February 3, 2025: The second annual Sunshine City Jai-alai Tournament concluded this past weekend after 11 hours of action-packed jai-alai featuring 32 players across the country. It was the largest tournament held player wise ever in the 17-year history at America’s first and only jai-alai cancha. Weather was perfect with mostly cloudy skies and temps in the mid-70s. The attendance Saturday was 56.
Scott King, the former Tampa Jai-alai pro player, and Matt Sutton, nephew of the “great” Anthony Sutton, were the winners of big event held at Puryear Park in St. Petersburg. If it wasn’t for a late scratch Saturday morning, this entire headline and outcome would have been dramatically different.
Matt Sutton, 27, was the second youngest player out there, was originally teamed up with Gizmo, aka Daniel Schwartz who played pro at Daytona and Melbourne in the 80s. But he was scratched at the last minute, and event organizer Scott King was in a pickle. He had to switch cloths from scorekeeper and ref to be a replacement player and eventually went all the way to the final game on Sunday afternoon – winning the event! Talk about Clark Kent turning into Superman. Scott King played like he had turned the clock back 40 years when he played on one of the top 3 rosters in the world for 14 years.
But perhaps the real champ was Matt Sutton. There must be good jai-alai blood in their family genes or something, but this kid really turned it up a notch. He didn’t drop a ball or hit the pad until his last game on Sunday and was amazing. Never in the years I’ve seen him play since a teenager, have seen anything like it. And he was playing against some tuff cookies out there – including many top players from Connecticut and Miami, not to mention his uncle and others in Tampa Bay. Almost half the players out there had played professionally – on top of it.
Congrats to Scott King and Matt – you deserved it.
The entire 11 hours were broadcast live on Twitch with a professional camera crew of several people filming it.
The format was also set up on Bracket HQ – a great website that anybody could log into and follow along.
Here is how the format was set up:
There were 6 “B” teams that played in Group A in the Bracket HQ app on Saturday morning. The top two advanced to the elimination bracket on Sunday. There were 10 teams classified as “A” players and were in groups B and C on the Bracket HQ app. The three top groups from each of those two advanced to the finals on Sunday. They were seeded 1-6 while the two winning teams from the “B” category were seeded as 7 and 8. That created the 8-team bracket for Sunday’s finals in Doubles.
Magic Mike and J Laca were the winners from the “B” players, winning all 5 of their games – the only team in all three groups to accomplish that. Joining them to the finals on Sunday were Seminole King and Rick B.
Because time allotted, there was a singles event added on Saturday with the main doubles event rapping up at 4:01pm. Fifteen (15) players participated with 4 players advancing to the finals on Sunday. The four finalized were Anthony, Monte, Brodie, and Rule. Anthony eventually beat Brodi in the finals. There were no trophies for them because it was not originally scheduled, but I’ll be getting them ordered tomorrow and be presented later at a TBA.
The event overall went well – everyone seemed to be enjoying the event. There was about a 7-minute delay on Saturday afternoon as a huge fight broke out in an adjacent soccer field with about 50 players converging in a battle that even saw a coach – a grown man shoved a player to the ground hard. Another 100 spectators were at their event in shock while the adults – both coaches and refs supposedly to be in charge – did nothing to stop it.
Special thanks to Scott King for putting on a great event and a special thanks to those that helped getting the cancha looking new again. We also want to thank RG3, our latest player to be a regular at the St. Pete Cancha, for all the help he did in getting the court renovations done in preparation for the tournament.
