Truth be told, it was really just the first round (or two) of local playoffs and not just for wildcards, but this year it is spread over two weekends.
Alas, my team did not advance to local playoffs, but I watched several matches of friends and former teammates and there was some good and competitive play.
In a few cases, not just the first round matches but even semi-finals were already played, and with what has become the traditional wildcard to Sectionals being given to the second place team from local playoffs, those teams that are in this coming weekend's final have already both qualified for Sectionals! Congrats to those teams.
For those teams that are already in the final, or happen to play their semi-final this weekend and get there, I'll digress for a minute and share my experience from a few years ago captaining a team that advanced to Sectionals. We made the local playoffs final and new we had a spot, and I elected to play a number of players that didn't play in the semi-final in order to give them a chance to play in playoffs but also give them some valuable experience to prepare for Sectionals. We ended up losing the final 3-2 which put us in the flight at Sectionals with the first place team from Portland. Alas, we lost to that team 3-2, the last court in a super tie-break. Had we won our local playoff final, we would have avoided this team until the Sectionals final. I can't say the result would have been different, but I do still think about how things might have been different if we won the local playoff and were seeded in the other flight at Sectionals. Something to think about for those captains that are fortunate to have such decisions to make.
Good luck to all those still in local playoffs this coming weekend!
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