The Las Vegas Night Owls celebrate with their trophy.
The Las Vegas Night Owls celebrate with their trophy. Major League Pickleball

Late run lifts Las Vegas to Challenger title over Nashville in feisty affair

The Las Vegas Night Owls—featuring Pablo Tellez, James Delgado, Brooke Buckner, and Zoey Wang—captured the Challenger level title in Grand Rapids with a thrilling DreamBreaker victory over the Nashville Chefs in Friday’s first match on Championship Court.

Here’s how the last match between these two teams went down last week at MLP New York:

Results from the most recent meeting between Las Vegas and Nashville, which took place on July 6th at MLP New York.
Results from the most recent meeting between Las Vegas and Nashville, which took place on July 6th at MLP New York. Major League Pickleball

Despite both teams sending out the same pairings in the same order, Friday’s bout was the complete opposite, with all four games having different outcomes from last time:

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Results from Friday's match between the Las Vegas Night Owls and Nashville Chefs.
Results from Friday's match between Las Vegas and Nashville, which are notably the complete opposite of the results from their last meeting. Major League Pickleball

That held true in the DreamBreaker as well, where Las Vegas overcame deficits of 1-7 and 10-16 to end the Chefs’ ten-match winning streak and rally for the mid-season crown.

 

“We just had to trust our shots,” said Buckner, who clinched the triumph by rifling a forehand winner past Ewa Radzikowska on championship point. “We went down big, but we trust our singles. Every single person came up clutch in different moments, and it was a full team effort today for the W. Nashville is so good in all four spots, so it was a tough battle.”

The win meant just as much to the Night Owls’ players as it did to Steve Deakin, the team’s coach and general manager.

“This is first and foremost one of the best moments of my life,” he remarked. “Every single member of this team, they are champions. Whenever we are down, we find a way to pick each other up.”

The highly entertaining encounter was, however, not exempt from some extra fireworks from the Night Owls’ Pablo Tellez and the Chefs’ Michelle Esquivel.

 

Esquivel appeared to take issue with a comment Tellez made during their mixed doubles game and proceeded to flip him off while walking to the bench immediately after the game.

All eyes will be on those two when Las Vegas and Nashville play again at next week’s Marathon MLP St. Louis.