Marshall Brown competing for the Nashville Chefs at the Edward Jones MLP Mid-Season Tournament.
Marshall Brown competing for the Nashville Chefs at the Edward Jones MLP Mid-Season Tournament. Major League Pickleball

Night Owls, Chefs set to clash for Challenger crown

The Las Vegas Night Owls and Nashville Chefs, the top two seeds in the Challenger level bracket, are into the Challenger final after earning wins late Wednesday evening.

But they took very different routes to get there.

Las Vegas outlasted the California Black Bears in a DreamBreaker, coming back to win after dropping both gender doubles games for the first time this season.

It looked like the Black Bears would achieve a 3-0 sweep when Layne Sleeth/Michael Loyd got up 6-1 over the Night Owls’ Zoey Wang/Pablo Tellez in the first mixed doubles game, but Wang/Tellez came back to take it 11-8 and keep Las Vegas in the match.

Brooke Buckner/James Delgado did their part in the second mixed doubles game to force a DreamBreaker, where the Night Owls cruised to a 21-14 triumph.

 

Buckner spoke about the team’s mindset going into mixed doubles after going down 0-2.

“Really the message was just to fight. Everything wasn’t going our way. We didn’t execute in gender doubles like we wanted, but we knew we could fight. That was what we could control. Pablo and Zoey were down big in mixed and they fought, and then we continued to do the same in the singles, and we walked away with a W.”

In the second semifinal, the second-seeded Nashville Chefs defeated the DC Pickleball Team 3-1 for their tenth straight win.

After teams split the gender doubles games, Nashville’s Ewa Radzikowska/Anderson Scarpa overcame a 2-6 deficit against Christa Gecheva/Daniel de la Rosa in the first mixed doubles game to put the Chefs in control.

From there, Michelle Esquivel/Marshall Brown closed out the contest with an 11-4 victory over Andrea Koop/Rafa Hewett.

 

With a day before taking on Las Vegas for the Challenger crown, Esquivel spoke about how the team will get prepared for that matchup.

“We’re going to get good rest and good practice,” she said. “You can’t sleep on a team like that, so we’re going to be fully prepped. Preparation is something that you can control, so we’re gonna try and be smart about it.”

That match will take place on Friday at 1pm ET on Pickleballtv.

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