PONG WITH THE WIND: Chicago Wrap-up (Carolina on our Minds)
Pong with the Wind…Carolina Gold Rush’s response when told that all Eastern Division teams were coming with their best rosters this past weekend: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” What’s the main takeaway you ask? Majorponghead’s deepest dish is this: watch out MLTT, Enzo and company think they’re good, and so do we!
November 14, 2023. Before we even get started, here is the requisite reminder that you can watch ALL the incredible action that happened this past weekend, with high-class quality production value and professional announcers, on MLTT’s Youtube channel. As the kids say, SMASH that subscribe button!
The sprawling Wintrust Sports Complex in the Chicagoland area was the site for this past weekend’s MLTT Eastern Division 3rd tour stop. In front of the largest crowds of fans to date, the Carolina Gold Rush staked their claim to top honors with a spectacular 3-0 performance reminiscent of the Florida Crocs’ week one Daytona Beach chomp down. The Princeton Revolution had a big bounce back weekend, going 2-1 and clawing their way out of the standings cellar to get within view of a playoff position. The Florida Crocs started Friday off with a big chomp against hometown Chicago, but then faltered over the weekend for a 1-2 record and now looking up at Carolina. And finally, like the Texas Smash two weekends ago, the hometown Chicago Wind fought their hearts out but could never find their prevailing direction as a team, suffering an alarming 0-3 record en route to dropping down to 4th place in the east.
With this past weekend’s performance, Carolina rockets from 2nd place in the standings to 1st with an 18-point cushion between themselves and #2 Florida, with Princeton leapfrogging Chicago into 3rd place.
Grade: a big fat A+ for Coach Alex Yang and his Carolina Gold Rush for their epic weekend. Their only real test was in their Friday match against Princeton…they went into the Golden Game up a point and promptly went down by an alarming margin…but big shoutout to reigning Eastern Division Player of the Week Hong Lin for her continued dominance in the GG, plus Bastien Dupont’s rousing 4-0 Golden Sweep of Ievgen Pryschepa which finally turned the tide for their side, eventually winning a nail biter, 21-18. On Saturday, they initially had a battle on their hands against Chicago, with Enzo Angles uncharacteristically dropping his singles match 2-1 to Sasha Khanin…but Daniele Pinto and Romain Lorentz picked up their top gun with 2-1 victories, and Lorentz’s win coming against Chicago’s MVP Damien Provost, a candidate for Majorponghead’s Upset of the Week. Enzo righted the ship with a great 3-0 win in doubles with Lin, and also played great in the GG, which they won 21-15 with just a bit of drama at the end, but Jeremy “Captain Canada” Hazin was able to close it out.
Outside of getting blitzed by Sasha Khanin 2-1 in their Saturday match against Chicago, the Gold Rush’s #1 draft pick Enzo Alles was once again his spectacular self, posting a record of 7-2 in singles and 8-1 in doubles. Enzo’s high point of the weekend was probably his 3-0 whitewashing of Florida’s main man, Daniel Gorak.
On Sunday against Florida, their dominance was obvious as they stunningly won the match 12-3 before the GG even began, and then cruised to an easy 21-8 GG victory…perhaps the most one-sided match victory in MLTT to date (meaning coaches, players and fans of both teams only suffered minor panic attacks during the GG). With nods to great performances over the weekend by Lorentz and Hazin, Carolina’s Man of the Match award once again goes to Enzo Angles. Outside of being ambushed by a fired up Khanin, Enzo was essentially perfect all weekend. He was chosen by Coach Yang to be an alpha, and to date he hasn’t let anyone down. Honorable mention to Romain Lorentz, who posted two huge 2-1 victories over Damien Provost and Marc Duran.
Koyo Kanamitsu and his Princeton Revolutionaries made a big push up the standings. Koyo, mind-bogglingly an 8th round draft pick, won all three of his singles matches by the score of 2-1 over Bastien Dupont, Ojo Onaolapo, and Thunder Dan Liu.
Grade: B+ for the Princeton Revolution. Despite dropping yet another heartbreaking loss to Carolina, who seems to have their number in the Golden Game (this season, Carolina has beaten Princeton in all 3 of their GG encounters by scores of 21-19, 21-19, 21-18). But Coach Mathias Habesohn, the consummate professional, got his team back on track mentally and physically by their Saturday morning training session, pounding out the multi balls (with Angela Guan’s super-dedicated mom on ball pickup duty) until the players had all sweated out their disappointment from the day before. They got into the win column with their second consecutive victory against Florida, with new baby daddy Jinxin “The Professor” Wang setting the tone by going toe-to-toe with Daniel Gorak, before elite modern defender extraordinaire Mathieu de Saintilan gave Princeton an early lead it would not relinquish with his Golden Sweep of Daniel Gonzalez. Guan then stepped up and despite her previous record of GG heartbreak, gave her team perhaps the most inspirational performance of the season to date by taking 3 of 4 points from the masterful and intimidating Matilda Ekholm. On a side note, Carolina’s Hong Lin was shown on the broadcast in the crowd, cheering loudly for her husband Jishan Liang’s teammate Angela…the same Angela Guan whom she had devastated last month with her 8-0 shutout in the GG. It was a beautiful poignant moment that did not escape the notice of the announcers extraordinaire Evan Kepler and Matt Hetherington, who interrupted their call of the action to eloquently note it. The Princeton boys took it from there and finished off the Crocs, 21-11. They kept the good times rolling with another win on Sunday over Chicago. Ievgen Pryschepa gave a masterclass in momentum control after dropping the first game against Alexandru Cazacu as he calmly, inexorably, methodically worked his way back into the match and eventually won 2-1. Koyo Kanamitsu also took a 2-1 decision from Thunder Dan Liu (his 3rd singles win of the weekend) to tie the match up at 6-6, but it was Jishan Liang’s brilliant 3-0 shutout of Sasha Khanin that set the stage for Princeton’s 21-12 GG win and Koyo’s viral “THIS is how you celebrate a Golden Game victory” moment. Go check out MLTT’s social media if you don’t know what we mean.
The Revolution’s entourage was rolling DEEP DISH in Chicago with family, friends and mascots (hello again, Squirtle!) traveling from Kansas City, Montreal, and the Bay Area to support their loved ones.
We’re giving Princeton’s Man of the Match to Koyo Kanamitsu. The Chinese language rapping, Red Bull chugging, off the bounce counterlooping man from Japan went 3-0 in singles and won too many points in critical GG situations to count. His style of play is just a joy to watch, perhaps the most aesthetically-pleasing and elegant timing plus economy of movement in the entire league. If he keeps racking up wins like this from the C&D position, it won’t be long until we get to see him matched up against the A&B players in the Eastern Division…and when that happens, we will ALL be pregaming with Red Bulls!
Florida’s Ojo Onaolapo, shown here a split second before his powerful follow-through absolutely disintegrated his shirt sleeves. Majorponghead’s editorial staff have made the decision not to show any images of Ojo after his sleeves were reduced to shreds, as this is a family-oriented blog site and Ojo’s arms are weapons of mass distraction.
Grade: C for the Florida Crocs. Normally a 1-2 record would get you at least a C+ or even higher, but we had to take into account the savage 18-3 beatdown suffered at the hands of Carolina on Sunday which dropped them out of first place by a significant margin (18 points). It started off with yet another chompin’ good time against Chicago on Friday, as Ojo Onaolapo had everyone buzzing about his performance, blasting his lightning fast forehands past Thunder Dan Liu and then Golden Sweeping Daniele Pinto in the GG en route to leading the Crocs to a 21-15 GG and 14-7 match victory. Marc Duran was equally brilliant in his 2-1 victory over Sasha Khanin, the Spanish Showman unveiling his full array of creative shotmaking much to the Belarusan’s dismay (we here at Majorponghead could watch Duran’s backhand sidespin punch shot on rewind-loop for hours…actually, we have). But even then, there were a couple signs of things to come, most notably the usually unassailable Daniel Gorak dropping a 2-1 decision to an under-the-weather Damien Provost, and the battler Benjamin Brossier surprisingly losing his match 3-0 to Pinto (although one of their points featuring a full out dive by Brossier will likely be a Top 10 Play of the Week…and probably #1 at that).
Upper Left: Marc Duran’s reaction to losing a game 3 Golden Point to Jishan “All-In” Liang’s insane inside out counterloop while falling to the ground.
Lower Right: Jishan Liang exclusively wears high quality Butterfly shoes.
Florida did not take then-last place Princeton lightly, as their loss to the Revolution in Myrtle Beach was the only blemish on their otherwise perfect record. The two teams battled to a virtual stalemate with the Crocs only giving Princeton a 1-point lead in the GG. But tied at 4-4, the bottom abruptly fell out as Daniel Gonzalez (who had battled De Saintilan admirably in singles) got Golden Swept by the chopper, followed by Onaolapo dropping 3 of 4 to a fired up Kanamitsu. Down 11-5 but with Matilda Ekholm coming up to face Guan, the Crocs held out hope that she would get them back into it, but some nerves and bad luck combined to give the defender yet another 3 of 4 points. After that 10-2 run, the teams would basically split points to the final margin of 21-11, giving Princeton the 14-7 win.
Like the S&P 500 Index during a bear market, the bottom continued to drop out even further on Sunday. Florida’s confrontation against Carolina was over even before the GG began, with Gorak, Gonzalez dropping 3-0 decisions to Enzo and Jeremy Hazin respectively, they likewise lost the doubles 3-0 and Duran dropped a 2-1 decision to Lorentz. Benjamin Brossier provided the only bright spot as he battled his countryman Bastien Dupont effectively, taking a 2-1 decision. But the match score was already 12-3 at the start of the GG, and a dispirited Crocs team could only muster 8 points en route to a 21-8 GG drubbing, and even worse, an 18-3 match loss, and gave a surging Carolina team a significant 18-point lead in the standings.
Man of the Match goes to Ojo Onaolapo, who continues to pound and astound (as Walt Clyde Frazier would put it) and put all his naysayers to shame. The 7th round draft pick has been playing with a chip on his massive shoulders, racking up the W’s for Florida as if W stood for Weightlifting.
Speaking truth to power is like serving long to Ojo’s forehand, very dangerous and generally not a good idea….but we’re gonna do it here. After this weekend, the Crocs have lost their aura of invincibility and it will be crucial to their playoff hopes that they turn the ship around. Another weekend of being turned into handbags like this, and they’ll be looking up at the playoff spots instead of chomping. Coach Frank Arias needs to rekindle that magic that had his team mauling their opponents and delighting their fans on social media up until this past Saturday evening. All great teams encounter challenging moments of great tribulations, and so if Florida is to prove themselves the great team they were until recently, then we’re in for a fantastic rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches storyline as Croc fans.
Her look says it all. The wind came out of the Chicago Wind’s sails this weekend, despite Emily Tan’s fantastic effort and her even more delightful laughter-filled stream-of-consciousness post-match interviews with Evan Lepler and Matt Hetherington.
Grade: C- for the Chicago Wind. For all the haters out there crying about grade inflation, we’re not in the business of handing out failing grades to teams who give it their all, fight to the very last point, and perhaps most importantly, stay supportive of each other through difficult times. The life of an athlete is an emotional roller coaster most of the time, and the dips can be awful. MLTT’s format, specifically the Golden Game, can feel like a cruel, brutal, malignant force when you lose…if league standings were based on results in the singles matches, Chicago would be in 2nd place and just a hair’s breadth out of 1st! Alas, the Wind got swept in front of a large hometown crowd, and that’s got to feel like warmed over dog vomit. But not once did they stop fighting, not once did they stop supporting and caring for each other. You get to see the true character of teams when things go bad, and we got to see how the Wind have already become a family, and that at least, was an absolute privilege.
Emily Tan brought them all the way back from a huge deficit to a Golden Point opportunity in doubles, then she unceremoniously dumped the serve return into the net. Her partner’s Damien Provost’s reaction was instantaneous and it wasn’t disappointment or reproach, it was love. Yet another example of the small moments in MLTT that have us as fans for life.
Sasha Khanin had a schizophrenic weekend, taking down the level boss Enzo Angles 2-1 (for Majorponghead’s Upset of the Week Award), but then also dropping a 2-1 decision to Marc Duran and then getting wiped 3-0 by Jishan Liang. Daniele “The Smouldering” Pinto was once again a bright spot, winning both of his matches, but Thunder Dan Liu had a rough weekend dropping both of his singles matches. Not that he’d ever offer it up as an excuse, but we heard it through the grapevine that Damien Provost was feeling under the weather the first couple of days. Despite not feeling 100%, he still provided the biggest and best moments for Chicago, with victories over Gorak (2-1) and De Saintilan (2-1), but dropping a 2-1 decision to countryman Romain Lorentz.
It wasn’t all without joy. The packed hometown crowd had plenty to celebrate about when MLTT #20 ranked Sasha Khanin pulled off the upset victory over #2 ranked Enzo Angles, which was Majorponghead’s Upset of the Week.
Man of the Match goes to Damien Provost, with Pinto a close runner-up. Provost’s performance under duress was mighty impressive, and he’ll be the foundation and steady winning presence that Coach Eric Owens needs to get his team back on track.
That’s all for now, pongheads. Check back in a couple days for our Western Division (Pleasanton, CA tour stop) preview and roster reveal article. But here’s a teaser…unlike in Texas, almost all the big guns in the west are coming out this time, including the long-awaited MLTT debut of a certain hometown hero who could very well tip the balance of power in the Western Division. How’s that for a cliffhanger?
Keep on pongin’, pongheads!
