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/
Grant Williams takes his first USAR High School title. Photo via USAR
Last weekend, the 38th annual USA Racquetball High School Nationals were held at the Vetta Sports clubs in St. Louis. Fitting since this is the home of the unique High School racquetball league that is responsible for a bit chunk of the junior development in this country right now. (note: the event generally flips between St. Louis and Portland every year and has for most of the last 2 decades).
Note: the Pro Racquetball Stats database does not store this information, but I do have it in a big XLS that i’ll link to here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1esBFXB4YrQNorKH6peEMJfAmCgenqev9TCyOE3IFlpk/edit?usp=sharing
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Singles Winners:
Boys Singles/#1 Gold: long-time USA Junior National team member and last year’s runner up @Grant Williams took the title, beating Mexican Junior national team member Alejandro Robles Picon in the final.
Girls Singles/#1 Gold: Andrea Perez-Picon, fresh off of a finals appearance at World Juniors 16U, won her third straight High School Nationals title, beating Violet Kennedy in the final.
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Doubles Winners:
– Boys Doubles #1: Ayan Sharma & Geffen Kama from Amador Valley High School, CA took the #1 doubles title, representing the 209 well.
– Girls Doubles #1: Alexis Boyko & Rebecca Christopher from the St. Louis powerhouse Kirkwood took the Girls title as the #1 seed.
– Mixed Doubles #1: The PIcon duo of Alejandro Robles Picon & Andrea Perez-Picon teamed up to cruise to the Mixed Doubles title, giving them both double golds for the weekend.
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Team Winners:
– Overall Team: Kirkwood HS, St. Louis, MO
– Boys Team: Kirkwood HS, St. Louis, MO
– Girls Team: Kirkwood HS, St. Louis, MO
For the third year in a row, Kirkwood has pulled ahead of the entire field to sweep all three team competitions.
The Home page for the Missouri HS league does a great job of record keeping: bookmark their home page here: https://www.mohsrball.com
Congrats to all 311 players and all sponsors/parents/coordinators for another awesome HS nationals event, and thanks to everyone who keeps the Missouri and Portland-area HS leagues so well run. You’re doing a massive part to keeping grass roots racquetball alive in this country.
– Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball & Javier Mar
TL/DR Executive Summary: Moscoso wins his 4th straight IRT event, but took a 15-0 donut from Kane while doing so.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=52146
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/d06f93
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In the 32s:
– Garcia blanked Sam Bredenbeck in the opener before he made a match of it; the Argentine moves on 0,12
– Trujillo topped Miranda 13,10 in an expected solid, close game.
– Carrasco crushed Sendrey 9,1; Cole may have to go back to the drawing board if he doesn’t turn around these results.
– Carter crushed Mendoza 5,3 to send a message to us pundits who continue to count him out.
– Gastelum topped Collins 14,14 in a match that was as close as it sounds.
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In the 16s:
– Adam Manilla rebounded from a 15-1 stomping in game one to save match points against in game two and advance. Score: (1),14,9
– Bolivian U21 star Flores certainly made a statement, beating @andree Parrilla 1,4 after having lost to him twice last season 11-10. Wow.
– #4 Jake Bredenbeck got by Trujillo by the skin of his teeth, 11-9 in the breaker. Looks like Trujillo is ready to get his top-10 ranking back.
– The bottom half went chalk, with all four seeds advancing rather easily.
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In the Quarters
– Kane took out Manilla 4,10 as Adam the technician worked some points but couldn’t really challenge the king
– Flores took out Jake 8,12 to make the semis and setup a dream matchup with Waselenchuk
– Montoya trounced Acuna 7,5 as predicted on the IRT Club Fantasy fastbreak podcast.
– Moscoso cruised past Mar in game one 15-6 and Mar felt something in his back and forfeited to save himself for the doubles run.
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In the Semis
– Flores/Kane was one of two matches I watched with intent this weekend. Here’s my report.
In Game 1, Flores jumps out to early lead; Kane makes several uncharacteristic errors. The Bolivian has sneaky power, with mechanics eerily similar to Carlos Keller (no surprise, they’re both from Santa Cruz). Kane stepped up the pressure, jumped right back in; heavy balls, put-aways, and a couple of Flores balls left up and its 5-6. Flores got a couple aces but generally had a very low 1st serve percentage, not a recipe for winning. Kane continued to grind out points, jumped to 11-7. Flores back, nearly ties it at 10-11 down, but Flores just isn’t handling Kane’s lob serves, either skipping them or giving Kane 3rd shot kills in the front court. Flores buries an overhead splat forehand for some wow factor, but Kane got to game point first at 14-10. Flores somehow escaped a 12-14 rally to get the serve back. Suddenly Flores buries a ceiling ball off the back wall for 14-14. On the ensuing serve, Kane hits a swinging kill shot on the service return that had us gasping. At 14-14, Kane gains control of the rally and buries a backhand for the 15-14 win.
Second game, Flores’ body language is terrible, he loses two ill-advised appeals quickly, he’s over hitting … and he’s looking like the game is going to get away from him fast. Flores also looks tired, as he very well might since he played a Men’s Open match a few hours earlier in the day (he didn’t forfeit out of Men’s Open despite being in the Pro semis). It’s one-way traffic, as Flores’ mental letdown of letting game one go and his overall fatigue catches up to him and he can’t stop the Kane train. Teaching moments all around. Kane ends up winning the game 15-1, emblematic of a game that Flores checked out of early.
– From the bottom half, Moscoso wasn’t terribly troubled by Montoya, really showing what the gap is between himself, Kane, and the rest of the tour right now.
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The Finals was one of the more interesting matches i’ve ever seen. Again, I took notes as I watched. Here’s how it went.
Kane wins the toss, opens up drive serving and gets three very fast points. He mixes several aces, gets a couple of 3 shot rallies and is in complete control in the early part of game one, jumping out 8-0. He’s hitting absolute missile drive serves to Moscoso’s forehand that are unreturnable. The Bolivian finally calls time out at 0-9 down … this game is probably a lost cause already. The few rallies that Moscoso is getting into he’s error-prone and misses a slew of shots .. but this is as good as i’ve seen Kane serve in months. The normally athletic Moscoso has just one dive in the game … which indicates just how dominant Kane has been. 15-0 Kane win and he screams as if he’s just won a major title; he’s definitely got something to prove here and is playing with an intensity rarely seen.
Game two starts more of the same, he’s hitting the crack ace serve to his right side over and over. At 0-4 in the second, Moscoso finally scores on an ace to Kane’s forehand, ending a 19-point run. Amazing. Moscoso grinds it back to 4-4 but it looks like tenuous comeback. Moscoso settles down and the pair battle it out for most of Game 2, with Moscoso holding a slight lead throughout the mid game. Moscoso turned his ankle at 13-9 up, bad enough that Kane ran over to him, but after a brief break he quickly served out the game and we’re in the tiebreaker.
Kane jumps ahead again in the TB, but once again Moscoso grinds back, grabs the lead. At 6-3 up, Kane lands on his knee awkwardly and is very clearly hurt. He also takes a medical TO, but comes back barely able to put weight on the leg. Despite that, he guts out the rest of the game and even scores a few points as Moscoso makes some mental gaffes (a double fault on a lob serve?) and struggles to
put the game away. Eventually he serves out the tiebreaker and wins the match. final score: (0),9,7 in one of the weirdest matches I’ve ever seen. Kane could barely put weight on the knee and I’m kind of surprised he chose to even give it a shot and risk further injury, and it amazed me he was even able to score points given what he was dealing with.
Quick donut trivia: Here’s a list to every final in the history of the tour: https://rball.pro/000f20 . It’s just the 3rd time ever that the winner of a tour
final has taken a donut-against: it happened in the 1986 Ektelon Nationals final, when Yellen gave Hogan a donut but lost in five, and it happened at the 2009 Kentucky Pro-am, when Huczek donuted Mannino in the 4th to extend it to five but then lost the match.
Also, this is just the second donut of Conrrado’s career; the first was in this event last year, when he badly hurt himself in game one against Bobby Horn and played out the entire second game instead of forfeiting, losing 13,0. So, technically this is the first time Moscoso had a donut put on him when he was healthy and trying.
As an old friend once said … it only takes 26 to win.
With the win, Conrrado wins his 4th straight tournament and is now on an 18-match win streak on tour. That streak now includes 3 straight h2h wins against Kane … but by no means should anyone think that Moscoso now “owns” Kane. Not when Kane can turn it on like he did in Game 1 to not only win but to absolutely dominate.
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Points Implications of results
With the win, Conrrado continues to tighten the lead that Kane has at the top. Using the 10-best results logic that will determine the 2025-26 champ, Kane’s lead is now down to 243 points on Moscoso. Which sounds like a lot … but here’s the rub: there’s 3 tournaments left on the schedule, so Conrrado has those 3 events to replace three tourneys from March-April last year where he got hurt and had a round of 32 loss, a missed tourney, and a round of 16 loss. Just making the finals in the remaining 3 events represents a 735 point swing, more than enough to eclipse Kane. However, Kane has a zero result that he can replace as well, and if he wins one of the 3 remaining we’re going to be looking at a very, very close race. In fact, if Kane manages to win one of the 3 remaining and make the finals of the other two, I think that would guarantee him the year end title. The loss of the US Open suddenly makes the last 3 events incredibly important.
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/31a568
Mar & Montoya cruised to a win over a depleted Moscoso & Carrasco in the final, which was played right after the singles match.
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Open Singles, other notable draws
Flores ended up not only staying in the Men’s Open singles draw but winning it. He had to play the semi just before playing Kane in the biggest match of his pro career … and it showed. I can’t blame these traveling South Americans for entering three draws and getting the most opportunities to make money though.
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Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up:
I had a banner weekend: my four picks in Fantasy were Trujillo, Flores, Montoya, and Moscoso. Three of my four made the semis, and I picked the correct winner. Probably my best fantasy showing yet.
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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. Great job announcing the players from Minnesota legend Matt Miller.
We have a week’s break, then the IRT heads to Chicago for the Papa Nicholas Shamrock Shootout. After that, March also features Beach Bash, NMRA nationals, PARC, and the WTR in Louisiana. Great month.
