Avery Signs Pettengill As Frozen Player
Keeps name on team sheet, guarantees zero appearances; Avery calls it a five-year plan.
Chernysh, his actual captain, calls it filing, not paddle.
By Anita Bath·Staff Reporter
A roster whiteboard in the Rowayton hut lists Sunday's lineup, with one name boxed off beside the words DO NOT PLAY.
“I hate this. I am also, somehow, for it.”
ROWAYTON, Conn., Sept. 6 —Kyle Avery, who co-captains Rowayton E, signed William Pettengill to the team's Sunday roster Friday as a frozen player, a designation that keeps Pettengill's name on the team sheet while guaranteeing he will not play a single point for the side this season. Avery described the arrangement as player development and the opening move of a five-year plan.
The frozen designation is a real category within Rowayton's own roster software, and Avery is, by his own account, its most frequent user. Rowayton E now carries three frozen players, more than any other side in the league's nine divisions, according to a roster ledger Avery maintains on a shared spreadsheet he updates from his phone during matches he is playing in.
Pettengill did not respond to a request for comment, extending a policy of silence with this newspaper that began last month, when he called a previous article about his partner search an insulting mischaracterization. He has not spoken to either of the Screen's reporters since.
Pettengill currently plays for Rowayton C in Division 4, where he ranks second of twenty-seven players on the roster. He will not appear this season for a Division 9 side that plays five divisions below it, a fact Avery called irrelevant to the arrangement.
Sergey Chernysh, who captains Pettengill's actual team, said he had not been consulted and did not intend to be. "On Rowayton C we play the matches," Chernysh said. "What Kyle does with a name on a piece of paper in Division 9 is not paddle. It is filing."
Andrew Simone, Avery's co-captain on Rowayton E, confirmed the signing and said he had not been able to determine what, precisely, it accomplished. "I have been co-captain of this team for four seasons and I still do not fully understand the lineup software," Simone said. "Now there is a man on it I am contractually forbidden to play. I hate this. I am also, somehow, for it."
Avery attributed his conviction in the plan to what he called algorithmic synergy, though he was unable to explain how the league's PTI algorithm, which no one at the club claims to understand, had produced it. He said he trusted the process.
The captains' call that approved the move ran eleven minutes over its allotted time Tuesday night, according to a member of the roster committee who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss frozen-player mechanics. He said the committee had never been asked to rule on a signing that guaranteed the player would not play, and that no rule currently prevents it.
Avery said Friday's signing was the first of what he is calling the Frozen Five, a slate of players he intends to add to Rowayton E's roster over the next several seasons without any of them taking the court. He declined to name the other four, citing tampering concerns.
In the hut Friday night, Pettengill's name sat on the whiteboard roster in Avery's handwriting, boxed off in a corner by itself, next to a note reading, in block letters, DO NOT PLAY.
