Andree Parrilla with the win on home soil.
Photo 2019 US Open via Kevin Savory
The first IRT event of the season* (more on that in a moment) was held last weekend in Mexican racquetball hotbed San Luis Potosi, and it featured a solid draw of locals competing for IRT Satellite points. Here’s a quick recap. No r2sports link, so we had to draw inferences on some of the results, but here we go:
* you may notice that I said first event of the season, even though we’re in August. That’s right; the IRT’s new leadership has decided to go back to the fall-to-spring schedule instead of the Jan-Dec schedule adopted during the Covid mess. So, we declared a 2024 season champion, and then we’ll declare a 2025-26 season champion next June after the US Open. This was considered more ideal than just declaring a “2025” champ based on the 3 events held in Feb and March of this year.
Here’s how this weekend’s event went down:
The top four seeds were, in order, Andrés Parrilla , @Erick Trujillo , @jordy alonso, and Diego Gastelum , all four regular IRT touring pros. However, the rest of the draw featured a slew of solid up and coming players from Mexico and the southwest, including US Junior National team member @DJ Mendoza, @Elias Neito, and 2-time defending Mexican U21 champ @Sebastian Hernandez.
When the semis hit thought, the top four seeds had advanced to face off. In the top half, Parrillao advanced past Gastelum, while from the bottom half Trujillo got a solid win over Alonso to setup a 1-vs-2 final.
In the final, Parrilla topped Trujillo in a battle of two IRT top 10 players 7,9 to take the title on his home court.
It’s a new International Racquetball Tour world, with new blood and new ownership, and this is the first of a possible 20-event slate. Great to see.
Team USA atop the podium. Photo via USA Racquetball
Congrats to your winners from the 2025 World Games:
– Men’s Singles: Conrrado Moscoso , Bolivia
– Women’s Singles: Maria Jose Vargas , Argentina
– Mixed Doubles: Jake Bredenbeck / Naomi Ros, USA
Pro Racquetball Stats Results links for the three draws:
– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/58944b
– Women’s Singles:: https://rball.pro/28cfd0
– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/b3914c
R2sports link for the event: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=50215
Recaps of the draws:
Men’s Singles:
The first round was relatively straight-forward, since the structure of this event basically guarantees that the top 8-9 racquetball playing countries would play entrants from less-well known countries in the first knockout rounds. There were a couple of stretched matches: Canada’s @coby Iwaasa was pushed to 5 games by the DR’s @Ramon De Leon. The one “upset” was Guatemala’s @Edwin Galicia upsetting Uruguy veteran @jose daniel ugalde in four games.
The big surprise of the tournament came in the next round, as Galicia took out #1 seed @jaJake Bredenbeck in four shocking games. 2025 PARC champ @Diego Garcia upset the defending World Games winner @Andres Acuna, while title-favorites Moscoso and @Eduardo Portillo won relatively easily to setup a tough Mexico-Bolivia semi.
Garcia continued his run, topping Galicia to get back to the final, while Moscoso went 5 games with Portillo before advancing to setup a rematch of the 2025 PARC men’s semifinal against Garcia. The two played an amazing final, which went to 5 games and which was finally won by Conrrado 14-12 in the fifth game. It’s Moscoso’s 6th career IRF title and he now owns the complete suite of international titles: Worlds, PARC, Pan Am Games, World Games, and South American games.
See this link for every IRF Men’s final in history: https://rball.pro/b2x
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Women’s Singles:
Like with the Men, the first round of the Women’s draw featured mostly blow outs between top racquetball playing countries and lesser-known competitors. There was one big upset though: Costa Rican @Larissa Faeth took out long-time LPRT touring veteran @Christina Amaya (playing for Italy) in four games.
In the quarters, Bolivian #1 @Angelica Barrios beat USA’s reigning national champion Ros in an upset by seeds but probably not really an upset based on capabilities and accomplishment to setup a semi-final round between the top four ladies in the competition.
In the top semi, Barrios played one of the matches of her life, and had top seed and GOAT @Paola Longoria on the ropes, but suffered a catastrophic knee injury that unfortunately forced her out of the event and will sideline her for months. Longoria, winner of the 2009, 2013, and 2022 World Games’ titles, advanced to the final. There she met current LPRT #2 Vargas, who handled the #2 seed and always-dangerous @AnaAna Gabriela Martínez in four games.
The final saw a changing of the guard in some respects internationally, as Vargas held firm against Longoria, and came back after dropping game one to grind out three close games for the title. It’s Vargas’ fourth international title.
See here for a list of all IRF women’s Open finals: https://rball.pro/6fd827
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Mixed Open
Mixed Open was a first at the World Games, and the 2025 Mixed title in China was just the 9th ever Mixed Doubles competition held by an IRF-sanctioned tournament (see https://rball.pro/d26121 for a list of all prior finals). The defending champions of Mixed from earlier this year (Team Chile Natera/Munoz) were not even qualified for the World Games, which meant a new titlist was to be crowned.
The structure of the China event meant that the Mixed teams were not necessarily the “best” teams a country could put forward, since they had to be comprised of the two qualifying singles players, but we still saw some pretty good teams put together and some great results.
Seven of the Eight seeds held in the opening round; the sole upset was team Japan over team South Korea (fitting that these two countries played, since they generally hate each other). The quarters gave us some really surprising results: Team Canada ousted Team Guatemala in four games, team japan got a walkover against Bolivia when Barrios had to retire, and then in a far-too-early pairing, team Argentina (Vargas & Garcia) beat the #2 seeds Team Mexico (Longoria & Portillo) in three straight. I had Mexico-Argentina penciled in as the non-final match of the event… but a 3-game beating of a team with Longoria was surprising.
In the semis, Team USA was stretched to the limit before beating Canada in the 5th, while the Argentines cruised past team japan to setup a solid final. There, in an even bigger surprise, Team USA bowled over Team Argentina 7,9,6 to claim the title. It’s the fourth Mixed IRF title for a USA-based team in the last five events held, giving USA a great history of winning these international competitions.
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Congrats to all winners, and congrats to the World Games for continuing to support racquetball.
Acuna is the defending World Games champion. Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory
Welcome to the 12th World Games competition, being held for 2025 in Chengdu, China, which is in the Sichuan province well inland. If you’re reading this in North America, you might never have heard of Chengdu before … which is understandable, because China probably has half a dozen cities you’ve never heard of who have populations that dwarf the largest cities in the US. You’d probably be amazed to hear that Chengdu has more than 20 million people and in terms of pure city-based population is one of the largest 4-5 cities in the world.
This is the 12th iteration of the World Games. The competition debuted in 1981 and was designed to be an Olympic Games-style competition for any and all sports that were not in the Olympics at that point. Racquetball was part of the very first World Games competition, held in Santa Clara in 1981, which was also used by the newly formed International Racquetball Federation to serve as the first ever Racquetball World Championships. The first World Games tournament was very USA-heavy, with American’s comprising 3 of the 4 singles semifinalists for both Men and Women’s singles. Ed Andrews beat Mike Martino for the first WG men’s title, while Cindy Baxter beat Barbara Faulkenberry for the first WG Women’s title.
Since the 1981 event, racquetball’s inclusion has been sporadic, as the Games have moved all over the world and been hosted in many countries that had no racquetball presence. Racquetball was included in the 2nd and 4th iterations, but then went a dozen years and three events without being competed, as the games were held in cities in Finland, Japan, and Germany which had no courts. Thankfully, we regained some momentum and the sport was re-included in 2013 in Colombia, and of course was in the most recent iteration of the competition, held in 2022 in Birmingham Alabama.
The organizers in Birmingham requested of USAR to install the Portable court to host the competition, and the broadcasts from that event were amazing. I use this event and these broadcasts often to counter internet claims that the sport of racquetball “is too fast for TV” or “can’t be broadcast … when in reality it just needs an all-glass court, high-end cameras, and a professional broadcasting crew to make it look amazing. It is just night and day watching this 2022 World Games broadcast versus our typical streaming solution cameras.
Speaking of broadcasts and viewing … unfortunately for racquetball fans used to “free” Facebook-based streaming of all top-level events, the World Games is a major event which sells its broadcasting like any other sporting event, and thus the availability of racquetball online will be limited. Keep an eye out on the regular places/groups where interested parties will post links as they become available.
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Event structure and Qualifying Overview
Initially the field was defined to be 4 countries from Asia, 4 countries from Europe, and then 8 countries from the Americas. The 2024 Worlds competition served as the qualifier for the countries, and at the time a lack of European representation led to a 5th team from Asia initially qualifying in. However, when the field was revealed this week, we see that the host country China technically does not have a team here, which then opened up an extra spot for Ecuador (who didn’t initially qualify).
The 2025 WG added a Mixed Doubles component but cut back on the competitors to just one Man/Woman per country, a change from 2022 where two men/women from the leading countries qualified in. So, the 2025 WG field is comprised of just one Man and one Woman from each country. There’s some fun country representations here: long-time Colombian Cristina Amaya Cassino represents Italy here, and long-time Chilean @Angela Grisar representing Germany.
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Previews
We have not seen the brackets yet, so it’s impossible to do a pure prediction, but here’s the favorites by competition:
Men’s Singles: The Men’s side likely will come down to the top touring pros who are present, namely @Conrrado Moscoso from Bolivia, @Eduardo Portillo Rendon from Mexico, defending champion @Andres Acuna from Costa Rica, and Argentina’s @Diego Garcia, who won the most recent international competition the 2025 PARC event with h2h wins over both Jake and Conrrado in the knockouts. Keep an eye out for @Jake Bredenbeck from USA and Canada’s @Coby Iwaasa , both of whom can pop into any top-level event and get upsets.
I think Moscoso and Garcia are the favorites, but Portillo is a tough out Jake didn’t fly to China to lose in the quarters. Should be fun.
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Women’s Singles:
Despite limitations of one player per country, the WG still have 3 of the current top 4 players in the world in defending champ @Paola Longoria of Mexico, Maria Jose Vargas from Argentina, and @Ana Gabriela Martínez from Guatemala. They’re joined by top competitors Bolivian #1 @Angela Barrios , USA reigning national champ @Naomi Ros, and Canada’s long-time #1 @Frederique Lambert as likely top competitors.
I like Longoria and Vargas in the final, but it kind of depends where Gaby and Barrios line up in the knockout stage, as they can get upsets and surprise.
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Mixed Doubles
There’s four teams i’m looking at primarily in the mixed who will be tough to beat, led by team Mexico (Longoria & Lalo); both of these players are excellent in doubles and Paola swinging on the right side will make them the favorites. Bolivia’s Moscoso & Barrios will be interesting, since Angelica can hold her own on one side while Moscoso’s athleticism will have him flying all over the court. Meanwhile, Vargas/Garcia from Argentina won’t be afraid of anyone, and Jake/Naomi will out hit most of the competition.
Mexico vs Argentina seems to be the favorites before seeing a draw.
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Looking forward to the competition! Stay tuned for more.
This past weekend featured the 2025 Mexican Junior National tournament in the Mexican racquetball hotbed of Chihuahua, Mexico. Mexico is the last of the “big 3” North American countries to hold its Junior Nationals, and the results of these events determine the national team members that will represent their country at the upcoming World Juniors in the Dominican Republic in mid December later this year.
Here’s a quick recap of the qualifiers and some commentary.
Mexican Junior tournament and qualification goes as follows: the entrants play a double elimination draw; the winner of the winner’s bracket is the champion and Junior National titlist, while the winner of the loser’s bracket is the 2nd player to join the delegation. This consolation bracket champ often is not the winner’s bracket finalist, and the format gives players hope of getting back on the team even with an early loss. Mexico does not play any official doubles competitions at its junior nationals; the singles qualifiers will form the doubles teams at Worlds.
R2 site for 2025 Mexican Jr Nationals: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=48744
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Congrats to the following Boys Singles winners and finalists for team Mexico (each has the winner’s bracket titlist listed first, then the consolation bracket champion and second national team representative second)
(click here https://rball.pro/olf for a Matrix of all Mexican boy’s titlists loaded into the database currently, dating to 2012)
– Boys 21U: Sebastian Hernandez, Jorge Gutierrez
– Boys 18U: Eder Renteria, Diego Romano
– Boys 16U: Santiago Castillo, Emilio Jurado
– Boys 14U: Elias Medrano, Alejandro Perez Picon
– Boys 12U: Max Soto, Hermann Gracia Castro
– Boys 10U: Kerman Gracia Castro, Isaac Soto
– Boys 10Udb: Jose Enrique Caro, Diego Diaz
– Boys 8U: Angel Perez, Esteban Sandoval
– Boys 8Udb: Luis Enrique Rivera, Esteban Sandoval
– Boys 6Umb: Angel Perez, Alex Nunez
Commentary on the divisions:
Hernandez repeats as U21 champ, but has still yet to appear in an IRT event. Eder Renteria wins his first Jr title since 2018. Santiago Castillo also returns to the title-holders club after a few years off, having been shut out of the entire 14U cycle. Medrano wins his 2nd title in three years. Soto wins his 3rd title in three years and is setup to plow through the Mexican Juniors. Kerman Damian Gracia repeats as 10U champ and gets his 3rd overall title. Lastly, newcomer Angel Perez wins both the 6U and 8U multi bounce competitions to start off his junior career with a bang.
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Congrats to the following Girls Singles finalists for team Mexico:
(click here: https://rball.pro/qcm for a Matrix of all Mexican Girls’s titlists loaded into the database currently, dating to 2012)
– Girls 10U: Jocelyn dominguez Chavez, Ana Paula De la Riva
– Girls 10Udb: Ana Paula De la Riva, Andrea Carrasco
– Girls 8Udb: Maria Rivera, Areai Maldonado
Commentary on the Girls divisions:
Ortega gets back on top, adding her 5th career Junior title to her bookshelf with one year of eligibility left. Trujillo claims her 5th title and now has one in each of the 5 traditional age slots (10,12,14,16,18). Former USA national Andrea Perez Picon wins her first Mexican junior title as the #1 seed in 16s. Michelle Gomez returns to the winner’s circle after a year off. 12U champ Jurado earns her 3rd career title.
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Congrats to all the Mexican Junior National title winners and National team qualifiers for 2025.
Erika Manilla faces a long road ahead to get back into the top 4. Photo 2021 US Open via Kevin Savory
In our last recap article, we’re going to selectively discuss players who didn’t make the top 10 but who are notable, we’ll talk about players who dropped off the tour this year, and opine some at the end.
Notables in the 11-20 range on tour:
– #11 @Samantha Salas Solis missed out on #10 by a scant 3 points and thus misses out on a top 10 spot for the fourth year running. She’s now 38 and is finishing up her 22nd year on tour. She made 2 quarters this year, and can still get wins, and is still Paola’s doubles partner getting titles. How much longer will she tour? We only had 7 events this year, so a once-a-month trip to see old friends isn’t too hard to keep up with.
– @Valeria Centellas and Lexi York finished with almost identical results and points this year, coming in at #12 and #13. Both made all seven events, each made the round of 16 five out of seven times.
– #15 @Stephanie Synhorst made all seven events, made the round of 16 three times, and just out-pointed Carla to finish #15.
– @Carla Munoz finished last year inside the top 10, but missed three of the seven events this year to fall to #16. She’s obviously closer to a top 10 player but just couldn’t hang with the ladies ranked above her missing so much time this season.
– #17 Maria Renee Rodríguez Josey returned to the tour after taking a bit of time away for life, education, etc. She finished #17 with three round of 16 finishes.
– @Michelle Key, who went years without appearing on tour, made four events and just made it into the top 20 this year.
– Former top 10 player @Angela Barrios fell all the way to #21. Barrios is always a tough draw when she does play, whether internationally or professionally, but is like many Bolivian players who struggle financially to make all tour events.
– Naomi Ros, who holds both the USA Racquetball National Adult title and the U21 Junior title right now, finished ranked 22nd.
– @Susana Acosta made it to two events, enough to ensure her 27th season in the rankings.
– Laura Brandt played in two events and finished tied for #28 with a few other ladies, but did so at the age of 57., She became the 3rd oldest player ever to make a round of 16 on tour.
– Two former top 4 players also finished with just enough results to get into the top 30: @Frederique Lambert and Erika Manilla . Lambert’s racquetball career now is mostly limited to Canadian National events, while Manilla’s hip injury has turned out to be far more difficult to recover from than she likely thought. Since exiting the 2024 US Nationals with the injury, she’s played just one LPRT event (in Dec 2024) and then attempted to earn back the US national singles title in May 2025. A healthy Manilla pushes for a top 4 spot on tour, but now she has to work her way all the way back from being ranked well outside the top positions.
– A slew of ladies finished “tied” for #34 with 18.75 points, basically the number of points one earns by making a round of 32 in a singular event. Included in that crew was the @Rhonda Rajsich, who entered her first LPRT pro event in years at the Arizona Open. Also notable in that group is 16U and busy national tournament participant Victoria Rodriguez , former top Mexican Junior @Lucia Gonzalez, and NorCal Outdoor specialist @Erica Williams.
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Some notable names who failed to even log an appearance this year:
– Sunshine Arterburn finished #21 last year; zero appearances this year.
– Argentine lefty @martina Katz showed some promise last year in limited appearances and was missing this season.
– Bolivian veterans @Jenny Daza and Yazmine Sabja Aliss missed out on this season. Former top Bolivian junior Michaela Meneses seems like she’s done with the sport.
– Former Junior legend @Adrienne Fisher Haynes didn’t play this season.
– Irish star Aisling Hickey got some surprise results last season but didn’t log an appearance this year.
– No traveling visits from the Ecuadorian Munoz regulars.
– Masiel Rivera has gone from being a top10 threat to no appearances in just a few years.
– Long-time touring pro @Adriana Riveros may ahve finally called it quits.
– Texan @Linda tyler is usually good for an event or two but hasn’t been seen in a while.
Lots of missing Mexican youngsters as well, who normally help fill out these draws and cause some surprises. The tour depth dropped for the 4th year running; we only had 43 distinct players play this season, down from 60+ a few years ago just after covid. A sign of the times.
That’s it for the season! LPRT kicks off with @jim hiser’s big World Singles and Doubles extravaganza in August.
Longoria is back on top. Photo via 2019 US Open/Kevin Savory
Hello Racquetball fans. This is part 2 of the LPRT 2024-25 season ending recap series. In Part 1 last week, I loaded up the official year end standings for the tour and did the data entry into the www.proracquetballstats.com database to show the rankings properly in various season-wide reports.
Here, we’re going to review the top 10 ladies of the year. In a fun twist, I’ll also refer back to my recap from last season where I made a far-too-early prediction on this year’s finish. The two reports to have up while reading through this report are the Season Summary Report https://rball.pro/84115e and the Season-ending rankings https://rball.pro/5eca5e .
– #1: Paola Longoria .1521.5 points, 22-5 for the year. 2 titles, 4 finals, 1 semi.
Longoria is back on top after a two year hiatus, She was dominant all year, making every final until the last event (where she already had the title wrapped up). She re-took over #1 on tour in December and didn’t look back. This is her 14th career pro title and at age 35 seems to have settled down after a couple of years of life changes (she got married and got elected to the Mexican congress). I predicted last year she’d either finish #1 or retire; clearly not retiring. Now i’m predicting she stays right where she is; at #1, though not nearly as dominantly as in year’s past.
– #2-T Monserrat Mejia: 1218 points, 18-5 for the year. 2 titles, 1 final, 3 semis.
Amazingly, both Vargas and Mejia finished tied for 2nd on tour with the exact same results and record for the season. The two met four times though, with Mejia winning 3 of the 4, but there’s no tiebreaker here. Mejia’s 5 losses on the season were to Longoria three times, Laime, and Vargas. After dominating the 2022-23 season, she fell to zero titles in 23-24, but rebounds this year with 2 wins, bringing her career total to 8 titles. I predicted she’d stay at #3 last year, but she’s stepped up. I’m predicting she returns to #2 next season.
– #2-T @Maria Jose Vargas : 1218 points, 18-5 for the year. 2 titles, 1 final, 3 semis.
Vargas takes a small step back from her dominant 5-win 23-24 season but stays tied for 2nd. Despite tying for 2nd, Vargas is trending downward, having lost 3 of 4 versus Mejia. I thought she would take the title again last year; now i think she’ll finish 3rd next season.
– #4. Ana Gabriela Martínez 919 points. 15-5 for year. 1 title, 1 final, 3 semis.
Gaby really put it together this season, getting her 3rd career title and finishing 4th, her highest ever season finish. She only missed one event, which really helped keep her ranking high. She managed to go the entire season w/o facing Mejia and gave Longoria two of her losses this season. I predicted last year she’d continue to languish in the 9-10 range on tour, but clearly she’s part of the upper tier of four players right now, each of whom had a title this year. I think she sticks right in the #4 spot next season again unless she misses too many events. The wildcardd for Gaby finishing top4 will be @Erika Manilla ‘s health and Herrera’s attendance.
– #5 @natalia mendez, 528 points, 9-7 for the season. 7 quarters in 7 events
Mendez was a model of consistency this year, never once getting upset in the 16s and earning exactly a quarter final berth in all seven events. This was enough to let her stick at the #7 seed for most of the season, then jumping the next two rivals for #5 at season’s end. I sense though she was lucky not to get an upset-special round of 16 this year and probably finishes closer to #10 next year, as I predicted last y ear.
Laime remains in the #5-#6 range for the third straight year, but did it with a slightly different pathway than in year’s past. Two years ago she was Jeckyl and Hyde, making 3 finals but also losing in the 16s four times. This year she cut down on early upsets (only one upset in the 16s at the NoVa event) and had more consistency. Had she not missed the Arizona Open she may very well have finished 5th. I think she continues to finish right in this spot until she can get more breakthrough wins.
– #7 Kelani Lawrence 487.5 points, 8-7 for season 6 qtrs and one 16s upset
Lawrence had almost an identical season to Mendez, save for one round of 16 upset to Parrilla in the Xmas classic last December. She continues to be a model of consistency on tour, nearly always advancing into the quarters but falling at that Juncture. She has made just one semifinal in her entire career, but the quarters 20 times. Nonetheless, she’s now finished in this 6-7 range for two years in a row and i think she’ll continue to be right here next season.
Herrera, a mainstay in the top 4 for nearly a decade, missed two events this year that likely cost her enough points to drop from #4 to #8 on tour. Her big rival this year turned out to be Gaby as they met in the 4/5 quarter final spot three times this season. She managed to avoid her doubles partner Mejia, but the two missed events cost her. If she can make all the tournaments, I think she returns to that 4-5 range. however, the #8 spot is a really tough spot to get away from; even if she wins a round of 16 she projects right into the top player on tour, who she’s got wins against but whom has had her number lately. She may be stuck here for a bit.
– #9 Jessica Parrilla , 320.25 points, 6-7 for season, 2 qtrs and 4 round of 16s
There’s a bit of a drop-off from 8 to 9 in the points, defining a bit of separation on tour between the ladies ranked in the 9-11 range versus those ranked in the 6-8 range. Leoni returns to the top 10 after missing out last season, and managed to do it with a couple of solid wins over Lawrence and Laime to earn quarterfinals appearances. She also held off round of 16 upsets to keep this spot. I sense though she may get pushed down a bit going forward, especially in the 9-10 seed spot.
Amaya just pipped Salas for #10 and thus stays in the top 10 for the second season in a row after dropping well out for a few years. This pivot in performance for a lady in her mid 30s is crazy, and well earned for Amaya. Her biggest win of the season was over Munoz in Chicago, which was instrumental in finishing at this spot. Also, kudos and bravo to Amaya for her awesome Racquetball News TV Weekly series: if you’re not following her on Youtube or Facebook you should be.
https://www.facebook.com/racquetballnewstv
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Next up, we’ll cover the rest of the tour notables, talk about some trends in the sport and on tour, and talk about what may happen next year.
Gaby wins the season opener in an 11-10 thriller. It was her only win of the season. Photo via Gaby
Hello Racquetball fans! The latest LPRT finished up in late June, with @Paola Longoria winning her 14th career Pro year-end title. As is our custom, we’ll do a few posts to recap the season.
In this post we’ll just put in links to the season-summary resources here at Pro Racquetball Stats, to which we’ve just finished adding the year-end standings. Next we’ll do a recap of the top 10 players, then in the last post we’ll cover the rest of the tour with notables and what not.
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Key Reports that show Interesting Year End Data:
– Year-End Standings in the database: https://rball.pro/67385e
Longoria ended up winning the title by more than 300 points. That’s exactly the number of points earned for a regular season tour event, so one missed event going forward and Vargas or Mejia could catch her going forward. The race between the top 3 is tight.
– All Finals this season: https://rball.pro/adb65d
We had 7 events this season, one fewer than last season. The tour lost the San Antonio and Chesapeake events, picked up the NoVa invitational, but will presumably lose the Glass Door event next season unless the Peters family/Chicago crew can find another site. They’ll pick up World Singes & Doubles and hopefully the US Open in 2026, but are still missing some of the big-money events they had at the beginning of the decade in places like Aguascaliente, Kansas City, Longoria made the finals of 6 of this season’s 7 events, only missing the last tourney where she already had the title sewn up.
– Distinct Winners per season: https://rball.pro/62777f
This season we saw four different winners in seven events, with very even distribution. @Gaby Martinez took the season opener, then the top 3 ladies each won twice this season. It was the consistency of Longoria versus her rivals that propelled her to the top.
– Season Summary report: https://rball.pro/a82149
This is my go-to report to see the best summary information for the entire tour in one place. This shows every player who appeared on the season, their season-ending rank, and they’re ordered # of tourney wins, # of finals, # of semis, etc. I’ve also got their age at the end of the season, their career and seasonal W/L records, etc. Interesting factoid from this report: there were just six distinct players all season who even made a Semi final. That’s amazing.
The highest seed to win this year was Gaby as a #9 seed. Twice we saw an #11 seed make their way to the quarters (both times Jessica Parrilla ).
– Draw sizes for the season: https://rball.pro/98d393
The tour was relatively consistent last fall: 23-25 entrants per event. That bumped up a bit this spring to peak at 27 entrants for both AZ and Boston, but fell off in June to a season low 18 players in Charlotte.
– Complete list of Year-end title winners: https://www.proracquetballstats.com/lprt/lprt_year_end_titles.html
This text-page shows Longoria’s 14 titles, now double the next closest player (Michelle Gould).
– LPRT Tour History; https://www.proracquetballstats.com/lprt/lprt_tour_history.html
This is a years-running list of “important events” that have happened on tour. If you see a major event i’m missing by all means let me know and I’ll add it in.
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That’s it for today. Next post we’ll cover the top 10.
McDonald with three titles this weekend. Photo 2023 Outdoor Nats via Lara
We’ve just finished Outdoor Nationals for 2025, the 51st time this long-running “grand daddy of all Outdoor tournaments” event has been held.
Congrats to your Pro/Open winners on the weekend:
– Men’s Pro Doubles: Kane Waselenchuk and @Chris McDonald
– Women’s Open Doubles: @Victoria Rodriguez and @Katie Neils
– Mixed Open Doubles: @Jack McDonald and @Martha McDonald
– Men’s Pro Singles: @Danny Lavely
– Women’s Pro Singles: not held
Exec summary: Kane wins his second straight pro outdoor nationals title, this time with Florida legend McDonald, who claims his first ever title after decades of competing. Chris ended up with three titles on the weekend, while Martha adds a title nearly 50 years after her first Outdoor Nationals championship. A lack of ladies pros onsite this year led to the womens and mixed divisions being turned into “Open” divisions, though we’ll still load the champions into the database.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=47360
ProRacquetballStats.com Match Reports by Pro division (notification that the results have been loaded to the database):
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/42d82e
– Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/0eef63
– Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/a8ebd5
– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/c726e6
– Women’s Singles: (not held in 2025)
Triple Crown Reports: (these show the winners of all Pro divisions at all WOR outdoor majors across time)
– Men’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/j47
– Women’s Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/2vv
– Mixed Pro Doubles: https://rball.pro/y43
– Men’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/86z
– Women’s Pro Singles: https://rball.pro/x8g
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Lets do a quick recap of the Pro/Open draws.
Men’s Pro Doubles: a small but star-studded draw of past champions whittled down to the two top seeds: Davis & Tucker (the 2018 and 2023 champs) and McDonald & Waselenchuk, who won his first title last year with Rocky. After playing together last year in Vegas and this year in California, Chris & Kane have gelled as a team and blew through the final, winning the title 4,4 to earn the surfboard.
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Women’s Open Doubles:
The ladies in attendance played a combo round robin event, and at the end the two teams who entered “Open” won their groups and met in the final. There, teenager Rodriguez and Arizonia Neils took out Onesti-Warren & Williams for the title.
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Mixed Open Doubles: The legendary @Martha McDonald teamed with younger son Jack to go undefeated in group play and then win the Mixed Open title in a walkover. Martha has been coming to Outdoor Nationals for 50+ years and had singles pro titles back in the 1970s.
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Men’s Singles: HoFamer Greg Solis made the final in his latest attempt to add a pro singles title to his resume, but he couldn’t overcome the top seeded @Danny Lavely.
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Other Major Draws in California:
– CPRT: Kane & Chris got the double win this weekend, taking out the same two teams they beat to win the Pro title to win the CPRT title as well.
– Men’s 75s: The always-tough lefty/righty pair of Patrick Allin and Lou Orosco took the combined 75+ draw.
– Men’s 100/Centurion: Alvaro Beltran & Knox La Rue took out the top seeds St. Clair & Berg in the semis before setting down favorites Hall & Rocky in the final.
– Men’s Open: It was all McDonalds in the Open final, as brothers Jack and Chris powered their way to the win.
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Thanks to the Tourney Directors Geoff Osberg and Jesus Ustarroz for putting this event on, and congratulations on your induction into the WOR Hall of Fame for your decade-plus of service here.
Thanks once again to all the sponsors.
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Next up?
We’ll do all the accounting for the Outdoor Cup series and publish a status of updated standings post Outdoor Nats later this week.
Per our handy master racquetball calendar … https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…
NMRA Masters is next weekend in Colorado Springs; this also serves as the IRF Senior International championships. Then, the last weekend in July is the National Senior Games and Mexican Juniors.
Naomi Ros with the triple crown at Junior Nationals. Photo via Ken fife
USA Racquetball held its 52nd annual Junior Nationals event last week on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and the event drew a solid field of top juniors from St Louis, San Antonio, Portland, Stockton, and other junior racquetball hot beds around the country.
The event has been held every year since 1974, save for the Covid year in 2020, and is one of the longest running events in the sport.
With this post, is official notification that the Junior Nationals results have been entered into the ProRacquetballStats.com database. For Juniors, we upload full bracket results for 21s,18s,16s, and 14s, but just load up winners and finalists for all age groups younger than 14U. For doubles, we load up just the finalists.
The best way to see Junior Singles winners is with the cross-year/cross-age group Matrix reports built into the site. They show all the winners for all age divisions going back to 1974. Here’s direct links for each Matrix report:
– Boys USA Junior National Singles Champion Matrix: https://rball.pro/mey
– Girls USA Junior National Singles Champion Matrix: https://rball.pro/cpf
Each full division draw can be accessed from the “event” pulldown after you enter either the Juniors or the Junior Doubles section. One Junior Nationals results in 18-20 singles draws plus another 15 doubles draws being entered into the database, so there’s a lot of new data here this week.
R2sports home page for the event, with all the full brackets: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=46099
(Apologies for any typos: these were hand typed into this post)
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Note: there are some combined divisions at 2025 nationals, especially in the 10s, 8s and 6s. I determined the champions when age groups were combined by looking at head to head results to “name” an age group champion. In some cases there are uncontested winners for younger entrants who competed with the next higher age group.
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Here’s some quick commentary on the Singles champions by grouping.
Boys Singles;
In 21U, Mendoza held off Sendrey in a battle of Texas junior IRT regulars to give Mendoza his first Junior title. The GOAT @Kane Waselenchuk was on hand to cheer on his pupil. in 18U Eshan Ali took his 6th career junior title. Vaishant Mangalampalli moved up as the reigning 14U champ and took 16U in his first shot. Ayan Sharma returned to the winner’s circle for the first time since 2018. Both the 10U and 12U winners were first timers; congrats to Michael Glenn and Ryan Joeckel. Jasur Pridatko repeated as 8U champ. Lastly the two multi/double bounce champs were first timers as well: Elijah Machado in 10UDB and then Gorthy, Saharsh in 8UMB.
Special recognition to Ash Murphy, who made the final in 8U, 8Umb and 10Udb. Also a shoutout to David Rada in 14U, who came in as the #30 seed out of a 32 player draw and made a run to the final as a complete unknown. They often say that in Junior draws, the hardest matches are the first round and the final, since kids show up out of nowhere and make huge runs quite frequently.
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Girls Singles quick recaps.
Reigning US Adult and 2024 18U champ Naomi Ros moved up to 21s and took the title, setting the stage for the possibility of 7 straight junior titles for Ros since her naturalization in the US. Sonya Shetty took 18U, her 5th national title. Aanshi Thakur repeated as 16U junior titleist. We had first time winners in both 14U and 12U in Shreya Chandel and Aaradhya Raja respectively. Marivada Sloka took 10U, her 3rd junior title. Sylvie Hatcher-Ross took both the 10Udb and the 8U title. Sasha Rai, 2-time defending 6Umb champ, moved up to take the 8Umb title. Lastly newcomer Almira Pridatko won the 6Umb.
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Multi-title winners
The following players took home the coveted “Triple Crown,” winning singles, gender doubles, and mixed doubles this year:
– Eshan Ali (18U)
– Ayan Sharma (14U)
– Michael Glenn (10U)
– Naomi Ros (21U)
– Sonya Shetty (18U)
– Aaradhya Raja (12U)
– Sloka Marivada (10U)
The following players took home the “double,” winning both Singles and a Doubles title in their age groups:
– DJ Mendoza (21U)
– Aanshi Thakur (16U)
– Shreya Chandel (14U)
These players took the “Double Double,” winning both Gender and Mixed doubles titles.
– Vaishant Mangalampalli (16U)
– Shreya Chandel
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Phew. that’s it for Junior Nationals. Congrats to all the 2025 winners. The National team includes the two singles finalists and the doubles winners in each division; those players have first right of refusal to represent Team USA at Junior Worlds later this year in the Dominican Republic.
Next up on the racquetball calendar? 2025 Outdoor Nationals, teaming with 3WallBall this year in Huntington Beach! We’ll preview and recap that event as we always do.
Vargas finishes off her season with a win, while Laime wins her 4th pro doubles title of the season. Longoria had already clinched the year end title. More in the points section later.
In the 32s, two of the best U21 players in the world (Bolivia’s Camila Rivero and USA’s Naomi Ros) topped LPRT tour vets Rodriguez and Synhorst to move on).
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In the 16s, chalk. All top 8 seeds moved on in the season’s final event. The only round of 16 to even go to a tie-breaker was in the 7/10 match, with @Kelani Lawrence advancing over Christina Amaya.
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In the Quarters, again chalk but with some closer matches.
– With @Alexandra Herrera now dropped to the #8 spot, the 1-8 is tougher than it normally is, and indeed @Paola Longoria had to go to the breaker to move past the lefty Herrera 6,(9),2.
– #3 Vargas crushed Laime 6,2 in a battle of hard hitters.
– #2 @Montse Mejia wasn’t too troubled in advancing past Lawrence 7,6
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In the Semis, the clear-cut top four players on tour have separated themselves at this point, with a massive gap in the points ranking between #4 and #5. Herrera used to be part of this upper group, and Manilla’s hip injury continues to prevent her from even playing, else we’d be closer to a “big 6” rather than our current “big 4.”
And, true to form, when you have a group of closely matched players, week in and week out you just never know who’s gonna win. And this weekend, we got two upsets in the semis.
– Gaby took out Longoria by the surprising scoreline 3,12 to get to her second final of the season. If Martinez hadn’t missed an event this season, she might e pressing for #2 on tour.
– Vargas flipped the script on Mejia in the 2/3 semi final, winning an incredibly streaky match 6,(3),1.
In the Finals, Vargas powered past the Guatemalan 8,5. Gaby entered the event a little under the weather but made it to the final before running out of gas.
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Points Implications of results
With the win, Vargas made up the ground she was trailing Mejia for #2 on the season and now the two players are in a virtual dead heat for the #2 year end spot. It will come down to point fractions and who was able to win a game in an eventual loss; we’ll keep an eye out for hte final season rankings. No other changes in the top 16 came from the season ender, with the exception of the absent Carla Munoz missing points for the second straight event and now dropping all the way to #16. She’ll face an up-hill climb to get back to the quarters next season.
Here’s a link to my LPRT 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.
Laime and Mendez finish off the title as the #1 seeds, topping Vargas and Centellas in the final. Thus, 3 of the four finalists were Argentine, and all four are Bolivian-born players who have left to represent other South American federations.
Meja and Herrera, who dominated the pro doubles circuit last season (they won 6 of the 7 doubles titles in the 23-24 season) won just once together this year as Laime became the top dog. Laime had 4 titles this year with 3 different players. Vargas switched partners, moving from Mendez to Centellas, and managed to make the final in 6 of the season’s 7 events but could garner just one title. Meanwhile, the reign of Longoria/Salas seems over; they made just two finals this season as both players are facing career choices going forward.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Timothy Baghurst, Jerry J Josey Jr., JTRball, and Tj Baumbaugh
