The Major League Pickleball season continues this week at Marathon MLP St. Louis, where six Premier level teams and all six Challenger level teams will be in action across four days at Chaifetz Arena.

This is the eighth of ten regular season events, as well as the fourth of six consecutive weeks with MLP competition. This will be a full weekend of action, with 31 matches set to be played across Championship Court and Grandstand Court.

Here is the order of play for the eight matches scheduled for Thursday:

Now, let’s get into what to watch for.

• The Chicago Slice (4-10, 14pts) and Atlanta Bouncers (4-11, 12pts) will face off in the first match on Championship Court in a contest between two teams that would miss the playoffs if the season ended today. Ranked 12^th and 14^th in the standings, respectively, both Chicago and Atlanta need a win to keep pace with the Miami Pickleball Club (7-13, 19pts), who holds the tenth and final playoff spot. Another storyline for this matchup is the player-for-player trade that these squads executed in June; Chicago sent Vivienne David to Atlanta, while Atlanta sent Vivian Glozman to Chicago. Both players—and both teams—could be extra motivated to show who won that exchange once and for all in Thursday’s clash.

• The Brooklyn Pickleball Team (14-5, 44pts) will kick off its final regular season vent against Chicago. More importantly, the squad will be without Dekel Bar for the fourth event in a row, which means that AJ Koller will once again fill in for Bar and Pat Smith. Brooklyn is a lock to make the playoffs at this point, but not being at full strength against a gauntlet of contenders like Dallas, St. Louis, and Columbus this week could cause them to leave some valuable standings points on the table. Koller has filled in admirably so far and will need to be sharp once again in Missouri.

• At the Challenger level, Jonathan Truong will fill in for Sam Querrey and start for the Bay Area Breakers (6-9, 19pts). He will play men’s doubles alongside DJ Young and mixed doubles with his sister, Alix Truong. The 18-year-old isn’t too far removed from a run to the Round of 16 at the PPA Orange County Cup last month, where he and Sammy Lee came through the qualifying draw before earning notable wins over Rafa Hewett/Juan Benitez and Roscoe Bellamy/Matt Wright. Bay Area will face the California Black Bears (5-10, 16pts) and Florida Smash (4-11, 12pts) on Thursday.

Grandstand Court action begins at 11:00am CT, while Championship Court matches will start at noon CT on Pickleballtv.