This past weekend the UL-Monroe racquetball crew in Louisiana held their annual Warhawk Open, a well-sponsored and well-attended event in North Louisiana run by three very active racquetball community members in Mark Thompson, Parker Ewing and Steve Semones.
For the second year running, they teamed up with the IRT’s World Team Racquetball Division (WTR), run by @mike Kinkin, and hosted team competitions. This team concept has had some excellent showings in the past, and is something everyone is still trying to get off the ground, so we wanted to give a shout out to those running the event.
Here’s a recap of the team and open events from last weekend.
– Louisiana Lasers : Jhonatan Flores • Maurice Miller • Marquis Miller
The team competition format was as follows: The 3 players would play for 5-point stretches (any 5 points scored, so it could be 0-5 one way or 3-2 the other way) then switch off, with the matchups determined by the “home team” in each match. They played one-serve, best of 3 USAR scoring style, using the IRT’s FormulaFlow ball.
– In one semi: the Culligan Waterboys upset the top-seeded and defending champs KWM Gutterman 11-8 in the breaker.
– In the other semi, the Louisiana Lasers crushed the Dovetail thunderbolts in two games behind the latest IRT champ Flores.
In the final, the Lasers beat Culligan 12,4 to take the title.
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In the “Amateur” team event, The Culligan Waterboys Elite team squeaked out an 11-10 finals win over the KWM Gutterman Kingz Elite.
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Men’s Open Singles: Gastelum took out Subieta in the final.
Men’s Open Doubles: Gasetelum got the double win, taking the doubles final with partner Craig Clement in an injury walkover over Flores & De marco.
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Thanks to the tourney directors and the litany of sponsors for keeping Racquetball Alive in north Louisiana.
Cole Sendrey wins his 2nd straight Intercollegiate title. Photo via gofundme
The 52nd annual Intercollegiates championship was held last weekend in Minneapolis, on the campus of the University of Minnesota, host of the IRT MN HoF event and long-time host of the US Open before its planned move to Missouri in 2027.
This was the third in USA Racquetball ‘s annual set of events (Nationals, High Schools, Intercollegiates, then Junior Nationals in June). Here’s a quick recap:
Congrats to the individual winners:
– Men’s Singles Champ: Cole Sendrey, Texas A&M
– Women’s Singles Champ: Ava Kaiser, University Of Wisconsin- River Falls
– Women’s Doubles: Kyla Davis / Ella Boaz (University Of Missouri)
Sendrey repeats as both singles and doubles champion, and blew through the draw to win the singles title this year, never giving up more than 3 points in a game to be the class of the college ranks right now on the Men’s side. Kaiser upset last year’s champion Boaz in the singles final for her first college title. Davis & Boaz repeated as Women’s doubles champions, taking a 6-team RR group handily.
Sendrey’s 2nd overall title is also TAMU’s second, while Kaiser wins the first title for her school Wisconsin-River Falls, and they become the 28th different college to house an intercollegiates women’s singles champ.
Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) remains the leader in individual singles titles, with 12 on the Men’s side and 7 on the Women’s side, having dominated the collegiate level of the sport for much of the 70s and 80s.
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In the team competition:
– Overall Team: Oregon State
– Men’s Team: BYU
– Women’s Team: Oregon State
Oregon State wins their 4th straight Overall team title and their 15th overall to extend their growing lead over Memphis. BYU wins their first Men’s team title in their long illustrious intercollegiates history, a huge accomplishment.
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I maintain a list of all the individual and team champs at this Google xls, now updated for 2026’s results.
You can see more about the history of all the Intercollegiate champions (and not just the #1 gold divisions) at this history link at USAR’s website, though it seems to be a bit out of date, having not been updated since 2020. Perhaps this can be a project for the social media intern that USAR is hiring for presently.
Javier Mar dominated 2026 Beach Bash, winning both pro doubles titles.
Photo via PK
Hello Racquetball fans. The first Outdoor “Major” of the 2026 season just finished up on the sunny courts of Garfield Street in Hollywood, Florida, and here’s a recap.
Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Men’s Pro Doubles: @Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball & @Javier Mar – Women’s Pro Doubles: Michelle Anderson & Anita Maldonado – Mixed Pro Doubles: Javier Mar & Aimee Roehler – Men’s Pro Singles: Jhonatan Flores – Women’s Pro Singles: (no event)
Executive Summary: Mar gets the double gold while Flores wins in his WOR debut.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=48742
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Reports on ProRacquetballStats.com:
Match reports for 2026 Beach Bash:
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/a56f52 – Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/ead368 – Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/ead368 – Men’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/1a9bf2 – Women’s Pro Singles: (no event)
Triple Crown Reports for all past WOR major champions (which dynamically update every time there’s a new WOR major):
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/3lj – Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/zoa – Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/obz – Men’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/9ey – Women’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/h27
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Lets run through the draws, recapping the action.
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Men’s Pro Doubles:
A stacked draw saw a reshuffling of seeds last minute, which happens from time to time when there’s a last minute withdrawal/replacement and/or someone onsite pitches a fit. I don’t know which situation it was this time, but the early round shuffle still ended up giving the tourney some awesome early matches.
Freddy Ramirez and David Blatt as a #14 seed was pretty crazy, but they topped the #3 seeds with ease to face off against the 14-time pro champ Waselenchuk and Montanez in the quarters. Kane and Tito advanced, but ran into the Hall of Famer Sostre in the Semis, who put on a one-wall clinic as he & Benny advanced to the final from the bottom half. Meanwhile, the top seeds Montoya & Mar, who have more than proven their one-wall bonafides over the years, had to face a gauntlet of top players to get to the final: they beat Miller & Deida (3-time Beach Bash champs) in the 16s , then Rocky & Ramos in the quarters (Rocky owns 12 outdoor doubles titles), then Rolon & Pruitt in the semis (Rolon owns four one-wall major doubles titles). So, they certainly earned their spot.
In the final, Montoya/Mar outlasted Sostre/Goldenberg for the win. It’s Mar’s 4th major one-wall title and Montoya’s first.
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Women’s Pro Doubles:
In a 4-team draw, outdoor legend @Michelle Anderson teamed with NYC legend @Anita Maldonado to win the title. They beat Neils and Roehler in a rematch of last year’s Beach Bash final.
This is Anderson’s 38th career major outdoor doubles title, and Maldonado’s 8th.
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Mixed Pro Doubles:
Eventual Champs Javier Mar and hall of famer @Aimee Roehler upset the top seeds in the semis and cruised to the title. In the final they topped Sostre & Neils, never an easy task. It’s Roehler’s 11th career major outdoor title.
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Men’s Pro Singles:
Bolivian phenom Jhonatan Flores played his first outdoor event in the USA and ended up taking the singles title. He beat a very tough lefty in Ramos to start, then blitzed the one-wall king from NYC Sostre, then took out the #1 seeded Portillo in the final. A great showing for his first event. I’m not sure just how much one-wall or even three wall experience Flores has; Bolivian players often have Fronton experience in their home country, which isn’t exactly the same as one-wall but is an outdoor variation of the sport.
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Women’s Pro Singles:
There was no Women’s singles event this year, thanks to a historically low female turnout which we’ll talk about more later.
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Other Notable draws. This year, the age-based “pro” draws were absolutely stacked, often having bigger draws than their corresponding draws. Plus, a slew of legends of the game were in Florida just to compete in these age-based draws. So, we’ll cover them a big more comprehensively
– CPRT 40+ Doubles: HOFamer Robert “Iceman” Sostre and partner Benny Goldenberg brought the CPRT title back home to NYC, cruising to the title as the #1 seeds. In the final they topped the criminally under-seeded @Cliff Swain and @David Blatt, giving the final a very Northeastern flavor.
– Men’s 75+: Texas was in the house in this draw, as the final featured three players from the great one-wall community in San Antonio. Abel Perez, one of the major sponsors of outdoor, teamed with Javier Mar to face off against the king himself @Kane Waselenchuk and his partner @Matthew Barron. After Kane/Barron dispatched another legend of the sport in @Marty Hogan (playing with multiple-Beach Bash champion Ignacio “Iggy” Espinal) in the semis, they topped Perez/Mar in the final 21-15.
– Men’s 100+: Hogan wasn’t done after his 75+ loss; he and the outdoor legend Richie Miller took the 100+ event, beating the best that the Virginia-based Stratton Woods outdoor crew has to offer in Allen Small & Suresh Vemulapalli in the final.
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Some Additional commentary:
This year’s Beach Bash was stacked on the Men’s side, with great draws and a host of legendary names down in Florida competing. This is in no small part thanks to a reshuffling of the events that normally butt heads in March from the WTR crew in Louisiana, so bravo there. But where were the women? This year, the event was missing nearly all its Beach Bash LPRT regulars and the event couldn’t even field a women’s singles draw.
I know part of this is the loss of funding for the competitors, a big reason they came to Vegas for so many years. And part of it is just the pivoting we’re seeing in the field: Longoria is pregnant, Scott has essentially left pro racquetball along with her boyfriend DLR, Munoz is stepping back, Lawrence has completely stopped competing, Laime doesn’t travel as much, Rajsich stopped playing outdoor years ago, Sotomayor now lives 3000 miles away, and of course the continued presence of the AF event two weeks prior cuts into the travel availability of many top NYC-based paddleball experts who otherwise may have played… No good answer here. But, it’s a shame because the ladies were a huge draw and helped make Mixed Pro Doubles such a fun event to watch. Hopefully we see a renaissance soon.
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Thanks to the Tourney Directors Peggine Tellez , Jen O’Meara , @Mike Coulter, @Vic Leibofsky, Soda Man, and the entire 3Wall Ball crew for putting this event on and ensuring the legacy of outdoor majors.
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Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/edit?usp=sharing
Next weekend there’s three major events at the same time: PARC in Guatemala, Intercollegiates in Minneapolis, and the WTR event in Louisiana.
Jhonathan Flores became the 47th person in the history of the IRT (and its predecessors) to win a Tier 1/full draw event. After doing my recaps and podcasts, I realized that I had some hard coded nuggets of information in the underlying perl code that would make for a great report.
So here it is; this is a breakdown of some key information related to each of the 47 first time winners. Take a look: i’ve got the data sorted from most recent winners to the oldest.
IRT: https://rball.pro/c288b0
Also, here’s the same data for the LPRT: https://rball.pro/e19899
(LPRT has only had 30 winners in its history … crazy).
Anyway, take a look, let me know if there’s other data you’d like to see on this report.
To run it yourself, go to the PRS home page, pick either the IRT or LPRT, then in the lower section of reports select and run the “First Time Tour Winners” report.
Flores becomes the 47th ever champion on the IRT. Photo via IRT’s Instagram account
Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Jhonathan Flores
– Doubles: Conrrado Moscoso & Kadim Carrasco
TL/DR Executive Summary: Flores becomes the 47th ever IRT Tier 1 tourney winner at the tender age of 20, fulfilling the promise that many have been speaking of since he first popped onto the scene two years ago at this event and took a game off of Kane.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=52434
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/1bf755
In the 32s, a couple of notable results:
– A week after getting pounded by Carrasco, USA junior Cole Sendrey got a career win with an 11-10 squeaker over the veteran Bolivian.
– Trujillo, for the second event in a row, edged fellow Mexican up and comer Gastelum to move into the 16s.
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In the 16s:
– Portillo struggled against Natera but advanced, injuring his ankle in the process, an injury that would force him to retire against Kane in the Quarters.
– A couple weeks after trouncing Parrilla in the 16s, Flores carried an arm injury into this event but still managed to grind his way past the ultimate grinder in Andree to move into the quarters.
– Manilla continues his comeback with a solid win over Javier Mar
– Moscoso falls behind early to Trujillo, but advances 10,4.
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In the Quarters, a couple of shocks
– Kane gets a walkover after a 15-3 game one win
– Jake plays great ball and trounces Montoya 8,6 to move on.
– Flores grinds out a game 1 win over Acuna 15-12, then blows him away 15-1 to move into the semis.
– Manilla gets the best win of his career, controlling the tempo and ousting Moscoso in the quarters to put a big dent in his title chances.
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In the Semis
– Kane just looks ordinary and Jake comes out firing in an 8,12 win. Per Manilla, the court conditions really hampered left-handed drive serves up the right side, which presented a very tough challenge for Kane, Adam, and other lefties all weekend, and resultingly Kane resorted to lob serves far more than he may have liked. Did he have any lingering knee issues from two weeks prior? It did not seem so to this observer, and Jake played clean ball to move on.
– Flores moved past Manilla but needed a tiebreaker to do it.
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In the Finals, I watched and kept running notes based on the import of the match.
Game 1: Jake jumps out to early lead; he’s playing super fast, and interestingly getting points by taking pace off, not increasing pace. But, Flores digs in, starts chipping away at the lead point by point and goes from 2-7 down to 9-9. Flores first serving at a very high pace, getting a lot of weaker returns from jake. Flores also incredibly adept at ceiling ball rallies and gets a lot of “who makes the error first” points. Takes the lead at 10-9; jake only really successful against Flores’ serve when he attacks.
Clearly, Both players are struggling with court conditions, and seem to have best success working along the right side of the court and/or depending on pinch/splat kills. Manilla talks about just how fast Flores is on the court; not from a diving perspective but from a court coverage perspective. Flores rekill off of Jake’s drive is scary good.
The pair trade points 9-9, 10-10, 11-11… jake gets a couple of points quick where Flores tries to get too cute mid-rally with pinch shots while Jake is in front court. Jake’s use of jam serves all game pays off with a setup on 13-11 but Flores crushes a forehand kill to save first game point. Flores takes a curious timeout 11-14 and entering service box… doesn’t pay off. Flores skipping a ton of opportunities late leads to Jake winning first game 15-11.
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Game2
Flores jumps out early with a series of awesome rallies. Now both players taking pace off during the rallies, perhaps due to the inconsistencies of the court (bowed front wall, cement side walls vs panel front, weird bounces off the back). Suddenly Flores is up 6-0. Flores really showing how good a ceiling ball player he is; he “wins” ceiling ball rallies over and over, with Jake the first to make a mistake and give Flores an attacking opportunity. Flores just starts lob serving looking to enter into CB rallies as a result, with great success.
Suddenly you look up and its 10-1 … Flores is swinging easy, getting the bounces, makes some amazing adjustments off the back court bad bounces … game is getting away from Jake. Flores comes up slow from a dive and loses a couple of
quick points … ended by a buried backhand 2nd shot, which seems to give Flores his air back. Game seems stalled for Flores; he’s either tired or just a bit lackadaisical; suddenly its 13-7 as Jake goes on a run. Flores struggling to put
balls away he was killing before. Jake will get a couple points … then Flores wakes up and kills a ball with ease but is struggling to put the game away. Wakes up, hits a great jam for a 3-shot rally to get to game point then pulls out a rare right-side drive for an ace and Game 2. Lots of expended energy here from both players in a game that probably should have been like 15-2.
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Game 3
Flores serving to start TB; goes with lob serve again; someone (Alvi?) is giving him tips that he’s winning the CB rallies. Jake gets in the box, goes back to his Jam serve, which has give him a lot of success this match, boom up 3-1. Broken ball in game 3 … a rarity for the FF ball. Flores makes a couple of fatigue errors … jake sees it and runs off a bunch of points. Flores needs to take a TO, Jake quick serving him to take advantage … In a flash its Jake 6-2.
Flores clearly tired … needs to remember to hit the ball at full tilt and not to ease off; that’s his strength. He goes back to drive serve, gets a couple of points quick to get it back to 4-6. Ace serve for 5-6. Flores scores 5 in a row by getting his intensity back; scores them in a flash.
Now its Jake on his heels momentum-wise… jake gets a tricky service return to get the serve back at 6-7 but gets a crap bounce mid-rally to lose the serve again … everything going Flores way. Jake guts out a tough rally with a buried splat from deep to get the serve back at 6-7. Flores goes from a really poor circus shot mid-rally to give up a point for 7-7. Jake gets a killable return off a z serve for 8-7, but Flores kills a serve off the back wall to get back in the box.
Flores keeps jake on the move for 8-8. Flores cracks out a serve leading to 9-8 lead and jake TO. Back in the box; great rally ends with a Flores diving kill for 10-8.
match point on his racquet: Went for a pinch rollout; 2nd serve … lob serve, yet another CB rally … jake leaves one short and Flores eventually buries it for his first pro win. Fitting that he wins the match on yet another ceiling ball error from Jake;
Some quick stats/info here: This is obviously Flores’ first tourney win. He wins in his 11th career event, which is pretty fast but not really near the 7-8th event range that the likes of Kane, Cliff, Sudsy all achieved.
Flores Age at first win: 20years, 249 days.
Youngest 1st time winners: 10th youngest ever.
– age 17: Serot, Harnett, Hogan
– age 18: Swain
– age 19: Huczek, Monchik, Waselenchuk
– age 20: Wagner, Yellen, Flores, GPeck
– age 21: DLR, Doyle, Hilecher, Inoue, Parrilla, Rojas
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Flores is the 47th player ever to win a Tier 1. Here’s the last 10 or so first-time winners and the date they won:
35: De La Rosa is the 35th distinct player to win an event with his Dec 2014 tourney win in New Jersey
36: Charlie Pratt is the 36th ever winner by virtue of his Dec 2017 Portland win
37: Alejandro Landa is the 37th ever distinct winner with his Sioux Falls 2018 win
38: Sebastian Franco 38th with his San Antonio 2018 win
39: Andree Parrilla the 39th distinct winner with his March 2018 Lombard win.”;
40: Conrrado Moscoso became the 40th and most recent distinct winner in Mar 2019 with his win at the Bolivian Grand Slam”;
41: Samuel Murray became the 41th and most recent distinct winner in Jan 2021 with his win at the Suivant Consulting Grand Slam”;
42: Mario Mercado became the 42nd and most recent distinct winner in Nov 2021 with his win at the Arizona Pro-Am”;
43: Eduardo Portillo became the 43rd and most recent distinct winner in Sept 2022 with his win at the Capital Classic in Severna Park”;
44: Jake Bredenbeck became the 44th and most recent distinct winner in Dec 2022 with his win at the John Pelham memorial in Portland”;
45: Rodrigo Montoya became the 45th and most recent distinct winner in Mar 2023 with his win at the Minnesota HoFame tourney in Minneapolis”;
46: Andres Acuna became the 46th player in the history of the pro tour to win a Tier 1 with his 9/7/25 win over Kane Waselenchuk at the World Singles & Doubles event in Colorado”;
47: Jhonathan Flores became the 47th player in the history of the pro tour to win a Tier 1 with his 3/15/26 win over Jake Bredenbeck to take the 2026 Shamrock Shootout”;
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Points Implications of results
As Noted, Kane missed a massive opportunity to bury Moscoso in the season standings with Conrrado’s quarter final upset. He extends his lead a little bit for the season … but if Conrrado wins 2 of the remaining 3 and makes the final of the third, he’ll take the season title. However … the presence of Flores now really complicates things for both players; he’ll move up to 8th in the standings, meaning he’ll play into Kane in the quarters in a full draw, Conrrado if someone in the top8 is missing. So we’re likely to get more matchups of the new young gun against the established top 2 players.
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.
Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/8bd97a
Carrasco and Moscoso won their 4th pro doubles title of the season, topping the long-running top-dogs Montoya & Mar once again. It’s just a matter of time before the Bolivians take over the top spot, and they have to be the PARC favorites now, even over the newly crowned Mexican national champs Parrilla & Portillo.
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Open Singles, other notable draws
– Open Singles: Flores, two weeks after staying in Open singles to the detriment of his pro results, was absent from the Open singles this weekend smartly, which opened the door for new blood. In the final, Guatemalan Juan Salvatierra took out Ohioan Victor Migliore in a tough final.
– Open Doubles: Migliore teamed with Herrera Jr. to make it two titles, topping the kids Williams & Sendrey in a walkover final that smells like travel issues.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the entire IRTLive crew.
Thanks to the Tourney Director Dave Negrete for putting this event on!
Thanks to the Tourney Sponsors Papa Nicholas, KWM, and others. 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.
Beach Bash 2026 is this coming weekend! quite a change to go from windy 30s to sunny 80s in Florida. Then, the week after starts the 2026 Pan American Racquetball Championships (PARC) along with the World Team Racquetball event in Louisiana. We also have USAR Intercollegiates the last weekend of the month, finishing off a very busy stretch.
Andree Parrilla loves Chicago; can he make some noise this weekend?
Photo 2019 US Open via Kevin Savory
One of the longer-running events on tour is this coming weekend in the Chicago-land area, as the tour visits a club it hasn’t played at in years for the 2026 Shamrock Shootout. They’re playing in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was site to the debut of the portable court back in 2008.
We’ve got a solid 36-pro draw with 17 of the top 20 players present, which will make for a fun opening couple of days of matchups.
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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:
In the round of 32:
– two IRT vets in Sam Bredenbeck and Robbie Collins meet in the 16/17 seed match
– Alonso is back after a weekend off; he faces DJ Mendoza in a fun one
– WE get a rematch of last week’s Carrasco-Sendrey matchup
– WE also get a rematch of the great opening round match between Trujillo and Gastelum.
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round of 16:
– Lalo Portillo is back after a weekend off; he plays into Natera in the 8/9
– Montoya-Alonso is a great round of 16 match between two guys who can both get hot and get results
– Wonder kid Flores faces off against Parrilla once again; he beta him 1,3 two weeks ago, but may not be 100% this weekend.
– Manilla-Mar in the 7-10 could be an upset for the lefty.
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Projected Qtrs:
– Kane projects to play Portillo in my predictions; Portillo is an awkward player to play and who can score points, so tough round for Kane
– Montoya-Jake in the quarters is a hard hitter’s dream.
– Acuna/Parrilla could be an upset for the Mexican, who loves Chicago and has some of his best results here.
– Moscoso should cruise through Manilla
Semis: I like Kane over Montoya, and Moscoso over Parrilla, to give us what we want; another 1v2 Kane v Conrrado final.
Finals;
Moscoso has won four straight tourneys, and has beaten Kane 3 times in a row. Can he keep these streaks alive? It certainly didn’t look like it for the first 19 points of the Minnesota final … but Conrrado found a way to win.
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Doubles review
All the usual teams are here and together; even though there’s some compelling partnerships right now on tour, the final will likely come down to whoever wins the semis between newly crowned mMexican national champs Parrilla/Portillo and the Bolivian champs Moscoso/Carrasco. Look for Parrilla/Portillo to win the semis and get another win over Montoya/Mar in the final.
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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, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the microphone, calling the shots!
Thanks to the Tourney Director @dave negrete for putting this event on!
Thanks to our main sponsors Papa Nicholas Coffee, KWM Gutterman, and the Klaimatis foundation ; it goes without saying that without you and your support, we don’t have a 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.
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!
Back in 2019, I saw a cool graphic showing the slow change over time of rankings of some IT thing; maybe it was market share of browsers or ranking of cell phone providers. After digging in, I found the site (Flourish.studio) and, what do you know, you can upload your own data. I created visual racing bar charts showing the Men and Women’s top 10s since the beginning of the tours in 1974, and those posts were one of the most popular I ever did.
@JT R Ball reached out this week and asked if I had thought about updating them … and I said, “Hey What a great idea!”
So, without further ado, here’s the two graphics, updated to the current rankings on both tours for the 2025-26 rankings.
Quick data caveats, since, well, this is Racquetball and no good deed goes published on the internet without someone complaining about it:
– These are End of Season top 10 lists. If you are a player who was ranked in the top 10 for a few weeks in a season 20 years ago and don’t see your name … don’t @ to tell me the data is wrong. Nobody captured mid-season top 10 data and I have no way of showing anything other than season ending top 10 ranks.
– In the The first few years of the tours, Basically there wasn’t a rolling ranking. The champions were determined by who won the season-ending Nationals event. That’s why the first few years look weird; i just took the Nationals finish and kind of jury-rigged a top 10.
Some fun facts:
– in 2019, there had only been 79 distinct players in the history of Pro racquetball to finish in the top 10 in any season. That number has now risen to 94 through this season, as we’ve had a ton of new faces make top 10 debuts in the last 5-6 years. Moscoso, Acuna, Jake, Montoya, Natera, Portillo, Adam, Carter, Martell, Trujillo? All new within the last few years, along with a slew of others.
– Same info for the Women: in 2019 there had been 97 women who had a top10 finish … now that number is up to 106. We haven’t really had that many new women debut that high in the last half decade. Gaby, Laime, Manilla, Barrios, Centellas, and this year Lotts is in the top 10.
Happy Friday. As always, if you can think of a cool application of this data that I should do or think about i’m always open to it.
Kane is in the driver’s seat atop the rankings … for now. Can he be caught? Photo via US Open 2019/Kevin Savory
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
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/
