Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: @Conrrado Moscoso
– Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball & @Javier Mar
TL/DR Executive Summary: Moscoso cruises to the singles title without dropping a game and beating Kane in the final somewhat convincingly. Mar & Montoya take the win over new pro doubles #1 Moscoso/Carrasco.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=54373
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IRT Semis and Finals go to IRT Club; some thoughts.
The 2026-27 season will now live stream the semis and finals of IRT events solely on the IRT Club platform, which requires a $15/month subscription. I knew about this change months ago as we began discussing the new season internally, and the reaction this week has been pretty predictable.
I have held off weighing in on Reddit and the various Facebook comment sections, but I’ll put some thoughts here now.
Most of the complaints seem to be summarized by the following generic statement:
“Why can’t I continue to get something for free on the internet that I have gotten free for years and that I do nothing else to support?”
That’s it. That’s the salient issue. For the last 8 years, ever since Mark Gibbs bought out the paid subscriptions of the old Irt Network, the community has been blessed with something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Pro Sports world; absolutely free content. Yes there’s advertisements on the stream; they do not come anywhere near covering the costs of the equipment, the staff who come in early to set things up, the broadcasters who spend all weekend at the event donating their time, the hosting, the website development, the administration, the business subscription fees for Facebook and YouTube, etc. The IRT isn’t in the same boat as the NFL with a billion dollar broadcast TV package; they have a handful of well-meaning tour sponsors who stream quickie ads as part of their overall benefit for writing a check to the tour every year. Nobody’s earning back an ROI; it’s all for the love of the game.
I’ve seen the tacked on cliche complaints that seem to also accompany every discussion on racquetball these days: “This is why the sport is dying.” “How does this support Juniors?” or, “How does this help grow the game?” You know what? You’re right; It doesn’t. Because that’s not the “job” of the professional tour. The job of the IRT is to hold a pro tour that supports a small group of pro athletes competing at the highest level, somehow continuing to raise enough money to keep events going and keep these top players interested enough to make the commitment to keep coming back.
Grassroots development of the sport? Not the IRT’s job. Juniors? Not the IRT’s job. The IRT and pro racquetball has been essentially underwritten for 2 decades by a handful of wealthy benefactors and local enthusiasts who cobble together $20k or so to host a local event. The “tour” itself for years and years has been essentially run by volunteers who have forgone any semblance of pay in order to keep things running.
Let’s face it: people who seek out the semis or finals of a pro racquetball tournament at this point … they’re already fans. Racquetball already “got you.” The nominal fee the IRT club is asking isn’t a blocker to gaining new fans: its (finally) a donation to help offset the real costs of producing what you seek. In what other world does anyone just get something you want for free, all the time? You don’t walk into Starbucks and get free coffee. If you want a coffee, you plunk down a few bucks and you get it. Same thing here. It is patently amazing to me that people complain about having to pay a pittance of money to get something they want. $15 is nothing. The average median household income in this country is now nearly $90k, meaning a $15 fee is roughly 1/6th of an hour of labor across an entire month. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Do you love the sport? Do you want to see it continue? Then pay the fee, help support the tour, help keep the lights on. Because this may be the sport’s last shot. The Ladies tour is in dire straights, having held just one tournament since January, and without the current ownership group financing things on their Amex cards, the Men’s pro tour would be in the same boat. So, pay the fee, help create some revenue streams to support the tour, and maybe we’ll continue to have a tour. Because even rich guys will stop writing checks at some point, even if its a labor of love.
Now, back to the recap.
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/171aa4
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In the 32s, not much notable; only two matches even featured a game getting into the double digits. @Jordy Alonso took out USA junior national Vaishant Mangalampalli 10,6, while the closest match of the round was US Junior National coach @Robert Collins taking out one of his former pupils in Cody Elkins 10,10.
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In the 16s, there was just one major upset and a couple of close matches:
– @Erick Trujillo trounced #4 @Andres Acuna 7,0 to move into the quarters for the 7th time and to continue is recent spate of success.
– @Alan Natera beat @Diego Gastelum 9,12 in the 7/10 seed matchup, a good result for Diego as he continues to look for his 2nd quarterfinal.
– In the 8/9 matchup, Lalo Portillo cruised past Thomas Carter 2,8.
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In the Quarters
– #1 Moscoso made fast work of Portillo 8,6: Portillo is probably better than his current seed thanks to schedule conflicts, but this is still a more dominant win than I would have expected.
– Parrilla took out Trujillo 13,10 in a rematch of a crucial consolation bracket match from the FMR selection event a few weeks ago.
– Montoya needed three to take out his doubles partner Mar, as one would expect from two players who know each others’ games so well.
– #2 Waselenchuk let Natera get to 15-11 in game one, then turned on the jets to donut him in game 2 to move on 11,0.
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In the Semis, Moscoso held off Parrilla’s improvement in game two to win 4,11 and get to the final, while Waselenchuk was not troubled moving past Montoya 3,6 to setup the 1-v-2 match all the neutrals wanted.
In the Final, Moscoso came out very sharp, jumping out to a big lead in game 1 before Kane reigned him back in. From there, a back and forth battle ended up with Conrrado winning game 1 15-12. Game two was never that close, with Moscoso on top of his drives all day to win 15-7 and take the title.
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Points Implications of results
There won’t be much movement after this event; Moscoso will expand his lead atop the standings to nearly 500 points thanks to the 2025 Tracktown open expiring, but he’s then going to enter a months-long stretch where all he’s doing is defending winner’s points; he won 4 straight tourneys between the 2025 Golden State Open in October 2025 and the Minnesota HOF in March 2026. So Kane knows what he needs to do: just win.
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.
men
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Doubles review
Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/901bc6
Mar & Moscoso take the win over new pro doubles #1 Moscoso/Carrasco to deny Moscoso a double for the weekend.
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Open Singles, other notable draws
– Emir Martinez beat Vaishant Mangalampalli for the Open singles title.
– Gastelum & Alonso won the Open Doubles dropdown out of Pro.
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Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up
With the redesign of IRT club, we haven’t started the Fantasy competition yet. So, we’ll revisit this after the next event.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, JT Rball, and the entire IRTLive crew.
Thanks to the Tourney Director Gerardo Duenas for putting this event on!
Thanks to the Tourney Gold sponsors: NMRA and Cindy Tillbury, Jamal Khawaja with Kind Home Loans and Friends of Pakistan USA community group, along with
Silver sponsors: Placentia Town Center and Jeff Gold, HMS Realty and Ken Courtney, Reyes Single Ply Roofing contractors and Francisco Reyes. Without you, we do not have a pro sport.
Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
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Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
there’s an IRT satellite in two weeks’ time in Chicago land, then Worlds in Chile over the final weekend of October. The IRT returns to action the 2nd weekend of November with the big Golden State Open.
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tags
International Racquetball Tour
post publishing edits: thanks to readers Anthony Martin and Asceric21 on Reddit for pointing out two incorrect names in the post. Both have been corrected.
