New Jersey 5s sweep Brooklyn, win third straight MLP title
New Jersey 5s swept Brooklyn 3-0 on Randall’s Island, taking their third straight MLP title and moving to the top of the 2026 standings.
New Jersey turned an all-hometown final into a statement, sweeping the Brooklyn Pickleball Team 3-0 on Randall’s Island to win MLP New York and claim its third straight event title. The final line, 11-1, 11-8, 11-4, gave the 5s the Super Sunday Belt at SPORTIME Randall’s Island, where Brooklyn was the host team and the event ran June 25-28 at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy site.
The 5s did not reach the title match cleanly. Earlier in the day, New Jersey saw its 15-match winning streak snapped by the Texas Ranchers, but it still advanced because it held the tiebreaker on net game differential from group play. Brooklyn earned its spot in the final by beating the Dallas Flash in a DreamBreaker, setting up a New York title match that carried real regional energy and a clear Northeast edge.
Once the final started, New Jersey took control immediately. Anna Leigh Waters and Jorja Johnson opened with an 11-1 win over Jackie Kawamoto and Hannah Blatt in women’s doubles, a result that extended their perfect run as a partnership to 22-0 on the season. Noe Khlif and Will Howells followed with an 11-8 men’s doubles win over Christian Alshon and Riley Newman, a key point in the match because Alshon and Newman had lost only once all season before that defeat.
Waters and Khlif then finished the sweep with an 11-4 mixed doubles win over Rachel Rohrabacher and Christian Alshon. Waters had another dominant weekend, going 10-0 and winning 79% of her points, while Khlif said afterward that his mixed partnership with Waters had taken time to settle before finding its rhythm. Waters said the wins mattered, but the larger target remained the 2026 MLP championship.
The title also mattered in the standings. New Jersey earned 25 points from the win and moved into first place ahead of the St. Louis Shock. MLP’s standings page showed the 5s on top after New York, and the league’s next major stop is the Edward Jones MLP Mid-Season Tournament in Grand Rapids, beginning July 8, with New Jersey positioned as the top seed.
For a league built on short bursts and quick momentum shifts, New Jersey’s weekend in New York was a clean answer to the one blemish it suffered on Sunday morning. The 5s left Randall’s Island not just with another trophy, but with the top spot and the clearest claim yet to being the team everyone else is chasing.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
