2022 Beach Battle Re-cap
The last big event on the 2022 Racquetball calendar happened last weekend, the Age Solutions (thanks to Andy Gomer for your continued support of outdoor and the sport in general) Beach Battle, held at the legendary Garfield Street paddleball courts in Hollywood, Florida.
This relatively new event, the brain child of DC-area outdoor aficionado Maddie Melendez , has quickly become a popular off season east coast outdoor event, which features both Paddleball and Racquetball, and draws players from up and down the East coast.
r2sports: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=39809
Note: everything below is One-Wall and all events are doubles.
Here’s a quick recap of the events of the weekend, highlighting the pro and popular events:
– Men’s Pro Doubles:
Dominant NY-based one-wall players William Rolon and Robert Sostre (colloquially known as “The Warrior” and “the Iceman”) took the title, topping the Florida pair of @Marcos Gravier and Roy Hernandez in a rematch of their group stage final. Semi finalists included long-time Beach Bash top talents @Eric Faro and @Igancio Espinal (winners of their group) and another top All-Florida pair of @Mike Harmon and Jonathan Burns .
– Women’s Pro Doubles:
Another all-NY pairing of @Jasmine Suarez and Delia Silva topped the quite-tough pairing of Aimee Roehler and @Katie Neil in both the group stage and in the pro final. Great win for Suarez/Silva.
– Men’s Open Doubles:
Solid Florida players @Yasmani Perez and long-time Florida tourney director Rob Mijares took the open draw over fellow Florida players @Mike Medina and @Seran Ramkissoon .
– Women’s Open Doubles:
Florida’s Karen Novick and Kelly Quinn won the group rematch over @Lisa Sostre (wife of Robert, therefore clearly to be known here and forward as “The Icewoman”) and Jewelz Santiago to take the Women’s Open title.
– Mixed Pro
The Warrior did the double (actually he did a triple; see below) by taking the Mixed pro with Kathy Guinan , once the namesake of the famous @Zerega complex in NY. In the final, they topped the excellent Virginia-rooted team of @Thomas Gerhard and @Aime Brewer.
– Mixed Open:
@Lisa Sostre teamed with @Darien Jimenez to do the Open double on the weekend, topping your tourney director Melendez playing with Mijares in the final.
– Men’s 75+
The biggest draw on the weekend was the 75+, becoming an ever more popular event with our aging player base.
Eric Faro (the original Beach Bash finalist in 2004) teamed with Nacho to take the 75+ draw. They topped under-rated VA-based player @Suresh Vemulapalli and the legend @Marty Hogan in the semis en route to the final.
In the final, Faro/Espinal topped the surprise finalists of @Novel Lopez and Jorge Algarin , who are (according to commenters post-publishing) from the Levitown One Wall league in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Bravo to them for making the final of a solid draw.
Congrats to all who played. Thanks to Maddie for running the event, thanks for all the Florida outdoor promoters who helped out, who did streaming, and who made this tourney happen.
What’s next?
This was the last known event of 2022. Happy Holidays to you and yours. We’ll capture the IRT year end standings and write a fun recap of the 2022 season as our next big post. Last we did that in three parts for lots of content and analysis.