Congrats to Coby Iwaasa and Frederique Lambert for taking the two Singles qualifiers this past weekend.
Iwaasa wins his first Canadian National event since May of 2015. He had faced off against finalist @Samuel Murray in the last 10 straight Canadian national event finals and got the win by virtue of an injury related walkover. It is Iwaasa’s 3rd overall title (1 National title, 2 qualifier titles).
Lambert wins her 4th straight Canadian national event, and her 14th overall with the win. She now owns 4 National titles and another 10 National qualifying tournament titles. She has not been defeated in Canadian competition since May of 2014, though her participation is understandably spotty thanks to her day job of being a Medical professional. She defeated Michele Morissette in the final, the third straight time these two have met in a Canadian national event final.
The Canadian Amateurs will presumably play another qualifier in the winter months before competing for their 2023 National title next May.
Mixed Doubles:David Serra/Disney Linares The Canadian Nationals also had Junior nationals, awarding the following Junior titlists:
Girls 21U: Cassie Prentice
Girls 16U: Ofelia Wilscam
Girls 14U: Lahni Buller
Boys 18U: Nathan Jauvin
Boys 16U: Asher Pocsai
Trackie home page for event: https://www.trackie.com/…/racquetball-canada…/476421/…
Lets do some quick commentary on each draw.
Men’s Singles: PRS event report: http://rball.pro/CF063C No real surprises here; #1 @Samuel Murray topped #2 @Coby Iwaasa for the fourth straight time. The Men’s draw was missing some regulars (Castro, the Landeryou brothers, Bousquets), but featured the expected names at the back end.
Men’s Doubles; PRS report: http://rball.pro/5F5739 The Murray brothers secure their third straight Canadian men’s doubles title together, and Sam gets his 6th for his career, by topping Iwaasa and Kurtis Cullen in the final.
Women’s Singles: PRS report: http://rball.pro/EEB08C Former LPRT #2 Dr. @Frederique Lambert won her fourth national singles title, defeating her doubles partner Michele Morissette in the final.
Women’s Doubles: PRS Report: http://rball.pro/7B7355 Lambert gets the double on the weekend, winning both Singles and Doubles. Frederique wins her 3rd career national doubles title, Morissette her 3rd as well, but their first together.
David Serra and Disney Linares took the first ever Canadian Mixed doubles title and bring some fresh new faces to the National team, winning a small 3-team round robin event.
Junior events
Girls 21U: Cassie Prentice
Girls 16U: Ofelia Wilscam
Girls 14U: Lahni Buller
Boys 18U: Nathan Jauvin
Boys 16U: Asher Pocsai
There was some junior competitions at the event but some divisions went un-competed. We’ll have to adjust the junior matrix for the new U21 division.
Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend from Racquetball Canada, who brought in Timothy Baghurst and JT R Ball to do the streaming on the weekend. Always helps when you bring in the pros.
Next up? Per our handy master racquetball calendar … https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/
Capital City WOR, then LPRT Supermax in mid June in Kansas City.
Murray wins his 10th straight Canadian national team event. Photo via us2019 Kevin Savory
For the first time since February 2020, Racquetball Canada hosted a selection event. Normally, Canada hosts two of these events each season (usually, in late November and then again in early February) to determine seeding for its eventual Nationals (held in May). But, thanks to Covid, we hadn’t seen one of these tournaments since right before the Pandemic took grip of society. Trackie.com site for the event: https://www.trackie.com/…/racquetball-canada…/474684/… Lets do a quick recap of the results. Note: thanks to IRF’s decision to go to rally scoring, this tournament was played with the rally scoring rules. Three out of Five games to 15, win by one. In Men’s Open, #1 Samuel Murray and #2 Coby Iwaasa met up in the final for the eight successive Canadian Nationals or Selection event, with Murray taking the title over his countryman for the 8th successive time. Murray’s 10th straight Canadian national tournament title came with the scores of 8,11,14. click here for the Match report: http://rball.pro/F20E68
Click here for a list of all Canadian Men’s National event finals dating to 1975; http://rball.pro/2CB02F
In Women’s Open, #1 @Frederique Lambert continued her dominance over Canadian Racquetball (when she can play, given her medical residence requirements) by taking out #2 @Michele Morisset in the final (😎,10,6,10. The draw was missing @Christine (Keay) Richardson, who had made the final of the previous five Canadian national tournaments. click here for the Match report: http://rball.pro/DCDEDE
Click here for a list of all Canadian Women’s National event finals dating to 1975; http://rball.pro/AF9A18
Murray and Lambert retain their #1 positions in Canada heading into May’s Canadian Nationals, and should be representing their country at the upcoming PARC event in Mid April In Bolivia.
@Racquetball Canada
This coming weekend is a busy one on the racquetball calendar
USA Racquetball High School Nationals is in St. Louis
the LPRT is in Boston
there’s an IRT Tier 3 in Findley, Minnesota that has a handful of touring pros attending.
there’s an IRT Tier 4 or 5 in Pueblo, Colorado, also with a few IRT regulars in the field. Click here for my running Racquetball “major” event tracker: https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/
Here’s a recap of Canada Junior Nationals, held this past weekend in Burlington, Ontario Canada. Trackie site for Canadian Jr Nationals: https://www.trackie.com/…/racquetball-canada…/471134/… (In case you’re wondering why Racquetball Canada has gone to a different system than R2sports … it has to do with Canadian data privacy laws for its players. R2 is not housed within Canada, so they had to switch to a Canadian-housed solution). Congrats to the following Boys singles finalists for team Canada (click here: http://rball.pro/5B9265 for a Matrix of all Canada boy’s titlists loaded into the database currently, dating to 2014 or so. We will do the 2021 data entry later this week while on travel):
Boys 18U: Nathan Jauvin over Naman Gauri
Boys 16U: Christian Pocsai over Matthew Hudson
Boys 14U: Asher Pocsai over Raphael Guillemette
Boys 12U: not competed
Boys 10U: not competed
Boys 8U: not competed This is the 6th junior nationals title for Jauvin, who is in his age 17 season so he has one more shot to extend his collection of tities. This is the 4th title for Christian Pocsai and the 3rd for Asher Pocsai.
For Doubles, we’re assuming the two singles finalists in 18U and 16U will be the doubles team. In Boys 14U, the two singles finalists Pocsai/Guillemette teamed up to win a small round robin to win the Doubles title.
Congrats to the following Girls Singles finalists for team Canada (click here: http://rball.pro/8DDB63 for a Matrix of all Canada girls’s titlists loaded into the database currently, dating to 2014 or so)
Girls 18U; Juliette Parent over Zoe Chopnick
Girls 16U: Tamara Wilscam over Ofelia Wilscam
Girls 14U: Chloe Jauvan wins the RR, Alaya Buller 2nd.
Girls 12U: not competed
Girls 10U: not competed
Girls 8U: not competed
This is Parent’s 4th junior national title, Tamara’s 3rd, and Chloe’s 5th.
Congrats to tournament director Jennifer Saunders for another successful Canadian national tournament. International Racquetball Tour LPRT Racquetball Canada International Racquetball Federation – IRF
Women’s Singles: Frederique Lambert over Christine Keay
Women’s Doubles: Christine Keay/Cassie Prentice
All singles finalists and the doubles champions now qualify to represent Canada at upcoming IRF events, including 2021 Worlds in Guatemala in December and 2022 PARC in April 2022 in Bolivia.
See https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/ for PRS’ master list of upcoming major events.
Trackie home page for the draws: https://www.trackie.com/…/entr…/matches/471131/4639/0/F/
Here’s recaps of the four draws:
Men’s Singles Match report in PRS database: http://rball.pro/1C8AAC The Men’s singles draw went nearly chalk to the final, with the top two seeds Murray and Coby Iwaasa advancing to sunday’s final and qualifying to represent Canada in IRF events coming up. In the final…Murray made quick work of his frequent finals rival Iwaasa, topping him 8,4 to take the title. This is Murray’s third National title, and third in a row.
Click here for all Canadian men’s champs: http://rball.pro/372371
Women’s Singles: Match Report in PRS database: http://rball.pro/2F3B62 There were a couple of upsets by seed in the early rounds, with #5 seed Alexis Iwaasa topping #4 Brigite Richard, and #6 Juliette Parent topping #3 Michèle Morissette in the quarters, but the semis featured the top two seeds in #1 Frederique Lambert and #2 Christine Keay advancing to the final and making the Canadian National team. In the final..Lambert topped Keay 13,2 to return to the throne of Canadian racquetball for the first time since 2017. This is her third overall title.
Click here for all Canadian Women’s champs: http://rball.pro/AA5A24
Men’s Doubles: Match Report in PRS database: http://rball.pro/D207F5
#1 Seeded brother team Sam and Tommy Murray cruised to the title in a draw that mostly went chalk. In the final they defeated the #2 seeded team of Iwaasa and Trevor Webb in two quick games 4,7.
This is Sam’s 5th national doubles title and Tommy’s second. They defend their 2019 national title. Sam is now halfway to catching the all-time leader in Men’s national titles for Canada ( Mike Green ), who had 10 titles and another 7 finals in his long career.
See here for a list of all Canadian Men’s dbls champs: http://rball.pro/EF2A7C
Women’s Doubles: Match Report in PRS database: http://rball.pro/9DD6F3 Big upset in the semis, as the Parent sisters Marjolaine and Juliette Parent defeated the top seeded team of Lambert and Michele Morissete in a tiebreaker. They could not seal the deal though, losing in the final to #2 Christine Keay and Cassie Prentice in two tough games. This is Christine’s 3rd national doubles title, but her first since 2017. This is Prentice’s first adult national title.
Click here for a list of all Canadian Women’s dbls champs: http://rball.pro/1DC54F
Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend from Racquetball Canada.
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 FB. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but FB stripped it since you don’t follow this page.
Next up?
IRT’s Shamrock Shootout is next weekend, then we have a week’s break until the big one; the 25th US Open .
tags Racquetball Canada UnitedHealthcare US OPEN Racquetball Championships International Racquetball Federation – IRF Pan American Racquetball Confederation – PARC
Lambert is back in action this weekend at Canadian Nationals. Photo unk
After a year-plus delay in hosting national events that saw the 2020 Nationals cancelled as well as the two normally held Selection events, Racquetball Canada is back this weekend with its National championships event, being held in Brossard, Quebec. Both singles and Doubles champions are being crowned this weekend, and the tournament sees a pretty full slate of top Canadian players competing for the title. Online tournament site: https://www.trackie.com/…/racquetball-canada…/471131/… (Note: Canada has transitioned away from r2sports to use trackie.com due to Canadian data privacy concerns going forward).
Here’s a quick run through of what to expect this weekend
Men’s Singles draw:
1 seed Samuel Murray is the odds-on favorite to repeat; he has not lost a National or a selection event qualifier in Canada since May of 2017 (see http://rball.pro/0AC39E for a list of all Canadian National events historically). Murray has met the #2 seed Coby Iwaasa in the final of the last six such events, each time taking the win. Iwaasa does have a win over Murray, but it was more than six years ago at the 2015 nationals.
Trevor Webb and Lee Connell round out the top four seeds. Former national champ Corey Osborne is playing and could make for an interesting quarter final match if he advances to face Murray. The draw is missing a number of regulars, including both Landeryou brothers Tim Landeryou and James Landeryou and 2019 quarter finalist Ian Frattinger.
Look for Murray over Iwaasa in the final and for Sam (currently ranked #4 on the IRT) to continue his dominance in Canadian Men’s racquetball.
Women’s Singles draw:
1 seed Frederique Lambert has had spotty attendance at Canadian national events lately and has stopped touring full time on the LPRT (for good reason as she finished Medical school and began her residency). But she’s still the player to beat in Canada. She has not been beaten in a Canadian national event since 2014 (see http://rball.pro/71FEBE for Canadian Women’s national results historically).
Challenging her this weekend will be #2 seed Christine Keay (nee Richardson), #3 @michele morissette, and #4 Alexis Iwaasa, all of whom have made finals of Canadian national events in the past few seasons as Jen Saunders has retired from active play and Lambert has missed events.
Look for Lambert to take the title and for some tough semis matches to determine who faces her in the final.
Men’s Doubles Draw
1 seeds Sam and his brother Tommy Murray (who curiously is only playing doubles here) are the favorites in this 7-team draw. The #2 seeded team of Iwaasa and Webb should put up a challenge.
Look for the Murrays to prevail and defend their 2019 title won together.
click here for a look at Canadian Men’s national doubles results historically: http://rball.pro/F3CA5B
Women’s Doubles Draw
1 seeds Lambert and Morissette have not played together at Canada Nationals since 2015, when they lost in the finals. But Morissette has two titles and two finals appearances since, and will look to return to the throne with Lambert.
They’ll be challenged by the #2 seeded team of Keay and Prentice. Keay has made the doubles final four years running and has two prior titles. In the end though, look for Lambert to win the double on the weekend.
click here for a look at Canadian Women’s national doubles results historically: http://rball.pro/7C6CBB
Streaming: follow Racquetball Canada on Facebook for live streaming notifications.
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 FB. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but FB stripped it.
Tags @International Racquetball Tour LPRT @international racquetball federation
Murray takes another Canadian National tourney. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory
In conjunction with the 46th annual Keystone Classic in Winnipeg last weekend, Racquetball Canada had the second of its three National team qualification events of the season. Here’s a quick wrap-up of the event:
Congrats to your winners on the weekend: – Men’s Singles: Samuel Murray – Women’s Singles: Michele Morisette
Reminder: we don’t currently load federation qualifying events into the database, therefore there’s no PRS links.
Lets review the notable matches in the Men’s Singles draw.
—————- In the Quarters – The top 3 seeds easily advanced; #1 Samuel Murray over #8 Michael Leduc #2 The Official Coby Iwaasa Fan Club over #7 Ian Frattinger and #3 Tim Landeryou over #6 Tanner Prentice. – We got an upset in the 4/5 match: #5 Kurtis Cullen took out #4 veteran Lee Connell in two games 4,13 to move into the quarters.
————— In the Semis – #1 Murray dominated Cullen to move on. – #2 Iwaasa was stretched at times but advanced over Landeryou
In the Finals, Iwaasa took the first game from the long-time Canadian #1, but Murray rebounded to win (8),7,1.
Murray (if i’m reading my records correctly) has not lost a Canadian Men’s national event (qualifier or nationals) since the May 2017 final (Mike Green’s last match before retiring).
————— Women’s Singles review:
Just four women in this draw, so they played Round Robin. Notable results from RR play:
#1 seed Christine Richardson was stretched to a breaker by #4 seed Cassie Prentice before winning, which was a precursor perhaps to the eventual face off with #2 seed Michèle Morissette, who topped Richardson 6,11 to win the RR group.
Morissette wins her first top-level Canadian national event since graduating from the juniors in 2015.
—————— Next up? This is the 2nd of two qualifiers leading up to Canadian Nationals in late May, so next up is Canadian Nationals.
In general, the Rball calendar gets a break until the first week of march for the next major event.
Murray continues his recent dominance in Canadian racquetball, taking the first National selection event of the new season. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer: Kevin Savory
While the US was recovering from a long holiday weekend, the Canadians were holding the first of their three national-level events used to select teams for next year’s international events. This past weekend’s event was held in Edmonton, AB, CAN.
In the Men’s Open, IRT top 10 player Samuel Murray continued his dominance over Canadian men’s racquetball, running to the title without giving up more than 8 points in a game, defeating #2 seed Coby Iwaasa in the final 5,8.
Murray has not lost in a top-level Canadian event since the final of the 2017 nationals and remains in pole position to continue to represent Canada at next year’s slate of IRF events (which will include PARCs and Worlds).
————— In Women’s Open, former LPRT top player Frederique Lambert took time off from her new Medical career to take the Women’s Open over #2 seed Christine Rchrdsn. Lambert has not lost a top-level Canadian event herself since 2014, though she’s had to take an understandable step back from competition with the commencement of her new career.
—————– PRS doesn’t load these National team qualifying events into the database, but we do have them captured and staged for possible future use.
Thanks to their performance at the 2019 Pan American Racquetball Championships earlier this year, Team Canada qualified two men and two women to the event, so these players will be pulling double duty singles and doubles in Peru.
On the Men’s side … the choices were pretty obvious. Murray and Iwaasa were the two finalists in all three qualifying events (the 1st National team Qualifier in Nov 2018, the 2nd Qualifier in February 2019, and Canadian Nationals In May 2019). Murray topped Iwaasa in all three events, and these two players have clearly established themselves as the top Canadian Men.
Murray plays the IRT tour full time and finished 7th on tour this year. He should be a favorite to advance deep into the knockout stages, given his tour accomplishments and his international experience. Murray has represented Canada 8 times before internationally; his best IRF result is making the 2016 world semis, losing toDaniel De La Rosa.
Iwaasa played just one pro event this season, the WRT event that occurred in Calgary in October. In that event (PRS match report here: http://rball.pro/E7785F) he topped a number of IRT semi-regulars before falling toAndree Parrilla in the final. This will be Iwaasa’s 6th international appearance; his best results previously were a quarter final apperance at the 2014 Pan American Sports Festival (where he lost to David ” Bobby” Hornand the 2015 Pan American Games (where he lost to Alvaro Beltran).
———————–
On the Women’s side, the two players selected are in-arguably the top two players in Canada, but some questions may arise from the qualification process. Lambert and Saunders were the finalists in the 1st qualifier, with Lambert winning. But, Lambert did not play in the 2nd qualifier nor Canada Nationals; there Saunders beat Christine Richardson in the finals both times. As it turns out, Canada’s team qualification guidelines specify exceptions for top-ranked IRT and LPRT pros, automatically qualifying them if they’re in the top 8 at the time of the team selection. See http://www.racquetball.ca/download/2019Racquetball_INP_PAGs.pdf for the guidelines (h/t to Frederique Lambert for the link).
Lambert obviously gives the team a better chance at medaling in Peru, but it comes at the expense of Richardson, who made a semis and two finals during qualifying and thus has a claim to the team based on the overall qualifying results.
Lambert finished the pro season ranked 9th on tour despite missing 5 of the 10 events (dropping out of the top 8 only at the last event). This after finishing the prior year ranked 2nd and making 5 pro tournament finals. She finished off Medical school, which limited her travel schedule. This will be the 10th time Lambert represents Canada; she has made two international finals, losing the 2012 and 2016 PARC finals to Longoria.
————————-
The limits of players on both teams also means that the selected players will be forced doubles partners. But luckily, the players do have some experience playing with each other.
– Murray/Iwaasa teamed up to win the 2018 Canadian National title – they also played together at PARC earlier this year, losing in the final.
– Lambert/Saunders first played together at the 2014 Worlds, losing in the qtrs. – They teamed up at the 2016 PARC event, losing in the semis to eventual champs Mexico – They made the semis at 2016 Worlds together, losing to the USA team. – They won 2018 Canada Nationals together – they last played at 2018 Worlds, struggling in the RRs and losing in the 16s.
Men’s Open: Samuel Murray Women’s Open: Jen Saunders
They take big steps towards putting themselves onto the plane to represent Canada at this August’s 2019 International Racquetball Federation – IRF Pan American Games, the biggest event in our sport. Based on the 2019 PARC qualifying Team Canada will get two players each in Men’s and Women’s, and based on the qualifying as of late it definitely seems like the two singles finalists in each draw will form the teams for Peru later this year, but we’ll wait to hear official word of attendance.
No Surprises in the round of 16, with all seeds advancing in 2 games. Closest match was #13 Ian Frattinger pushing #4 Pedro Castro to 13,10 in their match.
In the quarters: – One upset by seed: #5 Trevor Webb took out #4 Castro in two. – Both #2 and #3 seeds were taken to tiebreakers but advanced. – Coby Iwaasa came from a game down to advance past #7 Lee Connell.
In the semis: – #1 Samuel Murray made quick work of Webb 3,2. – #2 Iwaasa played a close game 1 then took off to win game 2 going away over #3 Tim Landeryou 13,2.
The Final was a rematch of the 2015 and 2018 Canadian finals, as well as a rematch of the last three running qualifier events. Murray and Iwaasa split the last two finals rematches, but this one was a Murray win going away 3,6. Murray captures his 2nd Canadian National title.
In the play-in round of 16, Cassie Prentice won in a slight upset by seeding, taking out the #8 Murielle Boivin 9,4. Meanwhile, the younger Parent sister Juliette beat her older sister Marjolaine 4,10 to advance.
In the Semis: – #1 Jen Saunders won a solid match over #4 Danielle Drury 13,8 – #2 Christine Richardson advanced over #3 Morissette in two close games.
In the Final, a rematch of last year’s Canadian National championship, Saunders won going away 4,1 to claim her 11th National Title. Saunders has now made at least the Canadian National singles final in NINTEEN consecutive years; every year since 2001. You have to go back to the 2000 national tournament to find a Women’s Canadian singles final that didn’t include Saunders (that year, Jackchristie Huczek beat Lori-Jane Powell for the title). Its a pretty amazing run for Saunders, who shows no sign of slowing down.
