Hello Managers,
As sad as it is to say, the season is now over. It was
another amazing year of racing and fantasy speed skating. And boy did we get lucky with World Champs
capping the whole thing off in perfect fashion. The rankings were changing
dramatically day to day and the final results weren’t known until the last mass
start race came to a finish. One extra DQ and things could have ended so
differently….
Another Year, Another Champion
But, alas, it’s time to announce a new winner and it’s
not Dad (but he was fucking close!). The
2025 Men’s and Women’s Stage 3
Choir Fantasy Speed Skating Draft Champion
is Thomas! He was already a
total stud and a new father, but he can now more importantly add “draft
champion” to that list. He’s also largely responsible for handling a lot of the
back-end stuff in this league, like keeping track of how many points skaters
earn, adjusting benches and swapping all your free agents on the website. This
shit can be tedious as hell and we’re beyond lucky to have Thomas on our team
of draft organizers. He’s never won before, so it’s only fitting that someone
who puts this much time into running the league (and therefore spends a lot of
time looking over skating results) finally has his time in the spotlight.
Emin and Choir Awards
This section will look a little different from last
year. A few classic awards are being discontinued while we have a slew of new
awards freshly added to the mix. Shoutout to Your Biological Father with
helping Dad with the award selection this year!
The
Emin Award for Worst Free Agent Swap
goes
to Molly, Claire, and Victoria for dropping Cooper McLeod before the first
World Cup so they could snag Tingyu Gao the second he appeared on an entry
list. They proceeded to milk Gao for 13 points while McLeod went on to earn a
bunch of other managers 319 points – more than Jutta Leerdam, Erin Jackson,
Kjeld Nuis, or Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong. Considering Molly, Claire, and Victoria
only finished 144 points back from first place in the league, this must be a
pretty bitter pill to swallow.
The
Choir Award for Best Rookie
goes to
Jordan. This is actually pretty incredible since it’s pretty much a guarantee
that he doesn’t know which skaters are on his team. Jordan, unlike most of us
in this league, didn’t even ever compete as a skater. He just inexplicably fell
in love with the men’s 10,000m event and has since followed the sport at an extremely
casual level.
The
Emin Award for Worst Performance from a
Previous Winner
goes to Dylan. He didn’t even do that poorly, the other
managers who have won in the past all just happened to do pretty damn well with most
finishing in the money this year. But, I’m still taking this as testament to
how flukey his win last season was (aided in no small part from being able to
pick Jordan Stolz first overall).
The
Choir Award for Skater Drafted to the Most
Winning Teams
goes to Rio Yamada. Four of the top seven teams drafted Rio
this year, including the top two teams. Surely this means she was one of the
reasons all those teams won money, right? Right? Right….?
The
Emin Award for Skater Dropped by the Most
Winning Managers
goes to Rio Yamada! It turns out being drafted by a
lot of good managers doesn’t mean you’re a good skater. Luckily, most of these
managers figured it out early and got rid of her before she could cause too
much harm.
The
Choir Award for Best Team Drafted on the
Side of a Rural Manitoba Highway
goes to Garrett! Despite showing up
late with no skater list and a shaky internet connection, he managed to put
together his all time best performance in this league. Unfortunately, not many managers
draft their teams from a rural highway in Manitoba, meaning Garrett unfortunately
also wins the
Emin Award for Worst Team Drafted on the Side of Rural Manitoba
Highway.
The
Choir Award for Best Team Drafted by a Matt
goes
to Matt Z. I don’t have to say too much here since his name sums it all up
pretty well: “Matt L Sucks”.
The
Emin Award for Worst Team Drafted by a Matt
goes
to Matt L. Better luck next year, shitter!
The
Choir Award for the Skater that got Closest to
Jordan Stolz
goes to Marijke Groenwoud. She earned a super impressive 555
points, beating out skaters like Mommy Miho, Joy Beune, Sander Eitrem, and
Jenning de Boo. Despite the incredible haul of points, she still fell 412 short
of Stolz. In fact, you could bundle up Groenewoud with Ragne Wiklund (who also finished
in the top 8 and is thus a certified first-rounder) and it would still equal
less than what Stolz got. This is why he will remain unavailable to draft.
The
Emin Award for Worst Team Management
goes
to Peter and Brooke for leaving 362 points on the bench, mostly in the form of
Femke Kok. Activating Kok and using either free agent slot to pick up any one
of the rather impressive free agents still available all year long would have added
more than enough points to this team’s tally to push them out of last place. It’s
pretty clear what the issue with this team was…
The
Choir Award for Beating a Dummy Team
goes
to only two managers this year: Thomas and Dad. The third-place finisher, Ben Finegold,
claims to be only three things: fat, vegan, and on his 3
rd
marriage.
But this list omits his most important quality: he’s not a real person (don’t
get him mixed up with the famous American chess Grandmaster). Ben was actually drafted
by the organizers off a dummy list since we only had 39 teams sign up this year.
This means all but two managers lost to a fake team. How embarrassing. (For
those wondering, the prize money “he” won will just be added to next year’s
prize pool.)
The
Emin Award for Worst Confidence to
Performance Ratio
goes to Stepdad. Now, he never actually released his
own pre-season rankings this year, but he did tell me (in confidence) that he
was going to win money this year. Hilarious! He never actually had a shot at finishing
in the top ten, as is evident from his embarrassing finish. He can try to blame
his AI model or algorithm or whatever scapegoat he tries to come up with, but
the truth is out: Stepdad, a confirmed alcoholic with poor taste in beer,
drafted a very bad team and is personally responsible for the mistakes that
were made.
Sorry guys but that’s all I’ve got for now. Also, sorry
for the relatively late post. It’s unfortunately a very busy time of year for
me so I’m just happy to get even this stunted version of a post out within a
week of Worlds ending. On behalf of the draft organizers, we hope you enjoyed
another exciting year of fantasy speed skating and we hope to see you again
next season. It’s an Olympic year so it should be a good one!
Cheers,
Dad