Month: October 2023

Racquetball’s highest international honor, the Pan American Games, has completed its singles and doubles competitions. Here’s a recap of the winners:

Congratulations to the individual winners:

– Men’s Singles: Conrrado Moscoso: Bolivia

– Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria: Mexico

– Men’s Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya & Javier Mar: Mexico

– Women’s Doubles: Gaby Martinez & Maria Renee Rodriguez, Guatemala

– Mixed Doubles: Adam Manilla & Erika Manilla, USA

Five events and four different countries represented in the winner’s circle, a great testament to the spread of the sport and talent throughout the two continents.

R2sports link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41548

PRS links to Match Reports for this event:

– Men’s Singles: http://rb.gy/pq3qo

– Women’s Singles: http://rb.gy/6hk0y

I’ve run out of URL shorteners in my account for the month, so for the Doubles just got to www.proracquetballstats.com, click on IRF Doubles, then pull down for these three events.

– Men’s Doubles:

– Women’s Doubles:

– Mixed Doubles:

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Here’s a run-through of the notable results for me in each draw.

Men’s Singles:

In the 16s, three interesting results for me. Andres Acuña handled Canadian Coby Iwaasa in three straight, a solid win for the Costa Rican over a tough player in Iwaasa who we rarely see on tour. Mexico’s Eduardo Portillo was stretched to five games before advancing over Ecuador’s Jose Daniel Ugalde. Lastly, the toughest match of the round was USA’s Adam Manilla advancing over Argentina’s Diego Garcia in five games. Garcia regularly gets upset wins whenever he can get to a pro event, and this was a very solid win for Manilla despite the seeds.

In the quarters: #1 seed @Conrrado Moscoso handled Acuna as expected, but USA’s top player Daniel De La Rosa fell in five games to Portillo in a huge upset. Portillo won 13-11 in the fifth, with the final call being a disputed service return skip. The courts in Santiago unfortunately were constructed with a small gap between the floor and the front wall, and to this observer it looked as if DLR hit a perfect return that would have rolled out on a normal court but which “popped up” on this court; the call stood and Lalo had his win. On the other side, Manilla game Mexico’s Rodrigo Montoya a run for his money but fell in five. Lastly, the #2 seed Carlos Keller Vargas held serve against Big Canada Samuel Murray to move on.

In the semis: Moscoso blitzed Lalo, while Keller shocked Montoya (the 2019 Pan Am games gold medalist) with a 5-game win to make it an all-Bolivia final.

In the final, Moscoso and Keller, who annually seem to play for the Bolivian National singles title and who have gone back and forth for years, played another in their series. This time around, Moscoso came out on top in three games. Conrrado wins his fourth straight major IRF title (2023 PARC, 2022 Worlds, and 2022 PARC; Bolivia did not send teams to the 2022 World Games) and has really solidified his place at the top of the Men’s international game.

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Women’s Singles

The 32s and 16s went basically as expected. A couple notable round of 16 matches included Costa Rica’s Maricruz Ortiz topping Guatemala’s @Maria Renee Rodriguez by the score line of 9,7,17. third game: 19-17. The match of the round though was the 2-15 seeds Carla Muñoz and Maria Jose Vargas , who went the distance with the Argentine coming from 2-1 games down to win.

In the quarters, Ortiz continued to impress, topping the draw’s #1 seed Natalia Mendez 12-10 in the fifth to move on and secure a medal. Current LPRT #1 @Montse Mejia took out the 2022 PARC champ Angelica Barrios in three. Three-time defending champ Paola Longoria moved past USA’s Erika Manilla in three, and Vargas rebounded from her near-upset loss to grind out a great 3-game win over 2018 World Champ and 7-time IRF singles finalist Ana Gabriela Martinez to move on.

In the semis, the two Mexicans held serve, with Mejia shutting down Ortiz in three, while Longoria reversed a recent trend of losses to Vargas on tour with a solid 4-game win to set up an all Mexico Final.

In the final, Longoria won her 25th IRF singles title of her career, and her fourth straight Pan American gold, with a 3-game win over her new rival.

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Men’s Doubles

The clear-cut #1 Men’s Doubles team in the world Rodrigo Montoya and @Javier Mar cruised to the title, dropping just one game along the way.

The quarter finals featured two major results: the #2 seeded Bolivian team of Moscoso and @Kadim Carrasco was shocked by the Guatemalan team of @Juan Jose Salvatierra and @Edwin Galicia. Bolivia was the finalist earlier this year at PARC, but they were one-and-done here. Meanwhile, the battle of heavyweights in the quarters was team USA versus team Canada. Murray and Iwaasa won the 2022 PARC event together and are a very experienced team, and they pulled the 5-game “upset” over De La Rosa and @Alejandro Landa to send the US team home one-and done. Canada ran to the final to face team Mexico and took game one before falling.

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Women’s Doubles

The Guatemalan pair of Martinez and Rodriguez finally broke through at a major and took the title, topping the surprise finalists from Argentina Mendez an Vargas. Gaby and MRR have been playing together for a decade and have made a slew of major international Women’s Doubles finals but have always fallen short of winning. Not on the day today, as they played the veteran Argentine team tough and outslugged them for the gold medal.

Vargas and Mendez were in the final by virtue of a shocking upset of the #1 seeds and heavily favored team from Mexico Mejia and Alexandra Herrera . Team USA fell to the Argentines in the quarters, while team Bolivia (Barrios and Daza) lost to the Guatemalans in four close games in the other semi.

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Mixed Doubles

There’s not a long history of Mixed Doubles in IRF events, but the few that have been held have been dominated by Mexico. They’ve won 3 of the 4 such events and were the losing finalist to Bolivia in the other. So when both Mexico and Bolivia were upset in the semis, it sent some shock waves across the sport.

Team Argentina took out team Bolivia (Moscoso & Barrios) in one five-game semifinal triumph, while team USA shocked team Mexico (Portillo & Longoria) in the other, to guarantee a first-time winner in the final.

There, the Manilla’s took over and dominated, winning the Gold medal 4,4,6 with a great game plan of having Adam range over to cherry pick balls and Erika out-hitting fellow power-swinger Vargas along the right.

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Team Standings.

At the end of the five bracket competitions, the conventional IRF points tally was tabulated to determine the overall Team standings. This is different from the Team competition that followed all the individual draws, an event that seems to have been added on to make the trip more worthwhile to the players. These are unofficial standings and are not generally done for events that don’t feature group stages.

Overall Team Standings:

1. Mexico 760

2. Bolivia 540

3. Argentina 440

4. USA 380

5. Guatemala 370

Mexico cruised to the combined title thanks primarily to the Bolivian’s poor Women’s showing. Only the Mixed gold saved USA from being in 5th place behind Guatemala, a country that literally only has one facility in their entire nation.

Men’s Team Standings:

1. Bolivia 360

1T. Mexico 360

3. USA 200

3T Canada 200

5. Costa Rica 150

Mexico won doubles, Bolivia won singles, so perhaps the tiebreaker is Bolivia having the better runner’s up performances.

Women’s Team Standings:

1. Mexico 400

2. Argentina 300

3. Guatemala 240

4. Bolivia 180

4. USA 180

Bolivia would win a TB by virtue of better Doubles performance over USA, if we were awarding team medals.

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As was well discussed during the event, streaming/broadcasting was non-existent officially until the finals, and even then just the doubles was broadcast on the https://panamsportschannel.org/ channel. It is what it is; racquetball fans are just not used to participating in an event where the broadcast rights are sold as a package and free streaming is readily available. We did get some guerrilla streams from parents and players, which kept us satiated here at home.

However, during the doubles final, the streaming was magnificent. High quality cameras showed crisp, crystal clear images of the sport. If only we could get this quality week in/week out. That was a treat.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

The IRT is in Boston in two week’s time, then the LPRT is in Chicago the week after, so we get all the pros in action in November.

International Racquetball Federation

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

This weekend, the sport of racquetball competes in the Pan American Games. The 19th annual Pan American Games is being hosted by Chile, who built a fantastic new racquetball complex to host this competition. Absent the sport ever being put into the Olympics, this quadriennal competition featuring all the countries in the two American continents is the absolute highest level the sport currently competes.

Racquetball first appeared in the Pan Am games in 1995, in Buenos Aires. In that tournament, John Ellis topped Michael Bronfield in an 11-10 final to cap off his amateur career before turning pro, with Derek Robinson and Canadian Sherman Greenfeld making the semis. On the Women’s side, two legendary female hall of famers from the USA battled in the final, with Michelle Wolf (at the time, Michelle Gould) topping Cheryl Gudinas for the title.

Making it into the Pan Am games was a seminal moment for the sport; it meant we were finally to be recognized as an “Olympic-level sport” in the eyes of the USOPC and IOC (since Pan Am games rises to that level), and it led to an official relationship with the highest US sports organization that lasts to this day.

Racquetball has now been competed in 6 Pan Am Games, missing only one event since the 1995 event (that being Brazil in 2007, when no courts were built). On the Men’s singles side, players from the USA won the first 5 Pan Am golds, with Rodrigo Montoya topping Alvaro Beltran in the 2019 final in Peru to break that streak. See http://rb.gy/gjl3f . For those who remember this famous match, Beltran was ahead in the second game when he dove for a ball and shattered the back glass door, covering himself in shards of glass. He was on a roll but ended up losing the match.

On the women’s singles side, Paola Longoria has dominated the last three events as expected, and is in Chile to pursue a 4th straight. See http://rb.gy/0cav6 .

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41548

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They play singles, doubles, mixed and a team competition. We’ll do a quick preview of the draws with some predictions.

As is normally the case in International events, the seeding is not as fans of the game would expect. That’s because the seeds are done by country (not player), and the country performance for several past events is taken into consideration. Furthermore the #1 and #2 seeds per country are driven by National results. It means we’ll have matchups of top pros way too early as always, and unbalanced brackets … as we have with practically every IRF competition.

Men’s Singles

Thanks to poor recent performances, team USA is the 3rd ranked country, meaning its representatives (Daniel De la Rosa and Adam Manilla ) are seeded 5th and 6th. DLR will have to face Mexican #2 @Eduardo Portillo in the quarters to get a shot at #1 overall seed Conrrado Moscoso in the semis.

In the bottom half, Manilla gets dark-horse #11 Diego Garcia in his opener and could be looking at a quick exit. Defending champ Rodrigo Montoya probably has to contend with Garcia and then the winner of the Carlos Keller Vargas – @Samuel Murray winner to get back to the final. Still, the top half is heavily weighted.

Usually when I look at a possible Moscoso-DLR match, i take into account the elevation, the ball, and the court construction. IRF uses the Gearbox black (slow), and Santiago is at a decent elevation (1,800 feet). I don’t know the court construction but can guess its panel. These factors seem to cancel each other out, but the slower the game plays, the better the advantage for DLR will be. DLR is healthy, has the game plan, and the patience that Moscoso doesn’t have. Meanwhile, Moscoso has won the last three major IRF events (2023 PARC, 2022 Worlds, 2022 PARC) … but has yet to have to contend with DLR in these competitions.

I’ll predict DLR takes Moscoso out in the semis and then tops Montoya in the final. DLR didn’t switch sides to fly all the way down here to lose.

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Women’s Singles

Lots of top-10 LPRT matchups early on in this bracket, as Argentine Natalia Mendez gets a #1 overall seed but has to contend with former #2 LPRT pro Frederique Lambert in the 16s. If she can get past the Canadian, she may have to contend with Costa Rican dark-horse Maricruz Ortiz. Meanwhile, the following four players are all in the same quadrant: #1 LPRT pro @Montse Mejia, 2022 PARC champ Angelica Barrios, former top10 touring pro Veronica Sotomayor , and USA’s @Michelle key . Just a brutal draw for all involved, but its hard to see anyone but Mejia coming out from the top.

The bottom half features five of the top 10 on the LPRT tour right now, including several recent tourney winners. @MarMaria José Vargas is the #2 seed, but last time she faced #7 @AAna Gabriela Martinez she got beat 9,12. 3-time defending champ Longoria is seeded #3 (by virtue of her win over Mejia at Mexican Nationals earlier this year) and is set to face top American Erika Manilla in the quarters, a player she’s dropped games to but never lost to. I see Gaby taking out Vargas, then losing to Longoria in the semis.

I sense Longoria vs Mejia in the final, and even though Mejia is #1 in the rankings, Longoria is #1 in international play and wins her 4th PanAm gold.

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Men’s Doubles:

There are great doubles matches all over this draw, with all the top teams present. #1 Montoya/Mar will barely sweat before making the final, while the bottom half will be a dogfight. USA (DLR & Alejandro Landa ) vs Canada (@Coby Iwaasa & Samuel Murray ) will be a tough one, but the winner here will be favored over #2 Bolivia (Moscoso playing with @Kadim Carrasco ). In the final though I favor Montoya & Mar to defend their Pan Am gold from 2019.

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Women’s Doubles:

The #1 team of Longoria & Mejia is the clear favorite. Team USA (Manilla & Key) will have a tough quarter against team Argentina (Mendez & Vargas) to then take a crack at #1 seeds. From the bottom, the long-time Guatemalan pair of @Maria Renee Rodriguez and Gaby will be favored to get to the final, but will be tested by #3 Bolivia (Barrios and @Jenny Daza Navia ). Look for Mexico to win.

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Mixed Doubles:

#1 Moscoso & Barrios won the 2023 PARC event over Montoya & Longoria; now Mexico is represented by Portillo & Longoria and I think Bolivia is an even bigger favorite to win. #4 Argentina (Vargas & Garcia) will be tough, as will #3 USA (Manilla and Manilla), but I expect this to go chalk.

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After the individual events, all the players get together for a team competition. Those draws will come out later on, but its the individual matches that matter.

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A comment; i’m sure fans of the sport have seen the video put out by @Cristina Amaya this week, talking about what happened and why she and teammate @Maria Paz Riquelme were excluded from the competition. The pair finished 6th in Women’s rankings at the 2023 PARC and should have qualified, but (if I’m understanding the situation) their defunct/bankrupted national federation did not file the paperwork to include their delegation, and thus their spots were given away. This all apparently happened in May but was only found out recently by the understandably crushed Colombian players. What a sh*tty thing to happen, and honestly someone should have notified them or made an exception. It’s not Amaya and Maria paz’ fault their federation collapsed due to corruption and greed. Their two spots (apparently) went to the next team in line, which was Cuba (it also looks like the Dominican Republic snuck two players in thanks to two of the countries ahead of them giving up female spots). Its a shame, and a situation that should have been avoided.

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Streaming outlook: it looks grim for streaming options, in that this event (unlike practically every other racquetball tournament) features broadcast rights that have been sold elsewhere. I’m sure we’ll see guerrilla streams here and there, but don’t hold your breath for 100% coverage.

Associations

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

International Racquetball Federation

Pan American Racquetball Confederation – PARC

USA Racquetball