Fall 2025 Draft and Season Openers

On Thursday, August 21, Fall captains, Torch & Zay, Keegan and Marisa, Jamonte, and MV met with your humble commissioner to draft teams for the 2025 fall season.  We had a lot of signups, and the league was right on the cusp of having enough players to try to have a six team league. That would have been a first for the fall season. Even though add some WUDI players in the fall, we lose a lot of the college players who are in our summer league. Fall league also has more part-time players due to conflicts with work, school, and for a few players, WUDI indoor. WUDI has asked that we consider moving our Thursday games to Wednesday for Fall league, but we have been reserving the field on Mondays and Thursdays all at once for both summer and fall. Soccer and softball also get played at the Kiln, so I think we're likely going to continue with our current schedule unless we hear that a lot more players have the WUDI indoor conflict. 

We also had a record number of DoW sign up for fall league, with all teams having either 8 or 9 DoW on their rosters. This is fantastic. We hope to play more 4-3 points this fall than we've been able to in the past. If we can, I'd love to see some all DoW points!

Since we decided to stick with a four team league because of part-time players, the rosters are big overall. Each team has over 20 players. We are unlikely to roster any DoM who ask to join late. We continue to prioritize DoW participation, so I don't want to turn any DoW away. However, I'm also watching what attendance looks like because we want to ensure people get playtime. All four rosters have some strong club players as well as rec level players and some new folks who are learning to play.

Season openers

The fall season began on Monday, August 25th. White played Navy Blue in the early game. Teams worked on chemistry. White established rotations for DoW, DoM handlers, and DoM cutters. Navy appeared to employ a similar strategy. White received the pull. Navy got off to the hotter start, scoring some break points and taking an early lead. White's defense got them back into the game, and they reclaimed the lead to take half on serve 8-7. Navy held to start the second half, and got some breaks to lead again. Similar to the first half, White's defense rose to the occasion and they retook the lead late. White got the win 15-12. Oatis and Pepper exchanged canine cheers and jeers at each other on the sidelines.

The late game was an epic contest between REDemption and Purple. Red was up at half 8-6. Purple caught up with a few breaks to tie at 9-9 and we were trading back and forth until the score was 12-12. Purple pulled away with a 14-12 lead. Red scored to make it 14-13. After a brief discussion about hard-cap, the teams played the next point and Purple won 15-13. 

The season is off to a great start.