So, I’m a little behind on this one. World Juniors was in mid December in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and to be completely honest the timing of the event along with the timing of other events I cover, as well as a mid-December work trip and then mid-December holiday travel completely conspired against me having any shot of doing the massive amount of work required to enter the data for World Juniors, nor to recap it until now.
However, this is one of the most important events of the year to cover, because it’s often the first time we hear about top-level juniors coming from Bolivia and Mexico who might suddenly start getting wins in the pro tours. It’s also a great way to see how the other leading countries’ juniors are stacking up.
So, with that said, lets recap. We’ll list all the singles winners, then do some quick narrative discussion by division.
Here’s the “matrix reports” of Boys and Girls Junior Worlds champions historically:
– Boys: https://rball.pro/ff5caa
– Girls: https://rball.pro/t6e
Champions were crowned in Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles in six age groups: 21U, 18U, 16U, 14U, 12U, and 10U, as well as a team competition, meaning that in essence this tournament actually held 30 separate competitions. All 30 competitions are now in the database; If you see any typos, or name corrections, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Reminder: as a practice, Pro Racquetball Stats does not capture full draws for any groups younger than 14yr olds; for the 12s, 10s, and younger we just capture the champions for historical reporting. Junior Doubles only has the gold medal match, not the full draws. If you’d like to see more data than this for juniors in the database, reach out and I’ll guide you on doing data entry.
Congratulations to your 2025 World Junior champions:
Boys Singles:
– Boys 21U: Jhonathan Flores, Bolivia
– Boys 18U: Marco Mamani Aguilar, Bolivia
– Boys 16U: Santiago Borja, Bolivia
– Boys 14U: Hanz Vega, Bolivia
– Boys 12U: Max Soto, Mexico
– Boys 10U: Damian Gracia Castro, Mexico
Summary: Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Boys titles. Not one final included a player from outside Bolivia & Mexico. Furthermore, and even more shocking, there was just one player from outside Mexico/Bolivia to even make the SEMIS in any of these draws. The dominance in World Juniors of these two countries is unlike anything we’ve seen since the old days, when every final was a rematch of the USA Junior National finals.
Girls Singles:
– Girls 21U: Camila Rivero, Bolivia
– Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar, Mexico
– Girls 16U: Luciana Illanes Quenta, Bolivia
– Girls 14U: Larissa Faeth, Costa Rica
– Girls 12U: Mary Hinojosa Garcia, Bolivia
– Girls 10U: Briana Ampuero, Bolivia
Summary: Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Girls Singles titles, and we get the first singles titlist from outside the big two countries.
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Boys Doubles:
– Boys 21U: Sebastian Hernandez/Jorge Gutierrez, Mexico
– Boys 18U: Eder Renteria/Diego Romano, Mexico
– Boys 16U: Santiago Borja/Sebastian Terrazas, Bolivia
– Boys 14U: Alejandro Robles Picon/Elias Medrano, Mexico
– Boys 12U: Max Soto/Hermann Gracia, Mexico
– Boys 10U: Juan Ignacio Morales/Benjamin Lino Daza, Bolivia
Summary: Mexico takes 4 of the 6 Boys doubles titles, while Bolivia takes the other two. There’s some penetration from other countries into the back ends of the doubles draws, but it continues to be Mexico/Bolivia dominated.
Girls Doubles:
– Girls 21U: Valeria Miranda Martinez / Rebecca Amaya Ardaya, Bolivia
– Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar/Mariafernanda Trujillo, Mexico
– Girls 16U: Larissa Faeth/Guliana Faeth, Costa Rica
– Girls 14U: Adriana Bazan / Valentina Villarroel Garzon, Bolivia
– Girls 12U: Sofia Rocabado / Mary Hinojosa Garcia, Bolivia
– Girls 10U: Montserrat Mercado / Briana Ampuero, Bolivia
Summary, as in 2025, Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Girls doubles titles, while Larissa Faeth leads the charge for Costa Rica to break through the Bolivia/Mexico dominance.
Mixed Doubles:
– Mixed 21U: DJ Mendoza/Naomi Ros, USA
– Mixed 18U: Nicolas Galindo / Yanna Salazar, Mexico
– Mixed 16U: Santiago Borja/Suszel Andrea Pairo , Bolivia
– Mixed 14U: Gustavo Cordova / Valentina Villarroel Garzon, Bolivia
– Mixed 12U: Dylan Zambrana / Mary Hinojosa Garcia, Bolivia
– Mixed 10U: Benjamin Lino Daza / Briana Ampuero, Bolivia
Summary: Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Mixed doubles titles, all of them the youngest of the six. Team USA gets its sole win of 2025, and Costa Rica’s Faeth is robbed of a triple crown by losing in the Mixed 16U final.
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Grand total of Titles won by Country:
– Bolivia: 18 of 30
– Mexico: 9 of 30
– Costa Rica: 2 of 30
– USA: 1 of 30
Bolivia has taken over Junior Racquetball in a strong way.
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Triple Crown Winners:
– Boys 16U: Santiago Borja, Bolivia
– Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar, Mexico
– Girls 12U: Mary Hinojosa Garcia, Bolivia
– Girls 10U: Briana Ampuero, Bolivia
Double Gold Winners:
– Boys 12U: Max Soto, Mexico; Singles and Boys Doubles
– Girls 14U: Larissa Faeth, Costa Rica: Singles and Girls Doubles
– Boys 10U: Benjamin Lino Daza, Bolivia: Boys and Mixed
– Girls 14U: Valentina Villarroel Garzon, Bolivia: Girls and Mixed
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Team Winners of the older competitions (16U and up)
– Boys Team: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3, Costa Rica 4
– Girls Team: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3, Guatemala 4
– Combined Team: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3, Guatemala 4, just edging out Costa Rica by 6 points for 4th.
Team winners of the Esprit divisions (14U and down)
– Boys Esprit Cup: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3
– Girls Espirit Cup: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3
– Combined Espirit Cup: Bolivia 1, Mexico 2, USA 3. Ecuador was 4th in all three divisions.
A clean sweep of the Team Cups for Bolivia, to no real surprise.
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Every singles and doubles draw has a match report in the database that you can run: instead of repeating dozens of links we’ll give some examples here. Any Singles age group 14 and up will have the full RR and knockout draws, while any Singles age group 12U and below will just have the finals. All Doubles have just the finals.
Surf to www.proracquetballstats.com, click on either Juniors or “Junior Doubles” database, then at the very top you can pull down a match report. You can also run a number of different reports for singles and doubles.
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Let’s run through the Singles draws and provide some commentary.
Boy’s 21U Singles: After a completely clean round-robin, with basically no upsets of any of the top 10-12 seeds, we got a relatively true knockout phase highlighted with the top four seeds from Bolivia and Mexico. The two team USA players fell in the quarters to the two top seeds. In the semis, the two Bolivian players Flores and Iglesias topped their Mexican rivals, ensuring an all-Bolivia u21 final and a rematch of the Bolivian U21 national championship. There Flores finished off the win, taking the U21 title in his first year of eligibility after winning the last two U18 titles, and doing it without dropping a game. It is Flores’ 5th Junior World title, and he seems set to run the U21 table for the next couple of years as well.
Boy’s 18U Singles: Marco Mamani Aguilar, the 16U world champ two years ago, returned to the top of the podium in his first year of 18U. He and fellow Bolivian Sebastian Terrazas (who won the 16U title last year) both were in the DR for this event, but Terrazas fell to Mexico’s Eder Renteria to prevent an all-Bolivia final. Aguilar finished off another solid World title with a 3-game sweep of Renteria in the final.
Boys 16U Singles: Costa Rica’s Alvaro Guillen became the first from outside Bolivia/Mexico to break through into the semis with an upset of #3 seed Mexican Axel Sanchez in the quarters, but Bolivia’s Alfredo Santiago Borja blew through the draw and took the 16U title after winning the last two 14U World Junior titles. He beat Mexica’s Santiago Castillo in the final, who got there by the skin of his teeth with a 16-14 Game 5 win in the semis over the Bolivia #2 Ruiz Michel.
Boys 14U: 14U and below played Olympic style brackets (Gold, Red, Blue, White) and did not limit participants to 2-per-country, meaning a massive gold draw with 4-5 participants from some countries. This also meant that top seeds gifted to players by virtue of their predecessors performance were exposed early. Both the #2 and #4 seeds from Costa Rica were ousted in the first round, as were the two USA entrants. By the time the semis rolled around, we were back to two Bolivia-Mexico matchups, as has been the pattern in the older boys divisions. Alejandro Robles Picon, American converted to represent Mexico and World 10U champ in 2021, was upset in the semis by Vega in five. The final was (presumably) a rematch of the Bolivian 14U final, taken by newcomer Hanz Vega over his countryman and #1 seed Gustavo Cordova, coming back from 2 games down to win 15-13 in the fifth, an amazing match.
In Boys 12U, it came down to the two top seeds and another Mexico-Bolivia battle. In the final, Mexico’s Max Soto got his first world junior title, beating Bolivian Santiago Cruz Arteaga in three. Arteaga was the 2023 10U world champion. 2024’s 10U world champion was inexplicably seeded 29th in the draw (Bolivia’s Vincent Riveros) and lost first round to Mexico’s Hermann Gracia (the 2022 10U champ). Definitely something to watch, having so many Junior World champs in one age bracket moving forward.
In Boys 10U, Mexico’s Damien Gracia Castro took out the #1 Bolivian Mateo Crespo, then another Bolivian along the way before beating his countryman Daniel Rodriguez in an all-Mexican final
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Girls 21U: Bolivia’s Camila Rivero blew through the draw and won her third straight U21 World Junior Title. Inexplicably, despite being the 2-time defending champ, she was only seeded 2nd in the draw. Make that one make sense. She beat USA’s reigning U21 and reigning National champ Naomi Ros in the quarters, topped the upstart Guatemalan Andrea Gabriela Reyes in the semis, then beat her countrywoman Rebecca Amaya Ardaya in the final to claim the title. She’s still got one year left in U21 and could go for an unprecedented 4-peat in 2026.
Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar repeated as Junior world 18U champ from the #3 seed spot thanks to her loss to Mariafernanda Trujillo in Mexican Junior Nationals last July. Nonetheless, she powered through both Bolivian entrants in the semis and finals to take the crown.
Girls 16U: newcomer Bolivian Luciana Illanes Quenta dominated the draw from start to finish, beating Mexico’s Andrea Perez-Picon in the final. Perez-Picon upset the top seed and favorite, Bolivian Nicol Abril Mansilla in the semis to break up the all-Bolivian final. Of note: Mansilla played in both 16U and 18U, losing in the semis of 16U and the finals of 18U.
Girls 14U: Costa Rican Larissa Faeth, who jsut got her first LPRT tour win at the Arizona Open a couple of weeks ago, repeated as World Junior 14U titleist. She beat Mexico’s best in the semis and Bolivia’s best in the final. For reasons inexplicable, she was only seeded 5th in the draw despite winning last year. Yes, I realize the seeds are done by country, and by last year’s country finish, but not having a repeating champion in the top spot tells me your seeding criteria is wrong. This has been a problem with IRF seeding for decades, nothing new.
Girls 12U: Bolivia’s Mary Hinojosa Garcia repeated as 12U world juniors champion, topping countrymate Sofia Rocabado in the final. All four semi-finalists in this draw were from Bolivia.
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Phew! Ok well if you’ve read this far, here’s some thoughts. Mexico still maintained control of the Junior categories last year for the most part, but Bolivia took a huge step forward this year. Meanwhile, former blue blood countries in the sport USA and Canada were generally nowhere to be found as the sport’s growth continues to concentrate south of the border.