I got a message recently from Felipe Mercado, asking if I could “cover” the IRT title race or explain it in more detail. Great idea. I write a quick points race summary after each IRT event, but it’s worth writing a larger missive to discuss where we are, how the race is going to be decided this year, and what’s at stake in the season’s final few events.
One of the first things the new International Racquetball Tour regime did upon taking over was to pivot back to a fall-to-spring schedule, as was in place for the first 50 years or so of the tour. This immediately led to a conundrum; should the tour award a shortened “2024-25” season just based on the first half of 2025’s events (there were just 3 events in the first six months of 2025), or should they go with a “super season” spanning a year and a half? The team went with Option B.
So, now as we sit in March of 2026, the tour is rolling towards the 6/30/26 official end of the 2025-26 season, and will soon be awarding the next season-ending titlist.
Quick level setting on points: for a regular Tier 1/IRT-700 event, the points awarded are as follows:
– 420 points for first place
– 280 points for second place
– 210 for the semis
– 140 for the quarters
– 70,35,18 for 16s, 32s, 64s.
(Note: the tour has had one IRT-800 level event; Tracktown, which adjusts the above scale slightly upwards. It’s possible one of the 3 remaining events also gets enough money to be an 800 level event, which would slightly alter this analysis).
The points basically follow the prize money: “IRT-700” means $700 for each round advanced. So, if you get to the semis, you’ve advanced 3 rounds and earn $2100. The winner gets a bonus for, you know, winning.
Given that there’s projected to be 12 Tier 1 events in the 18-month season, plus a slew of satellite events, the tour has decided that the best 10 results over the last 18 months for each player will determine their year end ranking. Satellite tournaments count as well; if someone wins a satellite event (worth 75 points) that result can replace a round of 16 loss (worth 70) or a round of 32 loss (worth 35) or even a missed Tier 1 event for the player. These events will absolutely help determine the rankings for players 3rd and below, and may factor into the top 10 race (an arbitrary cut-off but one that I have built reporting around for historical purposes), but the top two players are entirely about the Tier 1s.
The race for #1 is a two-horse race. Kane Waselenchuk currently has the lead with 2515 points, and Conrrado Moscoso is in second place with 2267 points. These two are more than 650 points ahead of the 3rd place @Andres Acuna
and 4th place Jake Bredenbeck ; the only way these two can get back into the race is if Kane & Conrrado both quit the tour tomorrow.
So, lets talk about where we are and what can happen. There’s some salient points to talk about before we play some what-if scenarios:
– The loss of the 2026 planned US Open in June means there’s just three tier 1s remaining: the Papa Nicholas Chicago event in two weeks time, the Player’s Championship in Fountain Valley in April, and Pro Nationals the first weekend of May in Montana.
– There will be exactly 12 Tier 1s included in the 18-month schedule.
– Moscoso got hurt in early 2025; he tweaked his knee in the round of 32 at last year’s Minnesota event and lost: this gave him a 35-point result and knocked him out of the next event.
– Moscoso recovered in time for the Sept 2025 World Singles & Doubles event … but ran into Kane in the round of 16 and lost, giving him a 70-point result.
– So, Moscoso netted just 105 points for these three events. Meanwhile, Waselenchuk won 2025 Minnesota, lost in qtrs of 2025 Chicago, and lost in the finals of World Singles and doubles for a combined 840 points to Moscoso’s 105 for those events. That’s a lot of points that Moscoso can “make up” with an extra six months of events to bolster his top 10 results. However, the loss of the US Open was critical; it took the total # of Tier 1s from 13 to 12, meaning Conrrado will have to “keep” one of these super-low results in his final tally. Even if he went to one of the two remaining satellites and wins it for a 75 point result, it will barely matter; he’s got to replace a 0, 35, and 70 result and at best he’ll only improve his 70-point result by 5 points assuming he advances deep into the 3 remaining Tier 1s.
Now, how about Kane?
– Well, Kane missed last year’s Golden State Open (to attend a wedding), and otherwise his lowest Tier 1 results are a qtrs injury-aided loss at last year’s Chicago event (140 ) and a semis loss in SoCal to Moscoso (210).
– So, Kane can make at least the qtrs in the remaining 3 events and improve upon both his 0 and his 140-point results. If he makes the finals of all three, he’ll replace all three of these results with higher-point totals.
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Ok that’s all fine and dandy, and probably confusing, but is Kane in jeopardy of losing the year end title race? Yes he is … but he’s in the driver’s seat in some respects. Here’s some scenarios:
Scenario 1: Conrrado wins all 3 remaining events and Kane makes the final in all three. Conrrado replaces his 3 lowest scores with 3 wins, while Kane does the same with three 280-point finals. The two players 10 best results will thus look like this:
– Moscoso: 7 wins, 2 semis, 1 round of 16. That would total 3464 per my projections.
– Waselenchuk: 3 wins, 6 finals, 1 semi: That would total 3215.
Scenario 2: Conrrado beats Kane in the final and wins 2 of the three remaining events, but Kane beats Conrrado in the final of the third:
– Waselenchuk: 4 wins, 5 finals, 1 semi: That would total 3355
– Moscoso: 6 wins, 1, final, 2 semis, 1 round of 16. Total: 3324
Just that one flip of a win vs a final would be enough for Kane to secure the title. And, it won’t be close enough for Moscoso to bother going to a Satellite event to gain 5 points; it’ll be game over.
If Kane is upset in any of the 3 remaining events prior to the finals, the pathway for Conrrado to win the title correspondingly becomes easier but not a lock. Same goes for Moscoso: if he loses in an early round, he won’t have the opportunity to “replace” those March 2025 results with anything substantive, and Kane would then roll to the title.
So, the rest of the season is simple: Conrrado needs to win out to guarantee he is in control of his own destiny to get the title. And, if Kane can win one, he’ll almost guarantee his 16th pro tour title.
Here’s what I’m hoping for: Moscoso wins the next two over Kane in the finals, and we head to the Pro Nationals event with a “winner take all” scenario. We’ve had multiple seasons where the race wasn’t decided until the very last tournament, and in some cases the very last final of the very last tournament: Kane over Huczek in 2004 and again in 2006, Cliff in 2002, Sudsy in 1996, Kane over Rocky in 2015 being the most recent examples.
Can’t wait to see how the next couple of events play out, to see if we get that pressure-packed last event.
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I have a per-event rolling points XLS that emulates the IRT official rankings at this Google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z6eg6NJT6fjGMfRRyKTNLShAiDoz0TzzmQCt1_SbNBo/edit?usp=sharing
Unfortunately, the Microsoft XLS formula I use to find the “best 10 results” doesn’t translate to Google’s formulas, so they’re broken online It’s too bad, because i put in a little “what-if” analysis section for the final three events that you can see online.
The actual running official IRT Rankings are here: https://irttour.com/rankings/
