Massive kuddos goes out to our Overall Winner - Elin (Grylla's goldens). She accumulated an incredible 16168.22 points for the season, and won the overall by 430 points! Not only did she win the overall, but she also won 2 Months and a GameWeek! Safe to say, she had one of the best seasons in FTL history!
Elin may have won the overall by 400+ points, but for most of the season it felt like it was anyones game. In fact, after the 22nd GameWeek (the Olympics), Elin was sitting in 3rd place (70 points behind). Elin was one of the few managers that didn't go all in for the Olympics (she ensured that she had plenty of coverage for both the Olympics and the North American swing), as she realized that there was going be both a physical and mental struggle by the players to move from the clay courts in Paris to the hard courts in North America. Sadly, almost every other manager in the top 10 went the other way and paid dearly for it over the next few weeks. Once the North American swing was over, Elin was the overall leader, and then she proceeded to win both the week after the US Open and the month of September!! Month 10 is full of semi-blind draws for the lockouts so anything can happen, but she was able to extend her lead even further (had a 350+ point lead) and by the time the final 2 weeks came to play, all she had to do was not miss the lockout and the victory was hers!
Tricia (Prepare for CzechMate) finished 2nd AGAIN (for the 3rd straight season). There's discussion as to whether or not she should change her team name to "Forever a Bridesmaid and Never a Bride" lol. She'll be honest with you, unless something crazy happened, she was out of contention for the top prize by the time the North American swing was over. I'm sure that she'll take some solace out of the fact that she won a Month, and 2 Game Weeks.
Anthony (Alcarazian Domination) finished 3rd, just 18 points behind Tricia. Nothing quite went right for Anthony this season as he didn't win a single GameWeek or Month and was actually sitting in 2nd place going into the final week of the season and paid for his decision to make Alcaraz his captain!
Our Defending Champion, Aoun (Fedex Superstars), finished 33 points behind Anthony and finished 4th. Amazingly enough, he was sitting in 2nd place going into the 2nd last week of the season, and due to salary cap issues, he was unable to trade in Coco Gauff. Sadly, her victory at the WTA Finals dropped him to 4th, and there wasn't much he could to make up the lost ground in the final week! He should take some solace that his 4th place finish is the best result ever by a defending Champion
Myself (💔 Asian Swing Withdrawals 💔) finished 25 points behind Aoun and finished 5th. My final team name speaks to how much trouble I had with players signing up for events for the Asian Swing and then deciding to take time off instead lol. My team got into trouble with trades before the US Open and with all of those withdrawals, I was put into a spot where you felt like you are on a boat that's full of bullet holes as you are trying to somehow get it to shore lol
I'd like to offer a shoutout to the rest of our top 10:
6th - Mohaib (Dr. peRFect)
7th - Taylor (Stripes VII)
8th - Mateusz (<>< v3.)
9th - Mikhail (Roger That)
10th - Jamie (The Umpire Strikes Back)
