MLP 2024 Awards - Get out and Vote!

Major League Pickleball is holding voting for four different honors for the 2024 season. These are the four honors that are up for vote:

• Premier Level Most Valuable Player
• Premier Level Most Improved Player
• Challenger Level Most Valuable Player
• Challenger Level Most Improved Player

How the voting works

Voting is made up of three different constituents: fans, pickleball media, and MLP team executives. Each of the three voter groups make up one third of the overall vote. This is similar to how other professional leagues conduct all-star and MVP voting. 

Usually, fans do not have as much of say as in this year’s MLP voting, so make sure your voice is heard! Fans make up one third of the vote!

Voters are asked to weigh the full MLP season - the regular season, Advil Targeted Relief Mid-Season Tournament, and the 2024 MLP Playoffs.

*Players must have been part of the original 2024 MLP Draft pool to be eligible for nomination*

How fans can vote: 

1. Visit this link to vote
2. Enter your email (one vote per person)
3. Submit your entries!

HURRY - Voting stops at 5pm ET Monday, November 25th!

I was honored to find out I was given a pickleball media vote by Major League Pickleball. I love covering the sport and specifically, Major League Pickleball - so I take my role in voting very seriously.

In full transparency in my voting, I will show you who the nominations were, who the snubs were (in my opinion), and who I voted for.

Let’s get into the action!

Premier Level MVP

Nominations

• Anna Bright - St. Louis Shock
• JW Johnson - Dallas Flash
• Hayden Patriquin - St. Louis Shock
• Anna Leigh Waters - New Jersey 5s

My Vote - Anna Leigh Waters 

This was the easiest vote for me out of the four different awards. Anna Leigh Waters dominated the season from beginning to end. In the regular season, she went 43-3 in her games, for a 93.5% winning percentage. She also won five of six games and the championship in the Mid-Season Tournament. 

Some stats that might be new to you:

• Anna Leigh went 21-2 in mixed doubles with Will Howells - 1st overall
• She also went 22-1 in women’s doubles with Mari Humberg - 1st overall
• In 50 Dreambreaker points, Anna Leigh went 35-15 overall, for a 70% win percentage - 1st overall
• 28/46 games Anna Leigh won 25-19 or better - what I call “dominant wins” - 1st overall
• Anna Leigh is the only player in MLP to have not taken a loss of 19-25, or worse 
• Anna Leigh won seven of the nine games she played in that were decided by two points, for a 77.78% win percentage - Tied for 1st overall (Federico Staksrud is the other)

Anna Leigh was by far the most dominant player in MLP Premier Level and deserves the MVP title. The other three players nominated were extremely good, but ALW just put up some insane numbers.

Premier Level Most Improved Player

Nominations:

• Quang Duong - Texas Ranchers
• Kate Fahey - St. Louis Shock
• Augustus Ge - Dallas Flash
• Rachel Rohrabacher - D.C. Pickleball Team

Snubs

This award should 100% be going to Will Howells, in my opinion. How he is not one of the four nominees, is beyond me. 

Some facts about Will Howells:

• Howells was drafted 37th overall and finished the season tied for fourth place overall, with a 72% match win percentage
• In the first two events of the regular season, Howells was 2-7 with Zane Navratil. In the last two events, Howells and Navratil were 6-3
• Additionally, Howells played Dreambreakers in the number one slot for the Fives, going 35-31, for a 53% win percentage against other teams’ best players

Howells has improved in many facets of the game over the past seven months and deserves the Most Improved award.

Okay, now that I am off my soap box, here is my actual vote.

My Vote: Kate Fahey

For me, this was a two horse race among the listed nominees. This was either Kate Fahey or Quang Duong. 

Augie Ge was taken 38th overall in the draft, and finished 13th, in terms of match win percentage. I just didn’t see him improving his game all that much this year, compared to where he started - he was already very good.

Rohrabacher’s nomination in this spot is a head scratcher for me. She was taken 14th overall, and was the fourth woman taken in the draft - we already knew she was extremely good. Rachel was the most consistent player on the D.C. Pickleball Team and dominated play, winning 70% of her matches. Rachel would have been my pick at the end of the 2023 season for this award. In 2024, Rohrabacher started the year as a top four woman and was closer to an MVP in my book than Most Improved.

Let’s finally get to Kate Fahey and Quang Duong. 

Fahey was a fairly unknown commodity going into the draft. Some Challenger Level GMs were excited to possibly pick her up, but the Shock took her as the 42nd overall pick in Premier. Fahey started off good in women’s doubles, and not good in mixed doubles with Gabe Tardio. She kept backing off the kitchen line in firefights and her consistency wasn’t where it needed to be. 

Fast forward a few months, Kate is now DOMINATING singles on the PPA Tour, her and Anna Bright had the second best women’s doubles game win percentage in all of Premier Level. Fahey went 34-22 in Dreambreaker points, for a 60.71% win percentage, good for FIFTH OVERALL. 

Here is a crazy stat I found, while researching Kate this MLP Season: Kate and Gabe Tardio went 2-16 in their first four events of MLP 2024, for an 11.11% win percentage. This was the worst in all mixed doubles duos at the time. 

In MLP Las Vegas, Gabe and Kate went 3-2, for a 60% win percentage, beating the following three teams:

• Quang Duong and Tina Pisnik
• Alix Truong and Connor Garnett
• Lacy Schneemann and Andrei Daescu

If that last mixed doubles stat doesn’t show you how much Kate improved this year, I don’t know what will.

Fahey is quickly becoming a complete player, and I would not be surprised at all for her to crack into the top ten in women’s doubles and mixed doubles in 2025.

My reasoning for not picking Duong is simple - he didn’t play the entire season and he started off pretty hot and never let down. If we are looking at “most improved”, I would like to see more progress than being good and then finishing the season winning 50% of games played. Quang’s work ethic is second to none on the tour and I am predicting he will be a top ten player in all three disciplines in 2025. 

Challenger Level MVP 

Nominations:

• Jaume Martinez Vich - Atlanta Bouncers
• Jack Munro - Chicago Slice
• Ewa Radzikowska - Frisco Pandas
• Chao Yi “Zoey” Wang - Las Vegas Night Owls

Snubs

The rules stated that players must have been a part of the original draft pool (meaning they didn’t opt out). According to the rules, Megan Fudge is then ineligible for the MVP of Challenger nomination. I would not have picked her as my MVP, but she would have been second in my voting, had she been eligible.

To be honest, I don’t know if I agree with this rule - if the league let them play, they should be eligible, IMHO.

My Vote: Jaume Martinez Vich

Vich was the best player in Challenger Level throughout the entire year. He finished tied for second (with Ewa Radzikowska) in match win percentage, at 70%. Jaume went 32-14 in his 46 matches.

Jaume (and Todd Fought) finished as the third best men’s doubles team, winning 65% of their matches. Jaume really excelled in mixed doubles, going 17-6, for a 74% winning percentage. This was tied for the best mixed doubles winning percentage in all of Challenger Level, among players who played at least half their team’s matches.

To show how dominant Jaume was, here are a few more stats:

• He had the highest points win percentage - 1,097 points for, and 961 points against, for a 53.3% - 1st
• Jaume averaged +3.0 points per game, meaning his average game was 25-22 - 1st
• 18 of Jaume’s 46 matches were dominant wins (25-19, or better), meaning 39.1% of the time, Jaume had a dominant win - 1st
• Jaume played 139 Dreambreaker points (most in all of Challenger Level) and won 56.12% of the time, going against the other teams’ top player. 

Other nominees

Ewa Radzikowska had another really great season. She tied Jaume with the best match win percentage and best mixed doubles win percentage, with 74%. She played on a Frisco Pandas team that was very up and down and barely squeeked into the playoffs and fizzled out quickly there. 

Jack Munro was another great candidate for MVP. He won 25 of his 38 matches, winning 66% of the time. Munro took a hit for me here because he did miss one event, and missed four matches for his team. While he went 3-1 in his two matches in the Mid Season Tournament, Chicago went 0-2 and was one of the first teams eliminated.

Zoey was great this year for a very tumultuous Las Vegas Night Owls team. They went through a tough overhaul half way through the season, with their GM fired (while being in first place) and trading away their two men for two men that very much underperformed. Zoey and Judit were the rocks of the team.

Zoey went 26-20, which was the same as Brendon Long, for Chicago. She had a worse win percentage than Milan Rane, Daniel De La Rosa, and Todd Fought, in addition to all of the other MVP candidates. The biggest knock I have on Zoey for MVP is that she was 6-16 in games decided by two points, only winning those games 27% of the time.

Challenger Level Most Improved Player

Nominations:

• Judit Castillo - Las Vegas Night Owls
• Todd Fought - Atlanta Bouncers
• Allison Harris - Chicago Slice
• Eric Oncins - Miami Pickleball Club

Snubs

I would have firmly put Max “Purple Jesus” Manthou in this category and he would have been my winner. I would have put him in this category over Todd Fought (more on that later). Max was on the second best overall team in Challenger, was on the best men’s doubles team in Challenger, and improved greatly in mixed doubles throughout the year. 

My Vote: Eric Oncins

Eric came onto the scene right after finishing his senior year on the tennis team at Florida Golf Coast. As soon as I saw him play, I knew he was going to be a good pickleball player - he has size, reach, quickness, and great shots from all over the court.

Statistically speaking, Oncins didn’t get much better from event to event. The MLP Miami event was not good at the end of the season. However, he showed up in a big way in the first round of the playoffs, going 3-1 to earn promotion and a semi-final berth.

Sometimes stats don’t always tell the whole story and this is one of those times for me. The eye test has shown me that Eric is one of the most improved players in pickleball over the past six months. 

Other nominees

Judit was very good this year. Her and Zoey finished with the exact same match win percentage. Castillo was taken as the 13th overall pick and I expected her to do well and she did. Did she get better? Absolutely! But not by as much as Oncins.

Allison Harris is another MLP veteran that was taken 19th overall in the draft, a late second round draft pick. She finished 27th overall in Challenger, so she actually finished worse than her draft position. Harris was a VERY good player for Chicago, going 25-21 in her 46 games, but to say she was the most improved in Challenger is a stretch for me.

I was most surprised by Fought's name being in this category. Not because Todd played bad this year - he was phenomenal. In fact, Todd was so good, I actually had him on my MLP Challenger Level All First Team, in my podcast with Matty Pickles. 

I was surprised because we already knew Todd Fought was a very good Challenger Level player. Todd won MLP 2023 Season 2 in Challenger with the SoCal Hard Eights and then went and proved this year that he is still very good. While Todd had a phenomenal year, I think it is a little disrespectful to his previous accomplishments to say he was most improved this year.