Players to Watch: Week Two
The MLQ season continues tomorrow at 3:30 pm ET with one our two Canadian franchises, the Toronto Raiders, hosting the Cleveland Riff. Later in the evening, the Boston Forge welcome the Charlotte Aviators to their home turf and, for our Series of the Week, the San Antonio Soldados take on the Kansas City Stampede. Want to know who to keep an eye on amongst all those Diaza jerseys? Here are six players to watch for week two.
Kansas City Stampede
Veteran utility Vincent Reyes will have a herculean task before him as a young and short-handed Kansas City Stampede squad travels south to San Antonio for its first series of the season. The Stampede do not have their 2023 leading scorer Riley Usami or experienced marksman Aaron Stout, and they will compete with only five total women this weekend, an issue that has challenged Kansas City before. Reyes will likely need to float between the beater and chaser games, working with Chanun Ong and TJ O’Connor to play to parity with San Antonio’s Daniel Williams in the beater game and facilitating to a number of dangerous weapons in the chaser game, including Lauren Smith, Anya Ortiz, and Ryan Mehio.
San Antonio Soldados
Watch for chaser Alyssa Villalba’s meteoric rise to continue this weekend, when the San Antonio Soldados take on the Kansas City Stampede with second place in the South Division and a spot in the quarterfinals at the 2024 MLQ Championship potentially on the line. Villalba, who started playing last season for UTSA and won a USQ college national championship in her rookie year, has reached new heights as a player and earned the trust of a veteran. Clear to everyone from her performance in the USQ college division national title game, Villalba has a great understanding of spacing, executes perfectly timed cuts around the hoops, and stands tall as a hoop defender.
Charlotte Aviators
The consensus top seeker in quadball and a skilled ball handler who has been a one-person offense at times in their career, utility Ryan Davis is the sun which the Charlotte Aviators revolve around. Particularly without veteran chaser Lee Hodge on the roster for the weekend, Davis will likely need to put up big numbers and secure a couple flag catches for Charlotte to have a shot to upset the favored Boston Forge. The Forge have dominated this matchup throughout its history, having never lost a game. Boston’s seeking game struggled in 2022 but showed signs of resurgence in 2023 and should be boosted by beaters Lulu Xu and Max Hamlin both starting the season healthy, while the Aviators will have to compensate for the absence of Celine Richard.
Boston Forge
The Boston Forge, featuring the core with the most experience playing under a three-maximum gender rule, debuts this weekend with a key matchup against an improving Charlotte Aviators squad. Boston boasts a number of supremely talented women and gender non-conforming chasers, including the US National Team’s Athena Mayor, Peter Lawrence, and Emily Hickmott. But fresh off a USQ college division national championship with Harvard University, chaser Luiza Nicolae could make the difference with her height, positioning, and composure on the ball. Especially with the length and scrappiness that the Aviators typically have around the hoops, Nicolae’s contributions could be pivotal.
Cleveland Riff
The Cleveland Riff have a long history of being led by their beaters, especially Ben Strauss who starred for the franchise in the late 2010s. They have managed to rebuild a lot of their depth in the beating game since then and beater Aaron Oehler has been at the forefront of the resurgence. Oehler will be key to matching up with the variety of beater pairs that the Toronto Raiders can throw and forcing turnovers against their spread offense that likes to use the whole field and excels at long passing and ball movement. He was tied for eighth in the league with 1.5 stops per game in 2023.
Toronto Raiders
On defense, the Toronto Raiders have typically played a more compact style that relies on their beaters to be conservative and disciplined and forces their opponents to take risks to break them down. Beater Emma Sherwood has been the trusted anchor of those defenses, with her statistics showing her immense value in 2023. She had a team-high +11 plus/minus and tied with beater Alexander Scherger for the most stops on the Raiders with seven while playing more drives than any of her teammates and averaging 1.47 dodgeballs, slightly more than former North Division MVP Cody Narveson of the Minneapolis Monarchs. Watch for Sherwood to stifle the Riff’s drive-heavy offense this weekend.
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