09/10/2026
To everybody who has thrown a bag in that lot,
Fall 2026 is not happening, and everybody who signed up is getting a full refund. You deserve the whole story rather than a one line notice, so here it is.
We spent five years going back and forth with the township trying to get this project approved. Five years. In June we finally got there. And I will say this because it is true: working with the county was a breeze. They were never the hold up.
The project is the outdoor dining area, the awning and the new parking. Here is the part that matters to you specifically. Expanding what we can do with co****le has been one of the main reasons for the whole thing from the beginning. More parking, a real outdoor space, room to run more than a Thursday night. That was the goal the entire time.
Then the timing landed where it landed. We chased estimates all summer and the work starts now, in the middle of the season. We did not expect it to fall here and we cannot move it.
Here is how the build actually runs. First we do the lot around the bar, and we have to close for a stretch of that. Once it is finished we move onto the lot between us and Kneble’s. The whole way through, both of those are either full of construction trucks or actively being built on.
Which means every car has to park at Kneble’s. And Kneble’s is where we play.
I know what the workaround looks like and I am not doing it. I am not asking you to park on Atlantic Avenue and walk across a road with no crosswalk in the dark. And I am not going to fill my neighbors’ streets with league traffic and have people parked in front of houses that never asked for any of this. Neither of those is worth a season.
I looked hard at running a short one instead. I would have discounted it, the money was never the issue. What stopped me is rain. Fall weather is the one thing none of us control, and against a shortened schedule one bad stretch takes the whole thing with it. I am not going to take your money for something the weather can erase.
It is frustrating. Five years of waiting on approvals and it lands on the one stretch of calendar that costs us a season. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Your refund is already on its way back to the card you paid with, in full. You do not need to do anything. If it has not turned up in a few days, text me.
We also pledged that part of every entry would go to the Main Street Food Pantry, run by the First United Methodist Church of Mays Landing. We are making that donation on behalf of all of you, and refunding every penny anyway. The pledge was made and the pantry should not lose out because we are pouring concrete.
We will be back in 2027. Expect more, bigger, better, and built to handle every player who wants in, because that is the entire point of what we are putting in the ground. I am not going to put a date on it, because the whole project has to be finished and signed off before anything opens on that property, and that timing is not mine to promise. When I know, you will know, here first.
Until then this site stays up as the record book. Nine seasons, every roster, every standing, every champion. If you want to look up what your record was in Fall 2024, or settle an argument about a head to head, it is all still there.
Freddy J's Bar & Kitchen and Kneble's Auto Service Center have sponsored every season this league has run, and Collini Real Estate, LLC came back again for this one. None of them get anything out of a season that does not happen, and none of them made it difficult. That deserves saying out loud.
Nine seasons since Summer 2023. Forty-four teams in one spring. Names on plaques inside the bar. Thursday nights in a parking lot that somehow turned into the thing people planned their week around. 2026 only gave us one season out of three, which is a rotten way for a year to go, and it makes me want the next one that much more.
When the doors are back open, come in for a meal. And come back for the next season.
Thank you for all of it. Genuinely.
In the meantime, stay sharp.
Grant