Top seeds New Jersey and St. Louis eye Mid-Season final clash

New Jersey and St. Louis arrived in Grand Rapids as the two seeds everyone circled, and the numbers explained why. Both clubs sat on 87 standing points heading into the Edward Jones MLP Mid-Season Tournament, with New Jersey at 17-2 and St. Louis at 16-4, while New Jersey’s current run stretched to 22 straight league wins.

That set up the clearest path to Sunday’s final: keep winning through a double-elimination bracket that rewarded the top seeds with a softer opening lane, then survive the one matchup each contender could not afford to lose. For New Jersey, the key was simple and brutal. The Fives had the best form in the league, and Anna Leigh Waters remained the cleanest edge in the field, listed as undefeated alongside Jorja Johnson and sitting at 42-2 in overall games. If that form held, the path ran through the doubles courts first and the pressure points of mixed play after that.

St. Louis looked built to chase them down. Four of the team’s top six individual winning percentages belonged to Gabe Tardio, Kate Fahey, Hayden Patriquin and Anna Bright, a roster balance that made the Shock dangerous in any pairing. That depth mattered because MLP’s mid-season format was seeded by Points Per Match, with Match Win percentage as the tiebreaker, and every game could swing standings points as well as bracket position.

Columbus was the other team that changed the shape of the week. The Sliders landed Hurricane Tyra Black in a June 15 trade with Dallas that sent Danni-Elle Townsend and cash considerations the other way, and that move pushed Columbus from nuisance to threat. Black gave the Sliders another elite women’s player and made them a legitimate DreamBreaker problem for any higher seed that expected an easy escape.

The rest of the field still had sharp edges. Los Angeles had finished first in its group at all three events so far, Brooklyn had stayed steady even without a full-strength lineup, and Dallas, the defending champion, carried enough upside with its new look to turn the bracket noisy fast. The invited teams from Team Australia, Team Canada, Team Europe and the College All-Stars added a path to chaos, even if the title race still ran through the top seeds.

The tournament, staged July 8-12 at Belknap Park alongside the Beer City Open, drew one of the biggest pickleball crowds of the year in Grand Rapids, with roughly 1,200 players around the venue area. With prize money, bonus standings points and playoff position all on the line, New Jersey and St. Louis were not just chasing a trophy. They were trying to turn a mid-season run into a statement that carried straight into New York City and the expanded playoff race.