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By Mike Melendez & Dave Siegel

Who are the greatest most dominant paddleball teams and the best singles player? Not of all-time, but right now! We know everyone has an opinion and this could be debated forever. But in today’s world of analytics, we can figure this out by the numbers. As most of you know, the PFA has maintained a ranking system for every division and it has been used to determine seeding in PFA and other tournaments. Points are awarded in sanctioned tournaments for placing from first to eighth and are weighted based on number of entries. Of course, teams that have remained intact have an advantage and that’s one reason why this system would be effective in determining who are the exalted ones.

As I have communicated numerous times in the past, the Number One team (or singles player) should be the team or player that is top ranked at year’s end. My long-time goal is to cap off each year with an annual gala sit-down dinner/awards presentation. However, we are not ready to do this every year because currently there simply are not enough sanctioned tournaments to make a meaningful determination. I believe that we need at least five tournaments in each division. It does not make sense to me to crown the BEST of the year based on four or less tournaments in that division. The PFA and the other tournament directors need to work together to ensure that we have at least five sanctioned tournaments yearly for each division and then we can truly crown the BEST at year’s end. Also in order to make a sit-down dinner a reality, we need to make it affordable for the whole paddleball community, and for that we need sponsorship.

To kick off the process this year, we have produced a four-year ranking in each division based on consolidating all of the sanctioned tournaments since 2018, which was the first year the ranking system was used. The PFA Board of Directors has approved this concept and I hope that you, the Paddleball Community, will support it!

Here are the results for the Best of the Best, Congratulations to all:
Big Ball Doubles:
o Robert Sostre & Freddy Ramirez – Total Points 381.25
Classic Ball Doubles:
o Dave Blatt & Keith Jackson – Total Points 106.25
Women’s Big Ball Doubles:
o Jasmine Suarez & Miriam Silva – Total Points 118.75
Big Ball Mixed Doubles:
o Kathy Guinan & Robert Sostre – Total Points 452.97
Singles:
o Willie Wheels Chavez – All the Points!