Acuna has been struggling with injury; can he get over the hump th is weekend?. Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory
The IRT does a quick turnaround and flies nearly 3,000 miles eastward from last weekend’s Golden State Open for the 2026 Turkey Shoot, Presented by Team Elmwood Racquetball, being held at the Ochsner Fitness Center in Harahan, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. This event is in is 34th year of operation, but for the first time has been elevated to a Tier 1 IRT event.
A quick history lesson: This is the first Tier 1 held in the state of Louisiana since August 2005, more than 20 years ago. The former Team Elwood Summer Cooler event was tradititionally held in late August and had a 17 year run of being the IRT’s season opener. That run ended in late August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans the same weekend that the tour was in town. By Friday night of that August 2005 weekend (just after IRT finished quarters) it was clear that the hurricane was going to hit the city hard, so the tournament was cancelled and players got out of town. On saturday the 28th it reached Cat5, and then
made landfall on the sunday the 29th.
See the URL in the comments for the match report from that event showing the “?” in the semis and finals. Your four semi finalsts that day: Mannino, Beltran, Huczek, and one Kane Waselenchuk, who is the #1 seed this weekend 20+ years after that event.
R2 Sports App link: see comments
We’ve got a 19-man draw for this event, down nearly 50% from last weekend’s GSO. We’re missing a few of the top 10; Flores remains out due to Visa issues and Montoya will miss this event continuing to nurse an injury sustained at Worlds.
Without these two top players, opportunities exist galore for the rest of the tour to make big runs as we saw last weekend, when Diego Garcia made the semis.
——————————
Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable matches that i’m looking forward to:
——————————-
round of 16:
– Gastelum/Carter in the 8/9
– Bredenbeck/Martell is an old WRT era rivalry that goes back more than 10 years.
– Garcia/Natera is a great opener and could portend who makes another semis run
– Trujillo/Carrasco is an opportunity for the young Mexican to get settled for a
possible upset run himself.
——————————
Projected Qtrs:
– Kane – Gastelum; Kane cruises against the youngster.
– Jake-Adam in an all USA battle
– Garcia-Acuna, and I see another Garcia win to make the semis as Acuna continues to nurse a leg injury
– Moscoso-Trujillo; if Conrrado isn’t 100%, this could be an upset loss for sure.
Semis:
– I Like Kane over Jake, but it won’t be easy. Jake is not afraid to play Kane.
– Garcia over Moscoso: if Conrrado gets past Trujillo, I don’t think he can beat Garcia unless he’s 100%. Diego has h2h wins over Conrrado in the past and knows how to beat him.
Finals; Kane over Garcia to extend his lead at the top.
——————————-
Doubles review
———————————
Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Look for Carrie Reitmeier, JT Rball, Rodrigo, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the microphone, calling the shots!
Thanks to the Tourney Directors Al Schoff and Team Elwood for putting this event on!
Thanks to tour sponsors: KWM Gutterman, Papa Nicholas coffee, Black & White Energy drinks, Reignstorm Group; tax and wealth management, Frank Hotels
Gearbox , and Formula Flow.
Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
IRT Club Fantasy: If you’re in the IRT Club, sign up to play Fantasy Racquetball along with myself, Brian Pineda, and other club members. Also, be sure to tune into our Fantasy Fast Break podcast, which we do before and after every IRT Tier 1 event!
– Mixed Pro Doubles: @Javier Mar and Maria Jose Vargas
TL/DR Executive Summary: Kane beats Conrrado in the IRT final when Moscoso retires, while Vargas cruises through the draw to win for the 7th time in the last 8 LPRT events.
R2 Sports App home page for event: See comments
——————
Let’s review the notable matches in the IRT Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: see comments
—————-
In the 32s:
– Diego Garcia beat #12 Diego Gastelum 6,(13),7 for the biggest upset by seed of the round, even though we’ve talked at length about Garcia’s bonafides.
– Juan Jose Salvatierra beat Bolivian Kadim Carrasco by the “perfect score” of 14,(14),10. This is the first time in the IRT’s history that a match has gone 14,14,10. The closest we ever came was a 14,(13),10 match between Murray and Diaz at the 2018 Shamrock shootout.
I once played a (14),14,10 match at Virginia States in like 2002 or 2003, saving match point against in game two and another match point at 10-10 before winning an 30+ match. I still think about the shot I hit at 10-10 down to get the serve back to win it.
– Robbie Collins outlasted Jaime Martell (2),11,6 in a bit of an upset
– Natera took out the top Mexican junior Santiago Castillo 11,0
– Erik Garcia played pretty well in his match against Kane, losing 8-5.
That’s better than the typical 1,3 shellacking Kane gives out in his openers.
—————-
In the 16s:
– #8 Portillo was ahead of #9 Trujillo when the latter retired due to injury, robbing the round of perhaps its closest match.
– Diego Garcia came from a game down to beat #5 Jake Bredenbeck. This is a huge upset by seed, but not so much on the court, as Garcia now has four straight h2h wins over the Minnesotan.
– Guatemalan veteran Juan Jose Salvatierra shocked #4 @adam Manilla, ensuring that a 20+ seed would be in the semis here.
– Natera outlasted Mar in a 3-game thriller to move into the quarters.
—————-
In the Quarters
– #1 Moscoso crushed Portillo 3,4. Amongst the “next group” of potential rivals to the top dogs on tour, Lalo is high up there on my list, and this kind of beating was indeed shocking.
– #21 Garcia cruised past Salvatierra to earn his first career IRT semi final appearance.
– Parrilla handled #3 Acuna in two easy games, an unsurprising result despite the current seeds of the players.
– #2 Kane Waselenchuk was not terribly troubled by #7 Natera, winning in two.
—————
In the Semis
– #1 Moscoso was not troubled by Garcia, winning 5,5 against a player who beat him back in 2025. Moscoso returns to the finals for the 6th time in the last 8 events.
– #2 Waselenchuk had to work a bit but advanced in two 9,6 against Parrilla to also get to the final for the 6th time in the last 8 events.
In the Finals … what started out promising ended in a dud; after holding firm to about 4-4 in the first, Kane blew Conrrado out and it became clear that the Bolivian was hurt. He lasted until 7-0 in the second before defaulting, giving Kane the title
It is his 134th career title.
—————-
Points Implications of results
With this win, Kane takes back over #1 on tour. It’s still neck and neck at the top with Moscoso, and a reverse of the final this coming weekend could cause another switch at the top. Other notable rankings changes include Flores dropping out of the 3-spot with his second event missed this season. Parrilla jumps up a bit at the expense of Jake and Adam, both early round losers here. Garcia’s huge run improvers him from #27 to #17, and Salvatierra’s big showing moves him up from 25th to 19th.
Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. see comments for link
—————-
LPRT Singles review
Match report in the PRS database: see comments
The ladies singles draw of 17 players was missing a slew of LPRT regulars from the past couple of seasons. Mejia, Longoria, Gaby Martinez, Munoz, Laime, Synhorst, Lotts, MRR, York, and Rajsich all out of this draw, which thinned the competition considerably. Some of these are “known” absences, but others could be indicative of another paradigm shift on tour.
The singles draw went chalk; no real upsets and only a couple of closer matches in the early rounds. Herrera needed a tiebreaker to get past her long-time Mexican rival Salas in the quarters. From there, #1 Vargas moved past Herrera in the semis and Mendez in the finals, with all three traveling Argentines making the final four of the event.
Vargas win 12,5 over her countrywoman and her long-time doubles partner, for her 7th title in the last 8 LPRT events. Vargas’ dominance on tour right now is unmatched, and in a draw missing all her top rivals, her title win is not surprising.
—————-
Mixed Pro Recap
The tournament directors did a fantastic job seeding the Mixed Pro division; normally the seeds on this rarely seen draw are completely out of whack with the results, but this weekend the seeding held all the way through to the final. In the final, #1 Moscoso & Centellas fell to #2 Mar & Vargas, giving Vargas the double gold for the weekend.
(reminder: there is no Mixed Pro database).
—————-
Open Singles, Doubles, and other notable draws
The GSO chose to have Mixed Pro with pro-level prize money instead of Pro doubles for the IRT or LPRT, thus the Open doubles draws were stacked. Here’s how they went along with the big singles draws.
– Men’s Open Singles: top seed Salvatierra dropped out when he made the IRT quarters, clearing a path for Costa Rican Antonio Sanchez to make the final. Unfortunately he had to catch a flight, giving Guatemalan and #2 seed Edwin Galicia the title.
– Women’s Open Singles: Naomi Ros took the round robin, winning the event over 2nd place Canadian Juliette Parent.
– Men’s Open Doubles: Natera & Gonzalez beat Galicia and Salvatierra for the doubles title. Quite a weekend for Salvatierra.
– Women’s Open doubles: Andrea_Perez-Picon / Verónica Santibáñez took the round robin group. 2nd place was Erica Williams & Sandra Ramos
– The brother/sister junior pair of Andrea Perez-Picon / Alejandro Robles Picon took the Mixed Open title.
——————
Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar (see comments for link)
The IRT is right back in action, heading to Louisiana for the first time since Hurricane Katrina washed out a pro final for the first time ever for the 2026 34th Annual Turkey Shoot Presented by Team Elmwood Racquetball.
Can Diego Garcia make another dark-horse run? Photo Kevin Savory US Open 2018
Welcome to one of (if not) the biggest pro racquetball event of the season. Brainchild of @Adam Manilla and David ” Bobby” Horn two years ago, this event has quickly grown into a must-attend stop on the tour. In their first season, the crew got the portable court out of storage, then in their second year put that money towards a dual IRT-LPRT event to include Mixed Pro Doubles, a situation that continues this year.
This year’s event features a huge Men’s pro draw and the debut event for the Ladies pro 2026-27 season. We’ll do a preview of both here.
There’s a solid draw of 37 Male pros here, representing 8 countries. We’re missing two top players (#3 Flores, who continues to have Visa issues and #5 Montoya, who may not have been able to swing Worlds and the GSO while holding a real job).
Here’s some of the early round matchups to watch for, and some projections for the rest of the draw.
In the round of 64:
– Galicia vs Kurzbard in a fun international quality match between members of the Guatemalan and Argentinian teams. We haven’t seen Kurzbard in a minute; last time he played an IRT event was in 2023 in Denver, and before that the US Open in 2017. But he just represented his country at Worlds and made the trip.
– Anthony Martin vs David Horn: Horn is pulling double duty doing tournament production and playing, and is still nursing a shoulder/arm issue from earlier this year. Martin has been playing tour events for years now and is a tough out.
– Erik Garcia vs Alejandro Robles Picon: Garcia is a 2-time Intercollegiates champ back in 2018-19, while Robles Picon is one of the better juniors out there, the reigning Mexican 14U National champ but still playing out of the Pleasanton/Stockton area.
——————————-
In the round of 32, here’s some fun ones to look for:
– #9 Trujillo vs Mangalampalli: Trujillo has the hot hand, and he starts this event with the local top US Junior Vaishant, who gets another crack at what it takes to be a top IRT pro.
– #12 Diego Gastelum vs #21 Diego Garcia: the best match of the round by far, and one that should be happening in the quarters instead of the 32s. Garcia curiously didn’t attend Worlds two weeks ago for his country, but makes the trip up here. Meanwhile, Gastelum has been grinding his way closer to the top 10. This may look like a blowout by seed, but Garcia is the favorite here.
– Carrasco-Salvatierra looks like a group stage IRF match. Carrasco is the higher seed but Salvatierra should challenge here.
– Martell- Collins features two veterans who know their way around the court.
– Natera-Castillo: see below.
Lastly, we have a slew of Mexican juniors in town, and a little birdie tells us to keep an eye out for the likes of Javier Gonzalez (18U player from Chihuahua), Salim Gonzalez (also an 18U player from Chihuahua), Santiago Galina (Mexican 21U player from San Luis Potosi), but especially Santiago Castillo, who was the World 16U runner-up last year in his age 15 season and is the two-time defending Mexican 16U champ. Castillo plays into #10 Alan Natera in the opener, and could get a quick shock upset to the draw.
——————————-
Round of 16 projected matches to watch for:
– In the 8/9 seed match we project to get Trujillo-Portillo, a great match of the Mexican players who have (or are poised) to take over the mantle of Mexico’s best now that the previous generation (DLR, Landa, Beltran) has moved on and the current generation (Montoya, Mar, etc) is aging.
– Garcia-Bredenbeck could be a barn burner. Diego has beaten Jake the last three times they’ve played, but two of those meetings were on the IRF using rally scoring and with full coaching staffs on site. Will it be different on tour?
– Manilla vs the Salvatierra/Carrasco winner: a great opportunity for Adam to make a deep run starts here.
– Acuna- Alonso should be interesting, in that Acuna missed Worlds and has been nursing an injury.
– Natera-Mar in the 7/10 would be great, if both players get there. both will have stiffer challenges in the 32s than they’d probably like.
——————————
Projected Qtrs:
– #1 Moscoso over #8 Portillo: same matchup as in Fullerton.
– #21 Garcia over #4 Manilla: I see a big run for the dark horse Argentine
– #6 Parrilla over #3 Acuna: Andree has the h2h advantage here.
– #2 Waselenchuk over whoever comes out of the Natera/Mar quarter.
Semis:
– Moscoso stops Garcia … but this is no gimmie. Garcia beat Moscoso in the 2025 PARC semis and Moscoso needed a fifth game 12-10 to beat him in the World Games last year.
– Waselenchuk over Parrilla, rekindling an old rivalry that’s included a triple donut and an 11-10 tiebreaker win for Andree.
Finals; Yes, it’s boring but i’ve got 1v2, Kane v Conrrado for the 6th time in the last 9 finals on tour. Golden State 2024 featured a Kane win in a field w/o Conrrado (he had an arm injury), while Golden State 2025 featured a Conrrado win from a field without Kane (he had to miss last year’s even due to a wedding). This year, in year three, we hopefully get the two of them meeting on Sunday. I took Conrrado in Fantasy Fastbreak, but it’s a coin flip. The conditions (sea level, California heavy air, slower FormulaFlow ball, and panel courts) would seem to favor Kane, but Conrrado is entering a stretch between now and next March where he has to win to stay Number 1. This could be his year to finally finish #1, but he has to win here to keep pace.
——————————-
LPRT Draw Preview
The Ladies singles draw has 17 players as the LPRT kicks off its 2026-27 season, a pivotal one that will feature a changing of the guard both on and off the court. Long-time LPRT commissioner TJ Baumbaugh has indicated she’s stepping down, and there also seems to be a changing of the guard amongst the players as well. Long-time tour stalwart Paola Longoria just had a kid and may be off the tour for a while, and this event is missing a big chunk of the current top 10. This results in the two Argentines Vargas & Centellas being the two top seeds in the singles draw.
Here’s a preview of the Singles draw:
Round of 32: there’s just one match in the 32s, and it’s a good one. #16 Camila Rivero, the 3-time defending world 21U champ who is fresh off of a Worlds appearance representing Brazil takes on Andrea Perez-Picon, who was a finalist at World Juniors 16U last year. It has been a while since we’ve had a Bolivian junior champion matriculate to the pro tour and stick; perhaps we’ll see a run from Rivero.
In the 16s, here’s some to watch:
– #1 Vargas vs Rivero/Perez-Picon winner: the recently crowned world champ has a massive lead atop the rolling 365 day standings to start the season, and kicks it off against a young rival.
– In the 8/9 we get Manilla vs Parrilla. Both were in Chile representing their countries at Worlds. It has been a minute since Erika has been able to compete well in Singles after a hip injury derailed her career; it should be interesting to see how she moves this weekend.
– Herrera vs Scott: speaking of players who we haven’t seen in a while, former USA #1 Hollie Scott is here and has a possibly winnable match again a player in Herrera who’s been waning a bit lately on tour.
– #2 Centellas, who has her highest career seed, gets former US National champ Naomi Ros for her troubles. This one could go either way.
Projected Qtrs:
– Vargas over Manilla; this used to be a finals quality match between the two hardest hitters on tour. Hope we can get back there.
– Herrera over Salas: amazing that last year I thought Salas was retiring; now she’s the 5th seed in the season opener.
– Mendez-Amaya: long-time international rivals rekindle their head-to-head.
– Centellas – Sanchez: A great opportunity for Annie (Roberts) Sanchez to get to a semi.
Semis and Final: It’s hard not to predict against anything but a Vargas win right now on tour; she’s lost her primary rival in Longoria, and the only other two players in the world who can press her (Mejia and Gaby) aren’t here this week.
———————————
Doubles preview: no doubles draws available as of this writing.
———————————
Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Also, since the LPRT is here, we’ll have dueling coverage from all your favorite voices. Look for Carrie Reitmeier, JT Rball, Rodrigo, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the IRTLive crew all weekend for the men, and listen for Timothy Baghurst, Sandy Rios, Jerry J Josey Jr. for the women.
Thanks to the event sponsors: Presenting sponsor: JMB: Jacobs Malcolm & Burtt produce and Gold sponsors: Reignstorm group, Visit Tri Valley,Manilla Athletics, Camp Run Amuk
Thanks to IRT tour sponsors: KWM Gutterman, Frank Hotels, Papa Nicholas coffee
Reignstorm Group; tax and wealth management, Gearbox, Formula Flow, and
Black & White Energy drinks.
Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
IRT Club Fantasy: If you’re in the IRT Club, sign up to play Fantasy Racquetball along with myself, Brian Pineda, and other club members. Also, be sure to tune into our Fantasy Fast Break podcast, which we do before and after every IRT Tier 1 event!
Some of you may know, or some of you don’t, that I presently serve as the chairperson of the USA Racquetball Hall of Fame Committee. We’re mid-cycle for the 2027 class deliberations, so nothing to announce yet, but I wanted to share some data assets we’ve created to help with consideration of candidates that we receive.
These spreadsheets summarize and aggregate data that’s available elsewhere on either USAR’s home page, or on Pro Racquetball Stats. Some of it i’ve created specifically to assist with the committee’s work.
Anyway, thought the community would enjoy. Thanks to Facebook’s new embedded link limitations, I’m putting the links into the first comment of this post as a work around. Let’s see if it works and if that’s a good way of going forward with this new platform restriction.
1. USA Racquetball Hall of Fame Roster. This is a Roster of the 80 current members of the Hall. It includes their induction category and some summary data.
2. US National Team Alumni. Dating back to the first US team named in 1981, it has all the qualifiers for the US team each year.
3. US Nationals Age Group Titles: this spreadsheet aggregates all the Age group singles titles players have captured historically, since one of the Categories of Hall of Fame induction is Amateur Age Group champion. The player’s hall of fame status is also listed for context. Mary Lou Acuff is the current leader with 28.
4. US National Title counts: this spreadsheets aggregates all National titles (singles, doubles, mixed) by player. It’s sortable by discipline and has a summary count. Hall of Fame status is also listed per player. In case you’re wondering, Rocky Carson is the going-away leader in overall titles with 21.
On WordPress, we have no link issues so here they are:
There’s some gaps in these spreadsheets that, with time or research may be improved. I’d love to add in Age Group doubles titles, because there’s a few Hall of Famers who made their bones in doubles moreso than singles, and I’d love to be able to answer the question, “who has qualified the most times to the US National team?” (difficult to do because the qualification steps have changed over the years, and direct qualifiers don’t always then represent the team internationally (like this year, when DLR came in 2nd at National singles but didn’t play for us at Worlds). There’s a weird gap on the USA Racquetball historical records pages for 2004 (all the 2004 Nationals age group winners are missing), and no age group titles are documented for any year before 1983. We also seem to have lost the 19+/24-/All Age group winners over the years.
Anyone who can help figure these out would be greatly appreciated.
TL/DR Executive Summary: Moscoso cruises to the singles title without dropping a game and beating Kane in the final somewhat convincingly. Mar & Montoya take the win over new pro doubles #1 Moscoso/Carrasco.
IRT Semis and Finals go to IRT Club; some thoughts.
The 2026-27 season will now live stream the semis and finals of IRT events solely on the IRT Club platform, which requires a $15/month subscription. I knew about this change months ago as we began discussing the new season internally, and the reaction this week has been pretty predictable.
I have held off weighing in on Reddit and the various Facebook comment sections, but I’ll put some thoughts here now.
Most of the complaints seem to be summarized by the following generic statement:
“Why can’t I continue to get something for free on the internet that I have gotten free for years and that I do nothing else to support?”
That’s it. That’s the salient issue. For the last 8 years, ever since Mark Gibbs bought out the paid subscriptions of the old Irt Network, the community has been blessed with something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Pro Sports world; absolutely free content. Yes there’s advertisements on the stream; they do not come anywhere near covering the costs of the equipment, the staff who come in early to set things up, the broadcasters who spend all weekend at the event donating their time, the hosting, the website development, the administration, the business subscription fees for Facebook and YouTube, etc. The IRT isn’t in the same boat as the NFL with a billion dollar broadcast TV package; they have a handful of well-meaning tour sponsors who stream quickie ads as part of their overall benefit for writing a check to the tour every year. Nobody’s earning back an ROI; it’s all for the love of the game.
I’ve seen the tacked on cliche complaints that seem to also accompany every discussion on racquetball these days: “This is why the sport is dying.” “How does this support Juniors?” or, “How does this help grow the game?” You know what? You’re right; It doesn’t. Because that’s not the “job” of the professional tour. The job of the IRT is to hold a pro tour that supports a small group of pro athletes competing at the highest level, somehow continuing to raise enough money to keep events going and keep these top players interested enough to make the commitment to keep coming back.
Grassroots development of the sport? Not the IRT’s job. Juniors? Not the IRT’s job. The IRT and pro racquetball has been essentially underwritten for 2 decades by a handful of wealthy benefactors and local enthusiasts who cobble together $20k or so to host a local event. The “tour” itself for years and years has been essentially run by volunteers who have forgone any semblance of pay in order to keep things running.
Let’s face it: people who seek out the semis or finals of a pro racquetball tournament at this point … they’re already fans. Racquetball already “got you.” The nominal fee the IRT club is asking isn’t a blocker to gaining new fans: its (finally) a donation to help offset the real costs of producing what you seek. In what other world does anyone just get something you want for free, all the time? You don’t walk into Starbucks and get free coffee. If you want a coffee, you plunk down a few bucks and you get it. Same thing here. It is patently amazing to me that people complain about having to pay a pittance of money to get something they want. $15 is nothing. The average median household income in this country is now nearly $90k, meaning a $15 fee is roughly 1/6th of an hour of labor across an entire month. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Do you love the sport? Do you want to see it continue? Then pay the fee, help support the tour, help keep the lights on. Because this may be the sport’s last shot. The Ladies tour is in dire straights, having held just one tournament since January, and without the current ownership group financing things on their Amex cards, the Men’s pro tour would be in the same boat. So, pay the fee, help create some revenue streams to support the tour, and maybe we’ll continue to have a tour. Because even rich guys will stop writing checks at some point, even if its a labor of love.
Now, back to the recap.
——————
Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
In the 32s, not much notable; only two matches even featured a game getting into the double digits. @Jordy Alonso took out USA junior national Vaishant Mangalampalli 10,6, while the closest match of the round was US Junior National coach @Robert Collins taking out one of his former pupils in Cody Elkins 10,10.
—————-
In the 16s, there was just one major upset and a couple of close matches:
– @Erick Trujillo trounced #4 @Andres Acuna 7,0 to move into the quarters for the 7th time and to continue is recent spate of success.
– @Alan Natera beat @Diego Gastelum 9,12 in the 7/10 seed matchup, a good result for Diego as he continues to look for his 2nd quarterfinal.
– In the 8/9 matchup, Lalo Portillo cruised past Thomas Carter 2,8.
—————-
In the Quarters
– #1 Moscoso made fast work of Portillo 8,6: Portillo is probably better than his current seed thanks to schedule conflicts, but this is still a more dominant win than I would have expected.
– Parrilla took out Trujillo 13,10 in a rematch of a crucial consolation bracket match from the FMR selection event a few weeks ago.
– Montoya needed three to take out his doubles partner Mar, as one would expect from two players who know each others’ games so well.
– #2 Waselenchuk let Natera get to 15-11 in game one, then turned on the jets to donut him in game 2 to move on 11,0.
—————
In the Semis, Moscoso held off Parrilla’s improvement in game two to win 4,11 and get to the final, while Waselenchuk was not troubled moving past Montoya 3,6 to setup the 1-v-2 match all the neutrals wanted.
In the Final, Moscoso came out very sharp, jumping out to a big lead in game 1 before Kane reigned him back in. From there, a back and forth battle ended up with Conrrado winning game 1 15-12. Game two was never that close, with Moscoso on top of his drives all day to win 15-7 and take the title.
—————-
Points Implications of results
There won’t be much movement after this event; Moscoso will expand his lead atop the standings to nearly 500 points thanks to the 2025 Tracktown open expiring, but he’s then going to enter a months-long stretch where all he’s doing is defending winner’s points; he won 4 straight tourneys between the 2025 Golden State Open in October 2025 and the Minnesota HOF in March 2026. So Kane knows what he needs to do: just win.
Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.
Mar & Moscoso take the win over new pro doubles #1 Moscoso/Carrasco to deny Moscoso a double for the weekend.
—————-
Open Singles, other notable draws
– Emir Martinez beat Vaishant Mangalampalli for the Open singles title.
– Gastelum & Alonso won the Open Doubles dropdown out of Pro.
—————-
Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up
With the redesign of IRT club, we haven’t started the Fantasy competition yet. So, we’ll revisit this after the next event.
—————–
Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, JT Rball, and the entire IRTLive crew.
Thanks to the Tourney Director Gerardo Duenas for putting this event on!
Thanks to the Tourney Gold sponsors: NMRA and Cindy Tillbury, Jamal Khawaja with Kind Home Loans and Friends of Pakistan USA community group, along with
Silver sponsors: Placentia Town Center and Jeff Gold, HMS Realty and Ken Courtney, Reyes Single Ply Roofing contractors and Francisco Reyes. Without you, we do not have a pro sport.
Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
there’s an IRT satellite in two weeks’ time in Chicago land, then Worlds in Chile over the final weekend of October. The IRT returns to action the 2nd weekend of November with the big Golden State Open.
post publishing edits: thanks to readers Anthony Martin and Asceric21 on Reddit for pointing out two incorrect names in the post. Both have been corrected.
Moscoso takes back over #1 for this event. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory
Hello Racquetball fans! We are back after a summer off, ready to kick of the 2026-27 @International Racquetball Tour season. This weekend, the tour is in Fullerton, California for the 2026 SoCal Open, held at the WallisBank Qube fitness center.
We’re glad to be back in Fullerton for the second year running, and glad to back in Southern California for the first time since the Players Championship last April.
R2 link for the weekend: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=54373
This is the first Tier 1 of the season, but we’ve hosted three satellite events in August and September to get ready
– Costa Rica Open in August: Parrilla beat Montoya in the final.
– the DMV invitational in Sept: Gastelum beat Franco in the final.
– Garden City Carl Meyers event last week: Manilla beat Carter in the final.
Despite winning the 2025-26 title for his 16th career season ending title, Kane enters this event ranked #2. How is that possible? Well I’ll tell you. The 2025-26 season was a special one, extended to be an 18 month season so as to move back to a fall to spring schedule. Each Player’s best 10 results from all the way
back to Jan 2026 counted in their rankings.
As of the beginning of the new 26-27 season, we’re back to a 365 day rolling calendar, meaning a player’s best 10 results now start, as of this event, as of the end of September in 2025, which was the 2025 Tracktown Open. Based on that sample, Moscoso has taken over as #1 on tour.
Intersetingly, despite being the two highest ranked players, both Conrrado and Kane only have 8 results in the sample size, so their first two results in the new season will be pretty important to determine who has the upper hand in the early part of the season. When Trackdown expires (which Kane won and Moscoso lost in the semis), Conrrado will get a bit of a bump, but when the next event falls of (the Mid Oct 2025 golden state open), Kane will get a big bump b/c he missed that event altogether.
Quick look at the draw
24 players. 32s on thursday, 16s friday, then quarters and semis on Saturday before a noon sunday singles final.
Big story: missing #4 Flores thanks to some visa/immigration issues, which immediately puts him behind the 8ball this season to try to move into the top echelon of tour. We’re also missing #6 Jake Bredenbeck and #7 Adam Manilla, both of whom had personal conflicts for this one.
Projected early matches to watch out for
32s: Trujillo-Emir Martinez, bobby Horn-Diego Gastelum
Predictions? The loss of Flores really opens up the top half of the draw for Moscoso. You never root against Kane, who will probably have to beat
both Natera and Montoya on Saturday to give us another match against the Bolivian number one, but that’s what we’re all hoping for by Sunday.
Look for Carrie Reitmeier, JT Rball, Rodrigo, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the microphone, calling the shots!
This week starts the new IRT Club exclusive broadcasting of Saturday and Sunday’s matches, so make sure you sign up for the IRT Club so you don’t miss out on the action.
———-
Before we leave, a quick shoutout to our sponsors, without whom professional racquetball would not be possible.
This weekend’s tournament Director is : Gerardo Duenas
Gold sponsors: NMRA and Cindy Tillbury, Jamal Khawaja with Kind Home Loans and Friends of Pakistan USA community group.
Silver sponsors: Placentia Town Center and Jeff Gold, HMS Realty and Ken Courtney, Reyes Single Ply Roofing contractors and Francisco Reyes.
Adam Manilla takes the Garden City in a warm up for Fullerton. Photographer Kevin Savory
We’re still not yet to the Tier 1 starting line of either pro tour this season, but the IRT did hold another satellite event this past weekend in Kansas, teaming up with the Garden City crew to hold an IRT-600 level satellite alongside its long-running Carl Myers memorial event.
IRT pro singles: Two top 16 pros made the trip, and they ended up meeting in the final. Current IRT #7 Adam Manilla took out Spears and Yelverton to make the final from the top half, while #11 Thomas Carter beat Cardwell and Emir Martinez to make the final from the bottom half. In the battle of lefties, Manilla took out Carter 6,3 for the title.
In the LPRT Exhibition, three touring pro ladies made the trip, Erika Manilla, Annie Sanchez, and Cristina Amaya. They were joined by Colorado’s Michelle Dockter to play singles and mixed. In the final, Manilla beat Amaya in a 3-game thriller where she saved match point against in game 2 before winning the breaker.
In the Mixed Open Doubles, Carter/Amaya and Sanchez/Yelverton shared the crown by going undefeated but having to miss the final RR game.
In Men’s Open/Elite doubles competition, which had all the mixed teams pouring in as well, Carter & Martinez ended up beating Manilla/Manilla in the final.
———
the IRT season kicks off in earnest this coming weekend, with the first Tier 1 of the season in Fullerton, CA. we’ll be back later this week with a preview and predictions for the first full-field pro event in months.
Diego Gastelum with the double in DC. Photo via Ken Fife
The second satellite event of the new 2026-27 @International Racquetball Tour season was last weekend; here’s a quick recap of the pro draws.
Severna Park used to host a full tier stop in the fall, but for the last couple of years has downsized to a Satellite event (this event was an IRT-400, which prevents any of the top 4 players from even entering), but it still draws from the big Bolivian community in the DC area as well as from the general mid-Atlantic region. In fact, it is at this very club where Waselenchuk tore his Achilles in Sept 2022, which sent the player and the tour on a several-year whirlwind of results and champions, now ended with the return of Kane to the top for the last couple of seasons.
Here’s a quick recap of the play this past weekend.
Men’s Pro Singles
The draw featured two touring regulars; #1 Thomas Carter and #2 @Diego Gastelum. They’re currently ranked 12th and 14th on tour, but Gastelum has been getting a bit of attention lately for his solid results on tour at the end of last season, especially a win over Montoya at Pro Nationals that earned him his first quarterfinal. Also lurking in the draw was @Sebastian Franco, a long-time top-10 pro who lives in the area after retiring from touring. Franco made fast work of solid NY-based open player Aaron Dardani, then took out Carter in the quarters 10,10. He ground out a tie-breaker win from Ohio-based Victor Migliore to make the final from the top side.
From the bottom half, another solid international living in the area Ezequiel Subieta advanced to the semis before falling to Gastelum in two. In the final, Diego cruised past Franco 4,6 to take the singles title.
Men’s Doubles
Gastelum teamed with Subieta to take the Pro Doubles title, beating Juan Pablo Rodriguez / Thomas Carter in the final to give the Mexican the double for the weekend.
——————-
Next up for the tour? Another Satellite in Garden City, Kansas later this month, then the first Tier 1 is in October in Fullerton. We’ll be back on the Fantasy Fastbreak Podcast before then.
The McDonald clan, headlined by eldest son Chris, took home six titles this weekend in California. Photo 2023 Outdoor Nats via Lara
This past weekend, the 52nd annual Outdoor Nationals tournament was held at Marina Park in Huntington Beach, California. Here’s a recap of the weekend’s event.
Congrats to your Pro/Open winners on the weekend:
– Men’s Pro Doubles: Kane Waselenchuk and Chris McDonald
– Women’s Open Doubles: Karen Grisz and Marie Gomar
– Mixed Open Doubles: Jack McDonald and Martha McDonald
There were no pro singles draws this year.
Exec summary: Kane wins his third straight Outdoor Nationals title, and his second straight with Chris McDonald. Martha and Jack McDonald defended their 2025 Mixed Open title, avenging a group stage loss in the final. Lastly in Women’s, Gomar, Marie and Grisz, Karen became first time winners.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=51162
ProRacquetballStats.com Match Reports by Pro division (notification that the results have been loaded to the database):
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/3194ac
– Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/15da8c
– Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/15da8c
Triple Crown Reports: (these show the winners of all Pro divisions at all WOR outdoor majors across time)
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/j47
– Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/2vv
– Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/y43
– Men’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/86z
– Women’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/x8g
————————–
Lets do a quick recap of the Pro/Open draws.
Men’s Pro Doubles: The men’s pro doubles draw had a slew of legends playing this year, including Greg Solis and Ravi Sohoni, past winners Brandon Davis & Josh Tucker, future hall of famer Rocky Carson & recently inducted Jesus Ustarroz, and of course my podcasting partner Brian Pineda . However, the draw was no match for the power of last year’s champs Kane Waselenchuk & Chris McDonald, who blew through the draw to repeat as champs.
Rocky & Jesus outlasted the long-time outdoor legends Solis & Ravi in the quarters, but fell 11-9 in the semis to Davis & Tucker. In the final, Kane & Chris ground out a 15-12 first game win, then blew their way to a 15-3 second game and the title.
—————–
Women’s Open Doubles:
Four teams of ladies Open/Elite outdoor players played a well-balanced round robin draw, where three of the teams wen 2-1 and the finalists had to be determined by point differential. In the final, Marie Gomar & Karen Grisz avenged a group stage loss to Sandra Ramos Mowry & Susie Boulanger to take the title.
—————–
Mixed Open Doubles: The legendary @Martha McDonald teamed with younger son Jack to finish 2nd in the group stage to the surprise team of Adrianna Moncada & Georges Barrera, then avenged the group stage loss in the final to repeat as champions.
—————–
Other Major Draws in California:
– CPRT: Kane & Chris got the double win this weekend, taking out Carson & Ustarroz in the final.
– Men’s 75s: Brothers Chris and Jack McDonald teamed up to take the title, beating Sweet Lou Orosco and Max Heymann in the final.
– Men’s 100/Centurion: The biggest draw of the event was 100+, with 13 teams. In the final, Miguel Arriola / Tony Hernandez rebounded from a 15-0 first game loss to beat Scott St Clair / Tony Burg in a breaker for the title.
– Men’s Open: Brandon Davis / Brian Pineda ground their way to an Open title, beating Greg Solis / Lou Orosco in the final.
————————–
Congratulations to the 2026 Hall of Fame Class, who were inducted Saturday afternoon. Kevin Booth and Greg Freeze both had decades-long dominance in the sport and in Outdoor Nationals and are well deserving. To read their bios, go to these links:
Thanks to the Tourney Directors Peggine Tellez, Mike Coulter, and the whole 3WallBall crew, who have now taken over Outdoor Nationals. Thanks once again to all the sponsors who make this event possible.
——————
Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar … https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…
NMRA Masters is next weekend in Tempe, then August has both Mexican Junior Nationals and the IRF Central American & Carribean games, always a fun regional event.
DJ Mendoza has both outdoor and indoor chops, and won the Triple Crown at USA Junior Nationals this past weekend. Photo via Rick Bernstein
USA Racquetball held its 53rd annual Junior Nationals event last week in Des Moines, Iowa, getting some really huge draws for some of the mid-teen brackets in a promising sign for the future of tournament racquetball in the states.
With this post, is official notification that the Junior Nationals results have been entered into the ProRacquetballStats.com database. For Juniors, we upload full bracket results for 21s, 18s, 16s, and 14s, but just load up winners and finalists for all age groups younger than 14U. For doubles, we load up just the finalists.
The best way to see Junior Singles winners is with the cross-year/cross-age group Matrix reports built into the site. They show all the winners for all age divisions going back to 1974. Here’s direct links for each Matrix report:
– Boys USA Junior National Singles Champion Matrix: https://rball.pro/mey
– Girls USA Junior National Singles Champion Matrix: https://rball.pro/cpf
Each full division draw can be accessed from the “event” pulldown after you enter either the Juniors or the Junior Doubles section. One Junior Nationals results in 18-20 singles draws plus another 15 doubles draws being entered into the database, so there’s a lot of new data here this week.
R2sports home page for the 2026 event, with all the full brackets:
– Mixed 16U: Mangalampalli, Vaishant & Bawa, Sarah
– Mixed 14U: Haacke, Scott & Strobach, Addie
– Mixed 12U: Chandel, Reyansh & Marivada, Sloka
– Mixed 10U: Gil, Damian & Rai, Sameera
(Apologies for any typos: these were hand typed into this post, but should get typo-corrected in the database).
—
Here’s some quick commentary on the Singles champions by grouping.
Boys Singles quick recaps
Boys 21U came down to Mendoza and Sendrey once again, and once again DJ came out on top. These two have also met on the IRT recently, and after early career h2h dominance Mendoza has now taken over in their rivalry. In 18U, London Townsend (finalist last year) was able to take it one step further and claim his first Junior National title. Grant Williams, who was the losing finalist in four straight Junior National events prior to this year, finally got the gold, taking the 16U title with a dominant performance end to end.
In 14U, Scott Haacke took his second title (he won 12U two years ago). In 12U, Ryan Joeckel won his second straight title. Damien Gil took his first junior title in 10U while Finn McGrath took his first 10Udb title. Saharsh Gorthy took his 2nd straight 8U age group title, this year moving up from Multi-bounce. David Lopez took this year 8Umb title, and Saharsh’s younger brother Vaibhav Gorthy won the 6Umb division.
—————–
Girls Singles quick recaps
LPRT touring pro and 2025 US National champ Naomi Ros won her 6th straight junior national title since converting over from Mexico; she has one remaining year in U21. Alexis Boyko, who has had a couple of silver medals in the past, broke through in 18U for her first Junior National title. Yana Alegria, who two years ago won 10U, took both the 12U and 14U title, something we havn’t seen in Junior Nationals for some time. Sameera Rai took the 10U title for her 2nd career win. Alyana Machado won her first title in 10Udb, beating the 8U gold medalist Sasha Rai in the final. The two multi-bounce champions were both first time winners: Almira Pridako in 8Umb and then Nainika Singi in 6Umb.
—–
Multi-title winners
The following players took home the coveted “Triple Crown,” winning singles, gender doubles, and mixed doubles this year:
– 21U DJ Mendoza: singles, doubles with Sendry, Mixed with Sanchez
– 14U: Scott Haacke: singles, doubles with Suarez, Mixed with Strobach
– 10U: Damian Gill: singles, doubles with Fernandez, Mixed with Rai.
Also, special mention to Grant Williams, who won three golds this weekend: 16U singles, 18U doubles with Whitley, and 16U doubles with Whitley.
The following players took home the “double,” winning both Singles and a Doubles title in their age groups:
– Boys 12U: Ryan Joeckel
– Girls 21U: Naomi Ros
– Girls 18U: Alexis Boyko
– Girls 10U: Sameera Rai
Special mention to Yana Alegria for winning gold in both 14U and 12U.
These players took the “Double Double,” winning both Gender and Mixed doubles titles.
– 14U Girls and Mixed: Addie Strobach
– 12U Girls and Mixed: Sloka Marivada
—
Phew. that’s it for USA 2026 Junior Nationals. Congrats to all the 2026 winners. The National team includes the two singles finalists and the doubles winners in each division; those players have first right of refusal to represent Team USA at Junior Worlds later this year at a date/site yet to be announced.
Next up on the racquetball calendar? 2026 Outdoor Nationals, teaming with 3WallBall this year in Huntington Beach! We’ll preview and recap that event as we always do. We also will announce the 2026 WOR Hall of Fame Class at 2026 Outdoor Nats.
