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IRF PARC 2026 Recap

Vargas wins the double in Guatemala. Photo via usaracquetballevents.com

The singles and doubles competitions for the 37th annual Pan American Racquetball Championships tournament are in the books. Here’s a recap of the group and knockout action, along with links for the results as entered into the Pro Racquetball Stats database.

Congratulations to the winners:

– Men’s Singles: Conrrado Moscoso , Bolivia
– Women’s Singles: @Maria Jose Vargas, Argentina
– Men’s Doubles: @Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball / Javier Mar, Mexico
– Women’s Doubles: Maria Jose Vargas/Valeria Centellas, Argentina
– Mixed Doubles: @Andres Acuna/Larissa Faeth, Costa Rica

Executive Summary: The favorites survived a crazy singles competition full of surprises and early upsets, with Moscoso beating Portillo on the Men’s side and Vargas topping Gaby in the Women’s singles final. Costa Rica’s mixed team won the title featuring the precocious Faeth alongside top IRT pro Acuna in a huge upset.

Pro Racquetball Stats DB match results. Click on these links to see the match results in the DB:

– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/1a85c7
– Women’s Singles: https://rball.pro/969028
– Men’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/587620
– Women’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/61d2b9
– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/8d73ce

Team Points Results From Knockouts

PARC now includes a “Team Competition” where the countries compete against each other at the end of the individual competitions, which is going on as you read this for the next couple of days, but for decades the “Team Standings” were determined by an algorithm that awarded points based on group stage and knockout performance. I’m unclear whether IRF continues to name “team winners” in this same way, but here’s the team results using the historical methods, which I also enter into the database for consistency across IRF events back to the beginning.

(You can get these “team results” via queries available from the IRF singles page off of proracquetballstats.com for past history)

If you’d like to see the worksheet that calculates these points, see here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SblLg5EbQ2KzXOmKHqxg-9iPPSMytmbH46Ay5hYJzZU/edit?usp=sharing

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Combined Team (Overall)

1st — Mexico
2nd – Argentina
3rd – Bolivia
4th — Costa Rica

Summary: Mexico’s overall performance dwarfed even 2nd place Argentina as it reasserted its dominance after getting pipped by Bolivia in competitions lately. USA dips to an embarrassing 7th in the team points competition.

Men’s Team

1st – Mexico
2nd – Bolivia
3rd – Canada
4th – Costa Rica

Summary: USA out of the top four after poor singles results really cost them points, while Mexico dominated on the men’s side, with a win and a final in doubles and singles respectively. Despite missing Flores, Bolivia finished in second.

Women’s Team

1st – Argentina
2nd – Mexico
3rd – Guatemala
4th – Bolivia & Costa Rica tied

Summary: a double by Vargas powered Argentina to a clear win here. Once again, the USA is out of the top 4.

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Let’s run through the individual draws and talk about notable results.

Men’s Singles:

In the group stages, not too many major surprises or upsets. Argentina’s Diego Garcia beat Jake Bredenbeck to take their group but that’s not too much of a surprise upset. Bolivian 16U player Sebastian Borja lost in 5 to Argentina’s Gerson Miranda to lose the group, but that’s also as expected. The biggest RR upset may have been Canada’s Coby Iwaasa taking out Alan Natera, but again not too big of a surprise as Iwaasa is one of the best players in the world who never really played the pro tour regularly.

In the knockouts, massive upsets early. Borja took out Garcia in the 16s; he was the champion in this event last year. Iwaasa then took out Andree Parrilla; that’s two IRT top 10 players beaten for the Canadian. Lastly, Sam Murry took out No. 3 seed Gerson Miranda in a huge seeding upset, but probably an expected result based on the head to head matchup. All told, 5 of the top 8 knockout seeds were beaten in the first round.

16yr old Borja more than held his own, making the semis and losing to his own countryman Moscoso. Murray topped Acuna but couldn’t get past Portillo, giving the draw a 1v2 final despite all the carnage earlier. In the final, Moscoso dropped the first game but won the match in 4 for his 7th international title.

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Women’s Singles:

Four of the five RR groups were straight forward, and then we had Group 4 with this quartet of players: Natalia Mendez, Annie Sanchez, Gaby Martinez, and Camila Rivero.

Editorial tangent: If there was ever a better argument for more intelligent seeding at IRF events, this is it. That’s two LPRT top 6 players in Mendez & Martinez, the current #12 LPRT player in Sanchez, and the 3-time defending 21U Junior world champ Rivero. Come on. In a competition that included, not to name names, literal B- players from lesser countries why would you stack a group like this? In the end, the players all beat up on each other, Sanchez went 0-3 and Mendez went 2-1 but finished 3rd on point differential to be omitted from the knockouts despite currently being ranked #5 on tour.

In the knockouts, the four top-ranked players in the competition all advanced to the semis as expected. There, Gaby took out Herrera and Vargas took out Mejia to get a solid final, where Vargas won and claimed her 5th career IRF singles title.

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Men’s Doubles.

No surprises in group stages, and all 13 entered teams advanced to the knockouts. There, the lack of Bolivia’s top team showed out, as they threw out two juniors who couldn’t do much with the powerful Canadian team. It probably didn’t matter, as the lopsided country-based seeding and the weird collapse of the Argentinian team cleared the way for Murray & Iwaasa to make the final. The bottom half was stacked, featuring Mexico, USA, and Costa Rica, but the Montoya/Mar juggernaut persevered and setup a dream final.

In the final, Montoya & Mar won a 5-game battle to claim their 5th career IRF doubles title together.

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Women’s Doubles:

No surprises in the group stage. In the knockouts, the powerful Argentine team of Vargas & Centellas outlasted a great push by the young Bolivian team of Rivero & Amaya to get to the final. In the stacked bottom half, Guatemala sent USA home early in the quarters but then fell to Mejia & Herrera in the semis. The Mexican pair, who has dominated Women’s doubles for years on tour, was upset in the final by the Argentine pair.

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Mixed Doubles

Perhaps the most wide open draw in the event was the Mixed Doubles event, which featured a number of teams who have had past success. Last year’s champs husband/wife pair of Natera & Munoz were knocked out in the semis by Bolivia’s Moscoso & Amaya, who then fell to Costa Rica (sporting the 16-yr old Larissa Faeth more than holding her own in this competition). In the final, Acuna & Faeth shocked the world with a win over Argentina’s Miranda & Mendez to claim CR’s second ever international title.

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Commentary on the State of the PARC and International competitions

The 2026 PARC competition saw the return of a team from Colombia after several years away (their federation collapsed, causing stalwart Colombians like Cristina Amaya to decamp for other countries). We also saw Venezuela send a time for the first time in years, along with players from Cuba (who missed last year), Puerto Rico, and Peru. In fact, the only regularly attending country missing this time around was Honduras. So, that’s good to see.

Four of the countries however didn’t send any females at all (Ecuador, Cuba, Peru, and PR). Peru and PR’s attendees may have been completely independent/self financed, but the other two federations should have sent full teams.

Bolivia continues to be plagued by financial support issues, which cost them the attendance of Jhonathan Flores and any of their top females … instead he was replaced by their reigning 16U world champion Borja in singles and by two other youngsters (Aldin & Aguilar) in Men’s doubles, plus a female in Amaya who doesn’t even have any junior results, which likely cost them a shot at the overall team titles. They held their own .. but if international competitions are so important to the Bolivians, perhaps they should figure out how to support their teams.

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Congrats to the International Racquetball Federation for another successful event. Thanks to the IRT streaming crew, and thanks to @Gary Mazaroff and all his co-announcers for their hard work all week.

Next up on the Racquetball Calendar: the IRT is back in action in Fountain Valley in two weeks’ time. Plus, I hear we may have an LPRT event in the making before the season ends.

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Warhawk Open and WTR event Recap

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.

R2 sports site: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=52179

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Team Competition: there were four “pro” teams in Louisiana:

– KWM Gutterman Kingz: Dylan Pruitt • Austin Cunningham • Craig Clemente

– Culligan Waterboys: Diego Gastelum • Raymond Flowers • Lance Hale

– Dovetail Thunderbolts : Ezequiel Subieta • Destry Everhart • Michael Perez

– 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.

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2026 USA Racquetball Intercollegiates Recap

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

– Men’s Doubles: Cole Sendrey/Jax Dixon (Texas A&M University)

– 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.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vDHJFTDyxlKXpaLKn7-JN1glYhbR0nrExUdwW5oG2vw/edit?usp=sharing

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.

https://www.usaracquetball.com/record-books/Intercollegiate-champions

Congrats to all the individuals and team champions!

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2026 Beach Bash Recap

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.

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tags

USA Racquetball

@WOR – World Outdoor Racquetball

@3Wall Ball

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New Report Added at Pro Racquetball Stats: First Time Tournament Winners Report

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.

Enjoy!

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IRT 2026 Shamrock Shootout Recap

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.

men

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z6eg6NJT6fjGMfRRyKTNLShAiDoz0TzzmQCt1_SbNBo/edit?usp=sharing

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Doubles review

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.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/edit?usp=sharing

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.

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tags

International Racquetball Tour

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IRT Papa Nicholas Coffee Shamrock Shootout Preview

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.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=52434

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!

Associations

International Racquetball Tour

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Visual Depiction of Pro Racquetball Tour Top 10s over time Revisited

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.

Men: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1113648/

Women: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1120539/

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.