either of us advancing to Sectionals 3 of the last 5 years. This year looks to be different.

The standings are close. The Pirates are 1-1. Springton K-O who we snuck by in our first match with two 3rd set match tiebreakers is 0-2. UMLY and the Wild Aces are both 1-1 and for real. And speaking of those Wild Aces, we battled Saturday night.  For PCA, Irene Acosta & Greg Titone met for the first time and proceeded to win in straight sets 7-5, 6-1 on at first doubles against a strong pair.  We dropped 2nd dubs in 3 sets in a well-played match.  Both sides were at times aggressive and patient in the match which lasted over 2.5 hours – just a good match and congrats to Alyssa White and Lewis Pettinos on the W.

At 3rd dubs it was my serve, down a set, down 4-5, down 30-40 – team match point out… and we win the point when my partner Stacy Bjorhus moves to cut off a groundstroke from our opponents and hits a clean volley winner.   We go on to win that game and we get to the 2nd set tiebreaker (first to seven, win by 2).  We go down 0-1, then 2-3, then we won the tiebreaker.  I get broke in the first game of the 3rd set, we go on to win the set, win the match, now we’re alone in 1st at 2-0, at least for now.

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The whole night has a concerning feeling and the Wild Aces showed up at our courts with supporters and confidence fully expecting to leave with the team win.

Up next we face the Pirates 12/15 and then Bryn Mawr early in the new year.  So happy to have a flight full of competitive teams – it will certainly make for an interesting Mixed season.