New Jersey 5s Muster A Win In Major League Pickleball Week 6 In New York

Transaction Recap & Player News

Ahead of the weekend, we had more trades and the league’s third Waiver period. There was enough moves to break out a separate post, which is linked here. The two new trades are detailed here, while the waiver moves are listed here.

• Palm Beach’s Dekel Bar remains out, so newly picked up Casey Diamond will continue to start for the Royals. He struggled at times in St. Pete last week, so we’ll see how that impacts the team in NY.
• Carolina is playing an onsite sub in Kelly Goodnow instead of either their 2nd female (Yoshitomi) or their bench player (Conard). Goodnow, if you did not know, is just 14 years old and is coming off a gold medal at the PPA Challenger held two weekends ago in Boise.
• Late word comes out that SoCal’s Meghan Dizon is sick, forcing their sub Naomi Nguyen into action and really dampening their chances of another big weekend. This robs us immediately of a Dizon vs Koller head to head matchup in the early Thursday tie between Chicago and SoCal.

News and Noteworthy

Ahead of the event, here’s some news and noteworthy items for MLP.

• Social media was filled with rumors of major changes coming to MLP, as a reaction to what we’re seeing on the field this season. Namely, a salary cap. Which is probably fair: you can’t have a team fielding a roster that cost nearly $1.7M to acquire (the St. Louis Shock) competing in the same league with a team that cost its owners only $20k to field (the Florida Smash). Honestly, what the league really needs is a salary floor, and for the six teams that spent less than $100k this season to be forced to compete.
• There’s also rumors of a “Franchise Tag” for next season, which will feature dozens marquee players who are original draftees from March 2024 coming to the end of their 3-year contracts. We were anticipating many millions of dollars in auction prices for a slew of players come next spring, but now with the possibility of teams being able to franchise a player, we may see something completely different in terms of dynamics of player movement. Here’s just a sampling of players who otherwise would be subject to next year’s draft: Waters, Johns, Rohrabacher, Tardio, Patriquin, both Kawamoto sisters, Alshon, Todd, Staksrud, Daescu, JW Johnson, Parenteau, Black, Howells, Klinger.
• Trade rumors continue to swirl, and the league is considering moving back the trade deadline a couple of weeks to allow teams to adjust. This is of no surprise; the MLP has freely moved previously defined dates for waiver periods and trade deadlines for years. This push-back becomes official; the new trade deadline will be pushed from June 30th to July 12th, likely to be accompanied by some of the competition structure changes being floated above.

Premier League Group Stage Match Recap

Day 1 Observations

• Palm Beach kicks off the NY event in the sun against Carolina’s new-look lineup, and Carolina immediately put a loss on PB’s McGuffin/Diamond team (Bar is out with injury still). Carolina is missing its starter and bench female, and has picked up 14-yr old Kelly Goodnow as a sub for the weekend. Their upset run continues into both mixed matches, where Carolina shocked the Royals with two close Mixed match wins to take the opening match in one of the biggest upsets we’ve seen in MLP history. I’ll repeat: Goodnow is only 14! This would end up being Carolina’s only win for the weekend, and just their 2nd of the season.
• Not to be outdone by Carolina playing with a 14-yr old, Chicago started 13-yr old Elsie Hendershot, just acquired from STL. The Slice also played teenager Goins in both doubles ties and got the whole bench involved in the match. Meanwhile SoCal played two teenagers themselves in Campbell and Mackinnon, making for an interesting battle of youth versus experience. In the end, SoCal’s team topped Chicago in a match that will go a great way towards determining some of the final playoff spots.
• Brooklyn’s women were comfortably in the lead 10-2 in game one when the end-court scoreboard literally fell over and landed on Rachel Rohrabacher’s ankle. After a 15-20 minute delay, Bay Area conceded the first game in a classy move, while Rohrabacher will sat the rest of the day out (they only have one match today) out of precaution. She’s up and walking on her own power, and seems ok, but will sit nonetheless. Brooklyn cruised to a 3-0 lead without needing Rachel, putting in the bench players to lose the meaningless final and will look to regroup tomorrow. This incident ended up impacting Brooklyn’s lineups all weekend.

Day 2 Observations

• Despite reports she’d be back in the lineup, Rohrabacher sat today and her replacement Hannah Blatt struggled to match pace, but had a nice comeback win in Mixed2 to seal the match for Brooklyn 3-1
• LV went with the youth movement, playing both teenagers Powell and Jacobson against the favored NJ in their event debut. ALW and Jorge pickled Truluck & Smith to open the match and it was smooth sailing from there as NJ swept.
• Palm Beach looked like they had righted the ship, getting a sweep of gender doubles and a very solid win for Diamond & McGuffin, but then Dallas crushed them in both Mixed matches to send it to the DreamBreaker. In the DB, Tyson jumped all over JW to open 4-0, but a 4-0 sweep by Townsend of Pam Beach’s singles specialist Emmrich evened the match. From there, JW’s domination of McGuffin in the 2nd and 3rd turns of the DB, as well as Danni-Elle’s dominance (7-1) made the difference. Dallas ekes out a win

Day 3 Observations

• SoCal had a fantastic win against Texas to guarantee 2nd place in the group and take a huge step forward towards making the playoffs. After sweeping gender doubles, both upsets on paper, they lost both mixed matches but gutted out a tiebreaker 21-19 to get the win. In the end, SoCal lost out on tie-breakers after three teams finished 3-1 in the group stage, but still had a great weekend that vaulted them up the standings.
• In the battle for 1st place in the group between New Jersey and Texas, Waters & Johnson cruised to a win to open, then the Howells/Khlif partnership got another setback with an 11-2 drubbing by Acevedo & Oncins for NJ’s first game loss of the weekend to send it to the Mixed. There, Acevedo took over to send it to the dream breaker. In the DB, Acevedo dominated Khlif 10-2 including match point for a 21-19 win. Unfortunately, due to game differential, the h2h win ended up being meaningless for Texas, who finish tied at 3-1 with NJ but lose out on tiebreakers for the championship Sunday spot.
• In a bit of load management, Brooklyn sat Rachel for the opener, and Dallas took advantage by cruising past Hannah Blatt in the women’s doubles. Rachel came back to win Mixed, but Danni-Elle Townsend and Auggie Ge crushed Newman and Kawamoto to send it to the DB. In the DreamBreaker, Dallas was on fire and opened up a huge lead. Brooklyn stemmed the flow, but Dallas was cruising and got to 20-14 match point. And there they stayed, for three turns and multiple shots at match point as Brooklyn’s crew dug in. Alshon went 3-0 and saved a match point. Hayworth dug in after getting to 20. Blatt tied it up at 20-all, then Jackie Kawamoto got the match winner.

Group Stage Results

At the end of the group stages, here were the standings, which drive the final day’s competition.

• Group A: New Jersey, Texas, SoCal, LV, Chicago. NJ wins 1st place over Texas by game differential, and Texas does the same to claim 2nd over SoCal.
• Group B: Brooklyn, Dallas, PBR, Florida, Bay Area, Carolina. Palm Beach edges Florida via head-to-head results for 3rd, as does Bay Area over Carolina for 5th.

Event Standings Results

For 2026, the final day features the Event Standings matches, where the winner of Group A players the Winner of Group B, the 2nd place teams play for 3rd, the 3rd place teams play for 5th, and so on. Here’s a review of those final matches.

• Event 1st Place match: New Jersey shook off their group stage loss to power past Brooklyn, who will be happy to come away with 2nd place points in an event where Rohrabacher nearly broke her leg.
• Event 3rd Place match: Texas has to like what they did this weekend, putting losses on both NJ and Dallas as they claim 3rd place points.
• Event 5th Place match: Palm Beach salvaged a 5th place win over the impressive SoCal team this weekend.
• Event 7th Place match: Florida had a fantastic win over Las Vegas in the 7th place game, sweeping gender doubles, losing both mixed but gutting out a DreamBreaker win. One of the least-heralded rosters is moving up the standings.
• 9th & 10th place goes to Chicago and Bay Area, who earn 1 point a piece. 11th place goes to Carolina, who finished last in the group with 6 teams. They receive 0 event standing points.

2026 League Team Standings Update Post Event

Here’s the teams who made notable moves up or down the season Standings in this event. Because of imbalanced schedules, we’ll use Points per Match to determine the “standings” in this analysis.

• New Jersey took over the lead in total points, but actually dropped to 3rd in Points Per event.
• Brooklyn moved up a spot and now sits 4th just ahead of Columbus.
• Dallas was the big mover, rebounding from their inexplicable last place showing in Austin to get back into playoff position.
• Chicago is heading the wrong way, and seems like they’re punting on the season.

Player Stats Analysis for the Weekend

Here’s a quick look at the players who played best (and worst) this weekend.

• To no surprise, Anna Leigh Waters was the top performer this weekend, going 10-0 in her games and winning an astounding 79% of her points. Jorja Johnson was a close second.
• Riley Newman finished just behind the New Jersey women, carrying his team this week in the face of adversity. He’s still got it.
• Dallas’ newly acquired doubles partnership of Townsend and Truong? They finished 7th and 9th this weekend, and are a big reason Dallas is suddenly resurgent.
• At the wrong side of the stats table, Genie Erokhina struggled badly for Bay Area, going 0-6 and winning just 20% of her points for the weekend. The Breakers aren’t pushing for a playoff spot, which may keep Erokhina safe for a bit.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top three Takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. Dallas is not dead. In fact, Dallas looked pretty darn good. Acquiring Townsend has been an energizing move; her capabilities on the left-hand side playing alongside Truong and the lefty Ge suddenly makes Dallas a very dangerous team. They should have beaten Brooklyn to win their group this weekend, and they may be putting themselves back into the conversation of dark horse title contenders.
2. How about the SoCal Hard Eights? On paper before this event started, you may have projected them to come in last in their group. Instead, they put losses on fellow playoff contenders Texas and Las Vegas, held serve against Chicago, and solidified their playoff credentials. Not bad for a team with a couple of teenagers in the starting lineup.
3. SoCal’s gain is Chicago’s loss; you just can’t expect much when you’re starting a 13-yr old in a pro doubles match, as well as an 18-yr old singles specialist. They had a -57 point differential for the event and won just 3 games in four matches. It may be a long season for the Slice and its veterans Navratil and Koller, who may be looking for some NHL-style trade deadline moves to get themselves to a contending team.

Media Pick’ Em Contest Update

We have a slew of influencers and members of the traditional pickleball media participating in a season-long pick’em contest. Here’s the link to track the competition online, and I’ll be tweeting out the pick matrix and updates, so follow me on Twitter if interested.

MLP Media Pick’em Competition Weekly Summary:

We get perfection for the first time this week, as three pundits went 11-for-11. Bravo to Chris Cali, Hannah Johns, and Nico the Lefty for the perfect slate. With his 11-for-11 performance, Cali moves into 1st place for the season-long competition.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, after a frenetic six straight weeks of MLP, we get a break for the 4th of July weekend, then for the upcoming Mid-Season tournament in Grand Rapids. After that, we’ll get the Trade Deadline, another Waivers period, and then Week 7 in San Diego the 7/19 weekend.

The rest of the Pickleball world continues as well: July features multiple international tournaments.

MLP-specific stats mentioned herein come from PickleKey.com, which has done a great job collecting detailed MLP player data for the league and went through an off-season re-design that includes a slew of new ways to slice and dice the data.

My colleague Erik Tice at the Dink (who does double duty as the GM for the California Black Bears) is back to maintaining his Public MLP Data sheet, which has all sorts of awesome data.

Any Tour-level match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 31,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.