Daub and Lewis win compass draw roundnet event in local showdown

Nick Daub and John Lewis won the Friendly City Open by beating Matt Bohnen and Jack Kaufman in the final of an eight-team compass draw bracket, a compact field that still produced a clean competitive finish.

The tournament drew 18 players, enough to give the local roundnet scene a bracket with real depth without stretching beyond the club-sized scale that often sustains the sport. The compass draw format kept teams moving through multiple matchups against opponents with different records, which gave the event more weight than a single-elimination night and let the final come out of a longer run of games rather than one lucky break.

Daub’s win carried extra regional context. Illinois roundnet coverage has described him as a premier player since 2017, and ClubSpike has placed him among the Midwest’s top-ranked players. Bohnen brought his own tournament credibility to the final as well; a 2018 Spikeball Tour Series recap referenced Bohnen and Daub as a College Nationals pairing, which made the championship matchup look less like a surprise than a meeting between players already familiar in roundnet brackets.

The event also fit into a broader system that has been built around roundnet over time. Spikeball Tour Series materials show that 2017 was the fourth year with official Spikeball Roundnet Association events, and the same ecosystem now includes Women’s Roundnet, College Roundnet, and a college five-team squad program aimed at grassroots growth. That structure matters because it gives local nights like the Friendly City Open a place in a larger calendar, with practice sessions, bracket play and repeat appearances helping players move from a neighborhood scene into more organized competition.

Still, the numbers tell a specific story rather than a sweeping one. An 18-player draw and an eight-team bracket show a healthy local turnout and enough continuity to crown recognizable winners, but they do not by themselves prove growth beyond one scene. What they do show is a functioning roundnet pipeline at the club level, with Daub, Lewis, Bohnen and Kaufman now part of the kind of names that can anchor the next local bracket.