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.