Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Kane Waselenchuk
TL/DR Executive Summary: Kane wins the event, his 5th of the season, his 133rd of all time, but more importantly clinches the 2025-26 season ending title for his 16th career pro title. If there was a Mount Rushmore of Racquetball, it would be Kane, Cliff, Sudsy, and Hogan … and Kane now has as many year end titles as the other three legends combined.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=51565
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/08ee66
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In the 16s, a couple of monumental upsets
– Diego Gastelum, who has been slowly creeping up the rankings, got a career best win over #5 Rodrigo Montoya, who this pundit had pegged for the semis. (12),12,6 for his first ever win over a top 8 pro.
– Also in this same quadrant, Erick Trujillo continues his rise back up the rankings with a heart-stopping 11-10 win over #4 Andres Acuna. Acuna had match point at 10-4 in the breaker … but skipped a return for the win and then watched as Trujillo came all the way back for the win.
– Mar needed a breaker to over take Thomas Carter, then an ankle injury took him out of the quarters.
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In the Quarters
– #1 Kane handled #9 Manilla 3,9, about what you’d expect at this juncture. Adam is crafty enough to get points but not enough to really press Waselenchuk.
– Trujillo put down Gastelum 11-7 in the third to earn his first career pro semi.
– Flores has to go deep into the breaker to beat Jake 11-8 to advance to his third straight semi-final. Flores is establishing himself as the 3rd best player in the world behind the two top seeds on tour.
– Moscoso got a walkover against Mar … saving some wear and tear on his body for the eventual final against kane.
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In the Semis
– Kane obliterated Trujillo 0,4 in a match that looked for a bit like it may be a double donut in a pro semi.
– Moscoso topped Flores once again, but was pushed as hard as his younger countryman has done so far with an 11-7 breaker.
In the Finals
– Kane wasn’t really troubled throughout, opening up a 12-0 lead in game one. Moscoso, as he normally does, seems to start slow then wake up and pulled the match back to 14-9, but it was too much of a deficit. In game 2, led throughout the early portion of the game, then at the mid way point down 6-8, Kane took over, blitzing Conrrado for a handful of points to take the lead, one which he’d never relinquish. At match point, Kane put away an easy cross court winner for the game, the match, the tournament, and the season title.
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Points Implications of results
As mentioned at the top, and in the previews, Conrrado had to win out to win the title. With this win, Kane has an uncatchable lead … even if he didn’t even show up for the last event of the season. He wins his 16th career pro title at the age of 44, a pretty amazing feat.
Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. In the interests of the race, I have been keeping this artifact exactly matching the top 20-25 players for the season.
men
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Open Singles, other notable draws
– Subieta beat Veronica Sotomayor in the Men’s Open final.
– Montoya/George topped Natera/Frank in the Men’s Open doubles final.
– Centurian Doubles: Monchik and Frank blitzed the draw for the win.
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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.
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Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
No pro events the rest of the month, but we do have Canadian Nationals on Memorial Day weekend. Then in June, each of the IRT and LPRT have season ending events, along with USA Junior Nationals. I’d imagine we’ll ahve Mexican Junior Nationals announced soon (Canada does its Jr. Nats at its May overall national championships).
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tags
International Racquetball Tour