LL Sleese Staks a win away from title

Yacchatta!!, the Smackers, the Beach Side Rockers, and the Small Hustlers all won in sweeping fashion on Tuesday night in continuation of the 6th Annual Coors Light Four-Person Beach Volleyball League at the Pacific Islands Club, but the team that gained the most sat idly by as the L.L. Sleese Staks saw one of their closest competitors fare not so well.

After rocketing out to an 8-1 start, Libweiirs!! dropped out of title contention and into third place when they suffered a one-sided loss at the hands of the Small Hustlers in their final game of the season.

The Small Hustlers started the push for their sixth win by taking the first set 11-5, but the clincher went into extra points as Libweiirs!! fell two tallies shy of their ninth win to fall short in the 13-11 second.

With all chance at first place gone, the wind left the sails of Libweiirs!!, and the mighty squad lost the third set 11-5 to fall 8-2. While they are still in the running for the prizes awarded to the top three teams, Libweiirs!! stock further suffered a hit when the Beach Side Rockers rose above the Air Biscuits to notch their eighth win with another sweep.

Captain Martin Castro, Joan Cramer, Linda Anastacio, and Bruce Berline dug deep to down the rising squad and earned their win two sets into the best-of-three match with back-to-back 11-7 scores.

Had the Air Biscuits won, they would have been in position to challenge for the number two spot in the standings with a win tonight over Yacchatta!!, but now they will only be playing for fun.

They had no fun in their final set of the night against the Rockers as they were on the smelly end of an 11-0 skunking, but the fact that they showed up was more than what the Monkeys and Bananas could say for themselves, as the once highly touted team took one on the chin to the Smackers when they failed to field a foursome.

The Smackers got their fourth win of the season gift-wrapped in a 33-0 package, but at 4-5 and nothing but fun motivating them to play, they would have much rather faced an opponent.

Yacchatta!! notched its third win of the season against …But We Don’t Swallow to improve to 3-6, and they did so by taking the broom to the underachievers in three straight sets. Unlike their performances in previous outings this season, the non-swallowers broke with tradition and almost won a set by forcing the third into extra points.

After losing the first two sets by a combined 22-4, the 0-10 …But We Don’t Swallow refused to go silently into that dark night by playing an inspired round of volleyball in which they lost in an exciting 12-10 back and forth affair.

In doing so, …But We Don’t Swallow entered the PIC record books by becoming the first team in the sand league’s history to go completely winless. Aside from completing the season 0-10, the non-swallowers put the wraps on their perfect season by dropping all 30 sets, by an average three-set combined score of 33-8.5.

Despite languishing at the bottom of the official league totals in every category, the non-winners raised the bar for sportsmanship and team spirit.

All of the hand-to-hand in the sand continues for the final night at the PIC, as the 6th Annual Coors Light Four-Person Beach Volleyball League comes to a close following the match-ups between the Crashers and Monkeys and Bananas at 5:30pm, Yacchatta!! and Air Biscuits at 6:30pm, and L.L. Sleese Staks and the Smackers at 7:30pm.