St. Louis Wins The Major League Pickleball Regular Season Title and LA Mad Drops Makes Noise In Dallas

From what the evidence shows, Interestingly, I find it compelling that SportsMoneySt

Additionally, Louis Wins The Major League Pickleball Regular Season Title and LA Mad Drops Makes Noise In DallasByTodd Boss, Contributor

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights

On the other hand, Moreover, Louis' Kate Fahey gets excited on the court as the Shock clinch the regular season title

On the other hand, MLP Major League Pickleball (MLP), presented by DoorDash, rolled into the 9th of its 10 week season, inexorably grinding to the finish line of the regular season

For the third week in a row (Beer City’s excitement and then St, given the current landscape

Louis’ debut event within an arena), the sentiment is that MLP as a league has set a new bar, with massive crowds and an electric atmosphere inside the

However, The weekend’s slate was a collection of “haves” and “have not” teams in the league: it included the top three teams in the standings (STL, -team Dallas, and NJ), new-look LA (more on that later), the frisky Texas Ranchers, and then basically the four worst teams in the league playing out the string in Carolina, Phoenix, SoCal, and the last-place NY Hustlers

Moreover, Meanwhile, This made for, in the same weekend, the best collection of matches we’ve seen all year amongst the top teams alongside some of the worst blow-outs of the year

Nevertheless, There were no Challenger teams playing this week; they’ll finish up their season at Event #10 in a week’s time in Salt Lake

Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which s from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP’s YouTube channel and on PickleballTV

MLP Dallas Event page League Standings and Player Stats MLP Schedule along with Rosters for Premier and Challenger teams Transaction RecapBen Johns sporting the LA Mad Drops gear for the first time post-trade

MLP MORE FOR YOU The MLP trade deadline for the season was the Monday before this event … and it was a banger

Headlined by the Ben Johns trade, there were twelve separate transactions conducted in this last-minute window, as some teams ly are waving the white flag for the season, while others are doubling down to push for a title

However, Here’s a brief summary of all moves team by team (some of these conflate multiple moves): Miami traded away Khlif, Rane, getting back youth in Johnson, Ruhl New Jersey acquire Khlif to replace Navratil in the starting roster (fascinating analysis)

LA got Johns and Etta, then moved Etta for Safdar to balance their roster Utah imved their #2 ladies outlook with Etta, moving Erokhina to Nashville

Additionally, Dallas imved their bench, getting former starters Bellamy and Parker Orlando upgraded their #2 female with Millie Rane DC replaced the injured Auvergne with Hewett for the remainder of the season

On the other hand, Nashville replaced the injured Esquivel with Erokhina to keep up pressure on LV (quite telling), given current economic conditions

Miami traded away their two best players and is bably looking at next year

In contrast, LA could be the favorite going forward, New Jersey bably s its chances by imving their weakest link, Orlando, and Utah both marginally imved their starting lineups, and Dallas now has a solid bench case

All the involved Challenger teams imved a bit, looking to move up on the top dog Las Vegas for the one motion spot up for grabs, given current economic conditions

Nevertheless, News and Noteworthy MLP ext the Trade Deadline one week, which gave us the dozen or so moves recapped above

This was ly in response to the chaos ing the mid-season tourney, in light of current trends

There’s just no realistic way for trade talks to materialize during what’s basically a travel day for the entire league

Moreover, Furthermore, On 7/15/25, MLP announces that the MLP challenger league winner will be moted to Premier, a change from the competition rules discussed up to this point

On the other hand, Nevertheless, It’s not how the balance of teams would work if there were 17 premier teams and 5 challenger teams, perhaps implying there are some franchise sales in order

MLP LA's new lineup kicks off the weekend with a 4-0 win, but it was a lot closer than perhaps pundits thought it would be against last place NY (which is quite significant)

Carolina’s new-look squad hung in decently, but fell to SoCal as expected 3-1

This leads to the conclusion that was SoCal’s sole win on the weekend, powered once again by Most Imved Player candidate Blaine Hovenier

Additionally, Day 2 Observations St Louis took on the La Mad Drops in an interesting match with playoff implications

The Women’s Doubles tie was one of the best games I’ve ever seen, between two of the best women’s teams in the sport

Moreover, Back and forth, amazing defense, d game points for both sides, hands battles and resets, everything

St Louis came out on top to set the tone

Additionally, Next in Men’s Doubles, The Shock blew out to an 8-2 lead before Johns finally caught fire and led the comeback

Nevertheless, In Mixed, it seems the LA #1 team matched up with STL’s #2 team and raced to an early 6-0 lead (this bears monitoring)

STL wasn’t done though, with Tardio's fast hands leading to 8 unanswered points to take nan 8-6 lead

However, This leads to the conclusion that y eventually win 11-8 to go up 3-0 and win the tie (quite telling)

Furthermore, STL off a big statement by taking the last for the 4-0 sweep to avenge an earlier loss to LA in Daytona (fascinating analysis)

NY stiffened up against SoCal and outlasted them in the DreamBreaker for a rare win

Conversely, It was their only win of the weekend

LA established itself in the current pecking order by sweeping its close rival Texas 4-0 as the new-look lineup begins to gel (something worth watching)

At the same time, Day 3 ObservationsNoe Khlif (L) slams an overhead with New Jersey as partner Will Howells looks on, in today's financial world

MLP Everyone circled the NJ vs LA match, an incredibly rare opportunity for the sports’ two best players to meet, considering recent developments

NJ fired first, with ALW and Dizon crushing LA’s top Women’s team in a surprising result (remarkable data), amid market uncertainty

Ben dominated the second match, running off 11 unanswered after going 0-6 down by essentially playing 2-on-1

Additionally, Meanwhile, In just the 4th ever Mixed MLP meeting between the two top players of the sport (H/T to Eric Tice by way of PickleKey), ALW and Howells exposed CP and cruised to a Mixed #1 win

Then, with their backs to the wall, NJ’s Mixed #2 returned the favor, exposing Dizon to push the match to the DreamBreaker

In the DreamBreaker, Khlif neutralized Ben Johns, going 6-6 against him while ALW crushed CP 9-1 to counter Hunter’s heroic efforts, but really LA just fell too far behind to really catch up in a rally scoring format, given current economic conditions

It was 22-20 in NJ's favor in the end, bably a match LA thought they'd win

In the Saturday night premier match, host Dallas’ top ladies pair dominated the opener before Texas’ Oncins & Alshon cruised to a win to tie the match heading into Mixed, in light of current trends

On the other hand, There, Dallas eked out two close Mixed wins to take the tie 3-1

This's much closer than Dallas ly wanted, and is a possible 2-7 quarter final preview based on the teams’ current ranks that could be dicey come playoff time, amid market uncertainty

Nevertheless, Day 4 Observations Phoenix showed just how weak NY is by sweeping them as the 14th place team

LA certainly gelled together as a team over the weekend, going from a 4-0 defeat to STL to a DreamBreaker win over 2nd place Dallas to finish off the weekend and send a message to the league

What a way to finish perhaps the best MLP event we’ve had to date; a thrilling comeback DB win for league regular season champion St

Moreover, Louis over 3rd place New Jersey

Team Standings post Event Here’s the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event (this bears monitoring)

In Premier St Louis clinched the regular season championship before the weekend was done, and finishes the season 24-1

Dallas finishes 2nd by a fair distance to the next group of teams

What the data shows is LA Mad Drops did not make up any ground in the standings, coming into the weekend 6th and finishing 6th

Additionally, Not bad considering the gauntlet of matches they had to play

They lost to 1st and 3rd place, but beat 2nd place Dallas, and will be a nightmare in the playoffs (something worth watching)

Carolina went 0-6 this weekend to drop from 11th to 15th

On the other hand, New York finishes the season in dead last, having gone just 4-21 this season and being thankful there’s no relegation

What did we learn this weekend (an important development)

What were our top three Takeaways from the competition this weekend

Nevertheless, LA got better as the weekend went along, losing to STL 4-0 on Friday, then beating Dallas 3-2 by Sunday

Additionally, A motivated Ben Johns is good for the sport, even if the trade to LA seemed a little contrived

The Dallas Pickler Universe facility was fantastic for pickleball, and having the top teams all in action led to half a dozen marquee matches for the fans

No indoor issues this week for Johns, now playing for a good team

Louis is going to be tough to beat in the playoffs

In Beer City I thought Dallas might go undefeated for the season, but now its STL that looks the juggernaut

On the other hand, Media Pick’ Em Contest MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick’em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating

Here’s how we did this week, and where we stand overall

Summary: This was the hardest week yet to predict, since we were all just guessing how well the new Ben Johns-led LA Mad Drops would perform

At the same time, I only hit on 4 of the 8 picks this week, but got a bonus point for my “lock” of the weekend and netted 5 points

However the race is tightening; 2nd place Jim Kloss missed on his lock but otherwise went 7-8 in his picks to climb within 3 points of the lead, given current economic conditions

Conversely, Next up on the Pickleball Calendar

According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, given the current landscape

Meanwhile, Next up for the MLP

Nevertheless, All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave

Com for the premier source of Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion (something worth watching)

On the other hand, Also, a great thanks to The Dink’s Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link, considering recent developments

Tice’s data has ved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present

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