Category: Guatemala

The 35th annual Pan American Racquetball Championships tournament is in the books. Here’s a recap of the knockout stage action, along with links for the results as entered into the Pro Racquetball Stats database.

Congratulations to the winners:

– Men’s Singles: @Rodrigo Montoya , Mexico

– Women’s Singles: Maria Jose Vargas , Argentina

– Men’s Doubles: Andres Acuna & @Gabriel Garcia , Costa Rica

– Women’s Doubles: Maria Jose Vargas & Natalia Mendez , Argentina

– Mixed Doubles: @Michelle key & @Sam Bredenbeck , USA

Executive Summary: Montoya wins his third major IRF Men’s Singles title. Vargas also wins her third IRF singles title, her last one coming in 2018. Costa Rica’s doubles title is just the second major IRF title for that country. Argentina’s women’s doubles title is their 3rd together. lastly USA’s mixed title is the second in a row for team USA, who also won last year’s World title.

Pro Racquetball Stats DB match results. Click on these links to see the match results in the DB:

– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/wsd

– Women’s Singles: https://rball.pro/b0m

– Men’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/vr8

– Women’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/n6z

– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/vde

Team Points Results From Knockouts

PARC now includes a “Team competition” where the countries compete against each other, but for decades the “Team Standings” were determined by a standard 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

(You can get these “team results” via queries available from the IRF singles page off of proracquetballstats.com historicall)

Combined Team (Overall)

1st – USA

2nd – Argentina

3rd – Canada

4th — Chile

The combined team title came down to the Mixed final between USA and Canada; if that result had gone the other way, then USA and Canada would have switched places at 1 & 3.

Men’s Team

1st – Canada

2nd – Costa Rica

t-2nd – USA

4th – Mexico

Canada’s two men’s finals power it to the Men’s team. CRC and USA tied for 2nd, but CRC pips them with better knockout results.

Women’s Team

1st – Argentina

2nd – USA

3rd – Chile

4th – Canada

Argentina win both singles and doubles in the Women’s competition and dominate.

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Let’s run through the individual draws and talk about notable results.

Men’s Singles:

There were a couple of “upset by seeds” results in the knockouts that probably weren’t really upsets on paper. In the quarters, Costa Rican #5 @Andres Acuna took out USA’s #4 Charlie Pratt Racquetball in three straight. In the semis, Mexican #1 Rodrigo Montoya cruised past Acuna in three easy games 9,2,3 despite having lost to Acuna on the IRT in the most recent event to get to his 6th international Men’s singles final since 2018. From the bottom half, Canada’s #3 @Samuel Murray destroyed USA’s #2 @Jake Bredenbeck 3,0,3 in a scoreline that can only indicate some sort of injury to Jake (I have no information and didn’t see the match live, so this is an assumption).

In the final, the pair of IRT regulars split the first two games, then Montoya won a very long 15-13 game three that seemed to take the air out of Big Canada. Montoya holds on 11-8 in the fourth for the title.

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Women’s Singles:

#5 Chilean CArla Munoz scored two straight upset by seed (though not by current LPRT rankings), topping USA #4 Michelle Key in the quarters, then Argentinian #1 Natalia Mendez in the semis to earn the final. From the bottom, current LPRT #1 Argentinian @Maria Jose Vargas held serve against Canadian @Juliette Parent in the quarters and then Dominican Republic’s Merynanyelly Delgado in the semis to make the final.

In the final, Vargas crushed her south american rival Munoz 1,3,5. Thanks to rally scoring, the final was finished in less than 30 minutes, featured just 22 minutes of on-the-court time, and Munoz’s 9 total points included just two points on her actual serve (the rest being side-outs). One of the reasons I struggle with rally scoring is a result like this: rally scoring prevents players from “digging in” and grinding out sideouts to keep games close and try to gradually turn the tide of matches.

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Men’s Doubles.

A huge upset from the top-side, as the #1 Mexican team of Montoya and @Sebastian Hernandez was taken out in the semis by team Costa Rica (consisting of Acuna and Gabriel Garcia . Great win for team CRC. On the bottom side, team Canada (the 2022 PARC champs and runner’s up last fall at the Pan Am Games) held serve in a close 4-game match against team USA Jake and @Sam Bredenbeck to earn a return to the gold medal match for the 4th time internationally since 2019.

In the final, team CRC continued to impress and scored another upset, taking out the favored Canadian team in a long 5-game match.

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Women’s Doubles:

The overwhelming favorite #1 Argentines Mendez & Vargas cruised into the final from the top half, topping teams from Cuba and the DR along the way. Team USA #2 seeds @Naomi Ros and @Lexi York nearly squandered a 2-game lead in their semi against team Chile, but came alive in the fifth 11-1 to secure a gold medal appearance.

In the final, team USA played admirably against the two LPRT touring veterans and pushed the match to five games. It couldn’t really have been closer, with Argentina winning 11-9 in the fifth. Total points scored in the match for each team: 50 for Argentina, 49 for Team USA. Crazy.

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Mixed Doubles

The Mixed draw saw a huge upset in the semis, with #1 Argentina (@Gerson Miranda

and Vargas) going down in five games to Team Canada (Parent and Coby Iwaasa ) in five back and forth games, securing a third gold medal match for Canada here in Guatemala. From the bottom half, team USA got revenge from their group-stage loss to team Chile (Munoz and Jaime Mansilla ), winning in four to secure a second gold medal appearance for the Americans.

In the final, Team USA worked its way to three straight nail-biting games, winning 9,10,9 to claim the title.

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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: https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2…/edit…

There’s an IRT satellite in Billings Montana next weekend, then an LPRT stop in San Antonio later in April.

Next up on the IRF calendar is the Bolivarian Youth Games in two weeks’ time, then nothing until 2024 Worlds, also in San Antonio.

International Racquetball Federation

International Racquetball Federation – IRF

Welcome to the 35th iteration of the Pan American Racquetball Tournament, held every year since 1986 (with the exception of 2 Covid cancellations and a civil unrest cancellation in 2000). The tournament was first held in 1986 in San Jose, Costa Rica, and was initially called the Tournament of the Americas. It generally is a showcase for Central and South American countries, having been held just once in the USA (1990 in Jacksonville). This year is back in Guatemala City, same host as last year, when the original planned host of Tarja, Bolivia fell through at the last minute.

This year’s tournament and its participation portends some possibly dark times coming to the international component of the sport. Because its annually held and is lesser regarded than the every-two-years World championships (to be held later this year in San Antonio), the PARC event often fails to attract the best players from the major countries. This year in 2024 however, we’re seeing a huge gap in the player pool across the spectrum of the sport.

– Bolivia does not have a team represented here at all, despite being the defending team champs from the last int’l event.

– Colombia is not here, thanks to their confederation collapsing in corruption a couple of years ago

– Argentina only sent one male participant, a u21 player in Miranda who only recently converted.

– Despite the tournament being IN Guatemala, their top two ladies players (Gaby Martinez and Maria Renee Rodriguez) are not playing. MRR now lives in the states and has a job, but Gaby’s absence reportedly is due to a financial dispute with her home country.

– Mexico did not send a single female player, almost shocking in that Longoria clearly treasures these int’l titles.

– Honduras: also just sent two males, no females.

– Ecuador does not have a team here at all. Nor does Venezuela or Puerto Rico, two smaller countries who infrequently attend.

– Speaking of federation financial issues, @USA Racquetball chose not to fund this trip at all for its players, who resorted to private fundraising and gofundme pleas to finance the trip. Bravo to Team USA players who are there, but its clear we have a weaker team there with a number of our top qualified players absent for various reasons (injury, retirement, suspension, and pickleball).

It’s sad to see this happen in real time, but this is likely to be the story going forward as federation financing becomes harder to come by. That all being said, as of this writing we’re through the group stages and the knockouts are set, and there’s some very solid matches coming up featuring regular touring pros that should be great to watch.

Three reminders for this event:

– IRF plays rally scoring

– there’s a group stages that determines the seedings for the knockout stages.

– Group stage seeding is done by country, NOT by the player, and then group results turn into knockout staging.

Interestingly, for what i believe is the first time, the organizers have split the singles knockouts into two groups. Normally the group stage of 20 guys results in 20 players seeded 1-20 in the knockouts. Here, there’s now a “Gold Draw” of the best 10 knockout players and then an “Elite Draw” of the remaining 9 players who all finished 3rd or 4th in their groups. This is an interesting development, probably giving the lesser players more of an opportunity to win something here. (Doubles still goes into one big knockout).

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42151

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Let’s preview the Knockouts: We’ll go singles then doubles.

Men’s Singles: There were no real upsets in the group stages of the Men’s Singles. The sole upset by seed came when @Samuel Murray took out Mexican #2 @Sebastian Hernandez in the group stage to claim the #3 knockout seed. Miranda took Acuna to five games, but still came in 2nd in the group.

The quarters could have some good matches: @Andres Acuna probably “upsets” #4 Charlie Pratt Racquetball in the quarters to play into #1 @Rodrigo Montoya from the top-half, while both bottom-half quarters are solid: Murray versus @gerson Miranda and Jake Bredenbeck taking on Mexican u21 Hernandez.

Both semis could go either way, but I like Montoya over Acuna as he seems to be extra-tough internationally, and I like Bredenbeck to work his way past Murray despite the two having a relatively even h2h history.

I like Montoya over Bredenbeck in the final.

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Women’s Singles:

Group stage recap: Group 2 was gutted by missing top players and upsets, leading to the DR’s Merynanyelly Delgado to top the group and claim the #2 knockout seed and send USA’s @Lexi York to the “elite draw,” out of medal competition.

The knockouts will feature a very tough 4-5 matchup between CArla Munoz and Michelle Key , kind of a bummer but there’s basically 5 touring pros in the knockouts and two of them had to meet early. Maria Jose Vargas should cruise to the final from the bottom half, while #1 Natalia Mendez will have her hands full with whoever wins between Munoz and Key. I’m guessing Carla wins both those matches to face Vargas in the final, with Vargas winning.

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Men’s Doubles:

The only real “upset” in the group stage was the Bredenbecks taking out team Costa Rica (Acuna & @Gabriel Garcia) in five, coming from 2-0 games down to do so. This earned them the #3 seed and a slightly better pathway to the final in the knockouts.

Knockouts prediction: the quarters should be easy to call, then the semis will be fun. I think team Mexico will be led by Montoya to the final over Costa Rica, while from the bottom half team Canada (Murray and @Coby Iwaasa ) are going to be too tough for team USA (@jake bredenbeck and Sam Bredenbeck ) to handle. In the final, I like the experience of Canada to pick on the younger Hernandez and edge out a win.

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Women’s Doubles:

The #1 seeds Vargas & Mendez are the clear class of this competition, which only really has one other touring pro even playing in Munoz. @Naomi Ros and Lexi York played well to earn #2 seed in the knockouts, and the final should be Argentina cruising past team USA.

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Mixed Doubles:

In the group stage, Team Chile shocked team USA to claim the 2nd seed, but in terms of the knockouts they’ll be playing again in the semis. The odds-on favorite here is Argentina, who is powered by Mendez and the very-good Miranda. Look for them to top the winner of the Chile/USA semis rematch for the title.

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Check the IRF page for streaming notifications, which should have already started today for the knockouts.

Associations

International Racquetball Federation – IRF

The 34th annual Pan American Racquetball Championships tournament is in the books. Here’s a recap of the 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: Montse Mejia , Mexico

– Men’s Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya and Eduardo Portillo , Mexico

– Women’s Doubles: Alexandra Herrera and Montse Mejia, Mexico

– Mixed Doubles: Conrrado Moscoso & Angelica Barrios , Bolivia

It was quite the weekend for Moscoso, winning Mens singles and mixed and losing in the finals of Men’s Doubles, but it wasn’t quite enough to prevent Mexico from winning the overall combined team title. Mejia got the double Singles and doubles, and the Mexico mixed team making the final just put them over the top to win the Combined team.

Pro Racquetball Stats DB match results. Click on these links to see the match results in the DB:

– Men’s Singles: http://rb.gy/4m4j8

– Women’s Singles: http://rb.gy/cvs9h

– Men’s Doubles: http://rb.gy/u2f40

– Women’s Doubles: http://rb.gy/ii02g

– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/9bz

Team Competition Results

Note: I do not yet have the full team results entered into the DB, but per blog posts we have gleaned the following standings:

Combined Team (Overall)

1st – Mexico

2nd – Bolivia

3rd – Argentina

4th — USA

Men’s Team

1st – Bolivia

2nd – Mexico

3rd – USA

4th – Argentina

Women’s Team

1st – Mexico

2nd – Argentina

3rd – Bolivia

4th – Guatemala

Mexico back on top in combined after finishing 2nd to Bolivia at last year’s PARC. 4th place overall is tied for the worst ever USA overall finish, and the Women finished5th. Definitely a disappointing result for team USA, and I believe these finishes cost the US some spots in the upcoming Pan Am Games.

Let’s run through the individual draws and talk about notable results.

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Men’s Singles:

There were no real surprises in the Round Robin stage of the Men’s singles; all the expected 1st place finishers finished first and I saw no real upsets. This led to a pretty true knockout stage draw.

In the knockouts, Canadian #1 Samuel Murray had to forfeit out, which thinned the bottom half of the draw a bit. The biggest “upset” in the quarters was Argentinian Diego García taking out USA #4 seed Thomas Carter, though Garcia’s results on tour lately made this a predictable result.

In the quarters, Garcia continued his run, taking out IRT top 4 player Portillo in a five game battle. It was chalk from the bottom, as #2 @Jake Bredenbeck and #3 Moscoso advanced to the semis without much trouble.

In the semis, #1 seed @Carlos Keller Vargas advanced to the finals over Bolivian-born but converted Argentine Garcia by the astounding score of 21-19 in the 5th. What an epic battle. From the bottom, Moscoso downed his familiar IRT pro rival Jake in 3 straight to get to the final.

The final was an all-Bolivian affair, a rematch of the Bolivian nationals that Keller surprisingly took earlier this year to ensure he was the top seeded Bolivian in this draw. Moscoso took three close games from his long-time teammate 8,9,9 to win the title. It is Moscoso’s 4th IRF title and third IRF major title (2023 PARC, 2022 Worlds, 2022 PARC), further solidifying his claim to being the best player in the world. See http://rb.gy/svvs1 for all Moscoso’s titles.

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Women’s Singles:

As with the men, no real surprises in the group stage, which featured a couple of all LPRT top 10 matchups that went basically along LPRT ranking lines.

The Knockout round featured a break out performance and a ton of upsets.

– #17 seed Costa Rican Maricruz Ortiz shocked the tournament by ousting #1 seed and defending PARC champion Angelica Barrios in the round of 16. A shocking upset by seed, but perhaps not so shocking for those who have watched Ortiz’ transformation lately as a player.

– #6 Mejia took a second win over #11 Erika Manilla after the two top 4 LPRT pros also met in the RR stage. This is one of the downsides of IRF’s seeding methodology, leading to a match that should have happened in the semis happening in the 16s and thus badly impacting team USA’s chances in the overall standings.

– Bolivian Yazmine Sabja Aliss got a solid win over LPRT top 10 player Carla Munoz to move into the quarters.

In the quarters, Ortiz continued her run with another win over a top LPRT pro, beating Colombian Cristina Amaya in a 5-gamer. Meanwhile, Maria José Vargas put another stake of doubt in the current status of world #1 @Paola Longoria , beating her in five games to give Longoria her earliest international loss since the 2006 Worlds (when Paola was a month past turning 17). See http://rb.gy/hzzal for a full list of Longoria’s IRF losses, which total just 11 over a nearly 20 year career.

Mejia topped her second top-4 talent player in a row, beating #3 @AAna Gabriela Martínez in four, while Argentina’s Natalia Mendez took out Sabja in a battle of Bolivian-born players.

The semis gave us some normalcy, as the two expected players Vargas and Mejia advanced, and then Mejia took a 3-game close final 8,6,9 to claim the title. This is Mejia’s first ever international title.

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Men’s Doubles.

The Men’s doubles draw was almost entirely chalk, with no real surprises in the RR stage and a grand total of one upset by seed through the knockout stage. That upset was #5 team USA and the Bredenbeck brothers taking out #4 Team Ecuador in three quick games. Otherwise this was a coronation of team Mexico and team Bolivia blowing through the draw to meet in the final. In that final, Rodrigo Montoya won his 4th major international title with partner Portillo over the Bolivian national champions Moscoso and Kadim Carrasco .

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Women’s Doubles:

The Women’s doubles RR gave a couple of surprises, especially team Guatemala (Gaby Martinez and Maria Renee Rodriguez ) taking out the pre-tournament #1 seeds from Argentina Mendez and Valeria Centellas to claim the #1 seed in the knockouts. They held serve all the way to the finals, taking out team Bolivia in the semis and team Chile in the quarters from the top-side.

From the bottom half, team Mexico (Alexandra Herrera and Mejia), which is largely now considered the best doubles team in the world, cruised through the draw without dropping a game en route to the title. This is Mejia’s first ever IRF title, and Herrera’s third.

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Mixed Doubles

This is just the third IRF event to host a Mixed doubles title, and Rodrigo Montoya has been in the final of all three. This time however, he came out on the losing end, as Moscoso earned the double for the weekend by combining with Mixed partner Barrios to win the title over #1 seed Team Mexico and its star-studded pairing of Montoya & Longoria.

It is a rare feat to beat Longoria in doubles internationally; she’s now a combined 104-6 in 15 years of competing internationally. But Moscoso and Barrios did it.

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Congrats to the International Racquetball Federation for another successful event. Thanks to the IRT streaming crew and @Pablo Fajre for streaming, and thanks to @Gary Mazaroff and all his co-announcers for their hard work all week.

Next up on the IRF calendar is the Central American & Carribean games in July, then the big one: Pan Am Games in Chile in October.

Welcome to the first International Racquetball Federation (IRF) event of the 2023 season, the 34th installment of the Pan American Racquetball Championships (PARC). This year’s event is being held in Guatemala City and serves as a qualifier into the 2023 Pan Am Games later this year in Chile. The Pan Am games, lest I remind you, are the highest international level competition our sport has in the absence of being in the Olympics, and thus these games take on additional import.

r2sports home page for the brackets and match times: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=40828

We’re through the round robin stages and have the knockouts set, so its a great time to do a preview.

Seeding for these events is done on a sliding scale of the country’s past performances and is not specific to a player, which is why you’ll see some odd seeding in the singles especially (#1 LPRT pro Paola Longoria seeded 5th, for example), and will make for some good early round match ups.

Here’s a look at open-level knock outs for singles, doubles and mixed.

Men’s Singles:

USA and Bolivia players own the top 4 seeds in the knockouts, which gives both advantages to get to the latter stages at the expense of the top Mexican and Canadian players.

The round of 16 may see some upsets:

– Both Costa Ricans are set to play each other in the 16s, a bummer for Andres Acuna and @Gabriel Garcia

– Upset watch: #13 Argentine @Diego García has the firepower to take out #4 Thomas Carter .

– Looks like Canada on Canada crime as #6 Samuel Murray projects to face his #2 Trevor Webb .

Projected quarters:

– #1 @Carlos Keller Vargas , who gets the #1 seed by virtue of his topping Moscoso in Bolivian Nationals a couple of months ago, projects to face Costa Rica’s Acuna. This is a coin flip for me; Keller generally plays really well internationally so i’ll favor him, but Acuna is more battle tested lately.

– #5 Eduardo Portillo vs #13 Garcia: Portillo should move on here but Garcia is an unknown to tour players and could forge an upset.

– #3 Conrrado Moscoso versus #6 Murray: I’m unsure if this match will occur b/c reportedly Murray dinged his knee during group play. This may be a walkover, or this may be another Canadian, or this could be the winner of Webb/Espinosa in the earlier round. Either way, Moscoso is favored.

– #2 @Jake Bredenbeck vs #7 Andree Parrilla ; , a pro semis-quality match that we’ve already seen on tour a couple times this year. Jake has the upper hand over Andree right now.

Projected Semis:

– Portillo over Keller. Lalo is just a better player right now than either Keller or Acuna and should move into the final.

– Moscoso over Jake: Its a lopsided draw; the bottom half is just so much deeper than the top. I’d have liked to see this as a final (as we saw in the last IRT event), but we’ll get it here.

Final: Moscoso over Portillo. Moscoso is hyper focused on international titles and gets one here.

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Women’s Open knockout preview:

Thanks to some really tough RR matchups, we’re going to have some bang-up round of 16 matches in the Women’s draw.

In the 16s:

– #1 @AnAngelica Barros taking on Costa Rican up and coming Junior @Maricruz Ortiz , who has been training in Florida with Sudsy Monchik and Veronica Sotomayor and has been improving rapidly. Not enough to beat Barrios, but enough to put a scare into her.

– Look for a close 8/9 between Cristina Amaya and Ecuadorian veteran Muñoz Pazita .

– A fitting 5/12 matchup between long-time veteran rivals Paola Longoria and @Rhonda Rajsich in what could be Rhonda’s final int’l appearance. Her American rivals may start to knock her off the US National team.

– #4 Maria José Vargas over Ecuador’s Munoz.

– #3 Gaby over fellow Guatemalan Aguilar

– 11 @Erika Manilla vs #6 Montse Mejia , who literally just played yesterday. This seems like a defect in the seeding. Too early an exit for Manilla and this will cost the US in the Pan Am Games seeding with two female round of 16 exists.

– #7 Carla Munoz versus Bolivian vet #10 @Yasmine Sabja could be close

– #2 Natalia Mendez should cruise over Dominican Delgado.

Quarters:

– Barrios advances by whoever comes out of 8/9

– Longoria-Vargas. phew. Vargas took her out with no pressure in an LPRT event a few weeks ago, but Paola lives for IRF titles and moves on.

– Mejia-Gaby; another powerhouse meeting. They met frequently as juniors, but Montse owns their adult meetings. Mejia to advance.

– Mendez Munoz: Natalia has the advantage here.

Semis:

– Longoria over Barrios. Yes, Angelica has a recent win, but this is PARC not the pros.

– Mejia over Mendez; Montse outclasses the Argentine.

Final … Mexico vs Mexico again, and Montse continues her dominance over the rest of her female compatriots with her first int’l title.

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Men’s doubles preview:

The injury to Murray hampers Canada’s chances here and really opens up the bottom half of the draw for a Bolivian romp to the finals. From the top, expect Mexico vs USA to be action packed in the semis but for Montoya/Parrilla to advance.

In the final, i see Mexico topping Bolivia’s Moscoso/Carrasco.

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Women’s Doubles preview:

Team Guatemala has been playing really well lately, but nobody’s stopping Herrera/Mejia from winning this title together. Can team USA Michelle Key and @Erika Manilla make some noise from the top half and get to the final? We’ll see.

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Mixed Doubles preview

Two powerhouse teams of top pros are seeded 1st and 2nd, and its hard to predict anything other than Mexico vs Bolivia final. The ladies player in mixed always dictates the winner for me, and I see Longoria outhitting Barrios on the right hand side in that final to power Mexico to another international mixed win.

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The IRT streaming team is in Guatemala doing the broadcasts, and lead IRF broadcaster @gary mazaroff is on the mike along with Alexis Iwaasa and others. Tune in all week for solid matches.