Category: Guatemala

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2024 IRF Junior Worlds Recap

One of the biggest tournaments of the year just wrapped up; Junior Worlds 2024, held at the fabulous facility in Guatemala City for the fourth time in out of the last five years. More than 200 Juniors from 14 countries competed there for the last week.

Champions were crowned in Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles in six age groups: 21U, 18U, 16U, 14U, 12U, and 10U, as well as a team competition, meaning that in essence this tournament actually held 30 separate competitions. All 30 competitions are now in the database; If you see any typos, or name corrections, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Reminder: as a practice, Pro Racquetball Stats does not capture full draws for any groups younger than 14yr olds; for the 12s, 10s, and younger we just capture the champions for historical reporting. Junior Doubles only has the gold medal match, not the full draws. If you’d like to see more data than this for juniors in the database, reach out and I’ll guide you on doing data entry.

Congratulations to your champions:

Boys Singles:

– Boys 21U: Jhoel Acha Portugal, Bolivia

– Boys 18U: Jhonathan Flores, Bolivia

– Boys 16U: Sebastian Terrazas, Bolivia

– Boys 14U: Santiago Borja, Bolivia

– Boys 12U: Alejandro Robles Picon, Mexico

– Boys 10U: Vincent Riveros, Bolivia

Bolivia takes 5 of the 6 Boys titles. Not only that, but every single final was lost by either a player from Team Mexico or a fellow Bolivian for a clean sweep of both Gold and Silver across the board.

Girls Singles:

– Girls 21U: Camila Rivero, Bolivia

– Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar, Mexico

– Girls 16U: Miranda Barraza, Mexico

– Girls 14U: Larissa Faeth, Costa Rica

– Girls 12U: Mary Hinojosa Garcia, Mexico

– Girls 10U: Lia Montserrat Gonzalez, Mexico

Mexico takes 4 of the 6 Girls Singles titles. Mexico was also the finalist in 4 of the six draws, showing a real dominance this year.

Team USA had a few of its singles entrants advance to the quarters, but USA did not have a single finalist at this event. The best result in singles for any American was @Annie Sanchez making the semis of U21 and @Naomi Ros making the semis of 18U.

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Boys Doubles:

– Boys 21U: Erick Trujillo/Sebastian Hernandez, Mexico

– Boys 18U: Eder Renteria/Jorge Gutierrez, Mexico

– Boys 16U: Sebastian Ruelas/Nicolas Galindo, Mexico

– Boys 14U: Santiago Castillo/Brian Axel Sanchez, Mexico

– Boys 12U: Alejandro Robles Picon/Max Soto, Mexico

– Boys 10U: Leonardo Zuna Campero/Benjamin Lino Daza, Bolivia

Mexico wins 5 of the 6 doubles titles, losing on the Boys 10U doubles title, where they made the finals. The losing finalists were mostly Bolivians and Team USA, the best result for USA for the event (Sendry/Mendoza losing finalists in 18U and Mangalampalli/Williams making the 14U doubles final).

Girls Doubles:

– Girls 21U: Camila Rivero/Natalia Mendez, Bolivia

– Girls 18U: Adriana Noelia Blacutt/Natalia Mendez, Bolivia

– Girls 16U: Andrea Perez Picon/Miranda Barraza, Mexico

– Girls 14U: Julia Rebello/Angelica Villaroel Garzon, Bolivia

– Girls 12U: Sofia Rocabado/Adriana Bazan, Bolivia

– Girls 10U: Lia Medrano/Lia Montserrat Gonzalez, Mexico

Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Girls doubles titles, including a doubles double for Natalia Carolina Mendez. Team USA Victoria Rodriguez & Montserrat Tores made the 16U final for our best result.

Mixed Doubles:

– Mixed 21U: Erick Trujillo/Ivanna Balderrama, Mexico

– Mixed 18U: Nicolas Ramiro Iglesias/Florencia Villazon Chalco, Bolivia

– Mixed 16U: Sebastian Ruelas/Andrea Perez Picon, Mexico

– Mixed 14U: Santiago Borja, Valentina Villarroel Garzon, Bolivia

– Mixed 12U: Hermann Racial Gracia/Michelle Gomez, Mexico

– Mixed 10U: Kerman Damian Gracia/Lia Montserrat Gonzalez, Mexico

Mexico takes 4 of the 6 Mixed doubles titles.

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Grand total of Titles won by Country:

– Mexico: 16 of 30

– Bolivia: 13 of 30

– Costa Rica: 1 of 30

There was just one Triple Crown winner on the weekend:

– Girls 10U: Lia Montserrat Gonzalez, Mexico

These players earned two titles:

– 21U Boys: Erick Trujillo, Mexico (2 doubles titles)

– 16U Boys: Sebastian Ruelas, Mexico (2 doubles titles)

– 14U Boys: Santiago Borja, Bolivia (singles and gender doubles)

– 12U Boys: Alejandro Robles Picon, Mexico (singles and gender doubles)

– 21U Girls: Camila Rivero , Bolivia (singles and gender doubles)

– 21U Girls: Natalia Mendez, Bolivia (who won both 21U and 18U doubles)

– 16U Girls: Miranda Barraza, Mexico (singles and gender doubles)

– 16U Girls: Andrea Perez Picon, Mexico (2 doubles)

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Team Winners:

– Boys Team: 1. Mexico, 2 Bolivia, 3 USA, 4 Costa Rica

– Girls Team: 1. Mexico, 2 Bolivia, 3. USA, 4 Guatemala

– Combined Team: 1. Mexico, 2. Bolivia, 3. USA, 4.

– Boys Esprit cup: 1. Bolivia, 2. Mexico, 3 Costa Rica, 4. USA

– Girls Espirit Cup: 1. Bolivia, 2. Mexico, 3. USA, 4. Ecuador

– Combined Espirit Cup: 1. Bolivia, 2. Mexico, 3. USA, 4. Ecuador

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Every singles and doubles draw has a match report in the database that you can run: instead of repeating dozens of links we’ll give some examples here. Surf to www.proracquetballstats.com, click on either Juniors or “Junior Doubles” database, then at the very top you can pull down a match report. You can also run a number of different reports for singles and doubles.

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Singles Draw commentary

Now some quick commentary division by singles division, mostly to recognize winners who have earned multiple Junior World titles over the years, and to provide some commentary on the older divisions with players who have already competed on the pro tours…

I use these “Matrix Reports” constantly; they show all the Junior winners across every age group for all of time. These links are for the Junior Worlds and date to 1989, the first ever Junior Worlds event, but are also available for USA, Canada, and Mexico.

Boys Singles Matrix Report: http://rb.gy/acygod

Girls Singles Matrix Report: http://rb.gy/yfsvqq

Boys 21U: #1 seed Bolivian Jhoel Alexis Acha took the U21 world title, topping current IRT top-10 ranked Erick Trujillo in the semis and Sebastian Hernandez in the final. This immediately makes Acha one of the top 20 players in the world in my personal pecking order, by virtue of the company he’s keeping. One thing Junior Worlds provides is a pathway into the top players in Bolivia, who we never get to hear about other wise.

Boys 18U: Jhonathan Flores repeated as 18U World Junior champ. The only player to get a game off of him the entire tourney was in the semis, when Mexico’s #1 Eder Renteria took him to five games. Flores, for those who forgot, took out Jake, Collins, Ulliman, and Alonso in Chicago’s IRT event in March. He’s legit, and as an 18yr old is probably better than any of the U21 players still juniors-eligible.

Boys 16U: Bolivian Sebastian Terrazas wins his 2nd career junior world title; he took 12U title in 2021 previously. Terrazas did not win his own National title this year, losing to Bismark Pereria (who was upset early here), but took out both of Mexico’s top 16U players in the semis and finals to win.

Boys 14U: Bolivian Santiago Borja repeats as 14U champ, but the story of this draw was the sole South Korean entrant at Junior Worlds: Taein Woo came in and upset Mexico’s Santiago Castillo 12-10 in the fifth to open the event, then made a run to the semis before falling to the eventual champ Borja.

Boys 12U: Alejandro Robles Picon, who made the rare switch from USA to Mexico for the start of 2024, captured his first ever Junior worlds title. He and his sister had huge weekends.

Boys 10U: Bolivian Vincent Riveros starts out his junior career with a win.

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Girls 21U: Camila Rivero, who briefly switched to play for Colombia but who now is back in the Bolivian fold, repeated as U21 champ. Last year she also won the 18U title, meaning she has another two years in the U21s. She’s got a few LPRT results on her resume from a few years back, but her most notable result may be a quarter finals finish at Worlds in San Antonio earlier this year when she played Longoria tough in a loss.

Girls 18U: Yanna Salazar topped America’s best chance for a medal in Naomi Ros in the semis, then beat her country-man Cynthia Gutierrez for her first World title.

Girls 16U: First time singles winner Miranda Barraza topped Andrea Perez Picon in the final to win the all-Mexico gold medal match.

Girls 14U: Costa Rican Larissa Faeth won the sole medal at these competitions not won by someone from either Mexico or Brazil, She moved up to 14U after winning 12U last year and claimed the title in her age 13 season.

Girls 12U: Mary Hinojosa Garcia moved up from 10U to win back to back titles.

Girls 10U: Lia Montserrat Gonzalez, the sole triple crown winner, got started with a singles title.

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Thanks to the International Racquetball Federation for hosting the event, thanks to the great hosts in Guatemala, thanks to all our the coaches and parents who sacrificed to get your kids down there, especially this close to the holiday season, thanks to @Gary Mazaroff for the streaming and broadcasting with partners all tournament.

That’s it for the 2024 Racquetball year. I still owe an IRT season summary article (waiting for the final season rankings to publish), plus I’ll throw together a recap of the calendar year of events before the year is out.

International Racquetball Federation – IRF

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2024 PARC Individual Event Recap

Sam Bredenbeck with his first international medal. Photo via Sam’s instagram

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.

—

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

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35th Annual IRF Pan American Racquetball Tournament Knockout Preview

Montoya is #1 seed in both men’s singles and doubles; can he convert with a new partner? Photo Kevin Savory 2022 Portland IRT event

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

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2023 PARC Recap

Moscoso powers Bolivia with two titles and a third final. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

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.

—

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.

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IRF 2023 PARC Knockout Stage Preview

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.

—

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.

—–

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.

—-

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.

—

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.

—–

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.

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Junior Worlds 2022 Wrap-up

Barrios takes the triple crown of U21 at World Juniors. Photo via Barrios’ facebook page.

One of the biggest tournaments for us to enter each year just wrapped up; Junior Worlds 2022, held this year for the second year running at the fabulous brand new facility in Guatemala City.

Champions were crowned in Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles in six age groups: 21U, 18U, 16U, 14U, 12U, and 10U, as well as a team competition, meaning that in essence this tournament actually held 30 separate competitions to enter into the database. Its the rough equivalent of doing 30 small pro tournaments all at once, with the added benefit of typing in brand new names never before seen for a good chunk of the participants. If you see any typos, or name corrections, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Reminder: as a practice, Pro Racquetball Stats does not capture full draws for any groups younger than 14yr olds; for the 12s, 10s, and younger we just capture the champions for historical reporting.

Congratulations to your champions:

Boys Singles:

– Boys 21U: @Diego Garcia , Argentina

– Boys 18U: @Sebastian Hernandez , Mexico

– Boys 16U: @Jorge Gutierrez, Mexico

– Boys 14U: Nicolas Galindo, Mexico

– Boys 12U: Pablo Ignacio Lagos, Bolivia

– Boys 10U: Hermann Gracia, Mexico

Mexico takes 4 of the 6 Boys singles titles.

Girls Singles:

– Girls 21U: Angelica Barrios , Bolivia

– Girls 18U: Michaela Meneses , Bolivia

– Girls 16U: @Naomi Ros, USA

– Girls 14U: Adriana Noelia Blacutt, Bolivia

– Girls 12U: María Laura Villacreses, Bolivia

– Girls 10U: Michelle Gomez, Mexico

Bolivia takes 4 of the 6 Girls Singles titles, while Ros secures the USA’s sole singles gold at the event.

———————

Boys Doubles:

– Boys 21U: Erick Trujillo / @Jose Carlos Ramos , Mexico

– Boys 18U: Sebastian Hernandez / @Luis Renteria, Mexico

– Boys 16U: Jorge Gutierrez / Eder Renteria , Mexico

– Boys 14U: Diego Romano / Sebastian Ruelas, Mexico

– Boys 12U: Axel Sanchez / Santiago Castillo, Mexico

– Boys 10U: Hermann Gracia / Arturo Gonzalez, Mexico

Mexico does a clean sweep of all 6 Boys doubles titles.

Girls Doubles:

– Girls 21U: Angelica Barrios / @Natalia Mita, Bolivia

– Girls 18U: Valeria Miranda / Rebecca Amaya, Bolivia

– Girls 16U: Cynthia Gutierrez / Yanna Salazar, Mexico

– Girls 14U: Larissa Faeth / Giuliana Faeth, Costa Rica

– Girls 12U: Angelica Villaroel Garzon / Luciana Illanes Quenta, Bolivia

– Girls 10U: Grissel Gomez / Michelle Gomez, Mexico

Bolivia takes 3 of the 6 Girls doubles titles.

Mixed Doubles:

– Mixed 21U: Hector Barrios / @Angelica Barrios, Bolivia

– Mixed 18U: Sebastian Hernandez / Angela Veronica Vera Ortega , Mexico

– Mixed 16U: Jorge Gutierrez / Yanna Salazar, Mexico

– Mixed 14U: Sebastian Ruelas / Miranda Barraza, Mexico

– Mixed 12U: Pablo Ignacio Lagos / Angelica Villaroel Garzon, Bolivia

– Mixed 10U: Hermann Gracia / Michelle Gomez, Mexico

Mexico takes 4 of the 6 Mixed doubles titles.

—————————

Grand total of Titles won by Country:

– Mexico: 17 of 30

– Bolivia: 10 of 30

– Argentina, USA, and Costa Rica: 1 each

Team Mexico really dominates the 2022 event, especially on the Boys side where they took 10 of the 12 divisions. Bolivia won 7 of their 10 titles in Girls divisions, supporting what we’ve seen on the pro tour, where Bolivian players (or Bolivian born) comprise 3 of the top 10 and 6 of the top 20 players.

Bravo to these players, who took hold Triple Crowns of Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles:

– Angelica Barrios: 21U, Bolivia

– Sebastian Hernandez: 18U, Mexico

– Jorge Gutierrez, 16U, Mexico

– Hermann Gracia, 10U, Mexico

– Michelle Gomez, 10U, Mexico

These players earned double crowns:

– Yanna Salazar, 16U, Mexico

– Sebastian Ruelas, 14U, Mexico

– Pablo Ignacio Lagos, 12U, Bolivia

– Angelica Villaroel Garzon , 12U, Bolivia

——

Every draw has a match report in the database that you can run: instead of repeating dozens of links we’ll give some examples here. Surf to www.proracquetballstats.com, click on either Juniors or “Junior Doubles” database, then at the very top you can pull down a match report. You can also run a number of different reports for singles and doubles.

——

Now some quick commentary division by singles division, mostly to recognize winners who have earned multiple Junior World titles over the years, and to provide some commentary on the older divisions with players who have already competed on the pro tours…

I use these “Matrix Reports” constantly; they show all the Junior winners across every age group for all of time. These links are for the Junior Worlds and date to 1989, the first ever Junior Worlds event, but are also available for USA, Canada, and Mexico.

Boys Singles Matrix Report: http://rb.gy/acygod

Girls Singles Matrix Report: http://rb.gy/yfsvqq

Boys 21U:

Clearly the two best players (Garcia and Erick Trujillo ) in this draw ended up in the same RR group, and then they fought their way to meet again in the final. Garcia (representing Argentina but who used to represent Bolivia) got two wins over his young Mexican to take Gold. The last time Garcia showed up on tour, he beat both Javier Mar and Rocky Carson; pretty heady company. We hope to see more of him. This is Garcia’s 7th Junior World title.

Notable here is Jose Carlos Ramos, aka “Pepe,” who beat Trujillo in the Mexican Junior nationals final and thus was the #1 seeded Mexican player here; he fell to Garcia in the semis. American #1 Micah Farmer got a great win over Bolivian @Adrian Jaldin but then fell to Garcia in the quarters.

Boys 18U:

Mexico’s Sebastian Hernandez came out of nowhere to win both his country 18U and World 18U titles, his first career Junior titles. He dominated in Guatemala, and the only player to even take a game off of him was an obviously hobbled @Timmy Hansen .

Hernandez joins a pretty illustrious list of 18U boys champs: here in reverse order are past winners: Trujillo, Miranda, Portillo, Marco Rojas, Christian Longoria, Montoya, Mercado, Moscoso, Marco Rojas, and Keller. That list includes 5 players currently ranked in the top 15, multiple IRT tournament winners, etc.

16U:

Mexico’s Jorge Gutierrez repeats as the 16U Junior worlds champ, the first time we’ve had a repeat 16U singles champ since Longoria in 2015. He’s another guy who has really blasted onto the scene, with no previous Mexican Junior titles prior to 2021. We went wire-to-wire as the #1 seed and defeated his countryman Eder Renteria in the final.

14U:

Hats off to Galindo for taking this title; he was inexplicably the #18 seed here, behind two other fellow Mexican players, despite being the 14U losing finalist in Mexican Junior Nationals and thus finishing ahead of multiple other Mexican entrants to this draw. I’ve complained about questionable IRF seedings before but this one is beyond me. He defeats Ruelas in the final after losing the Mexican final to him.

12U: An all-Bolivian Final which featured two Mexican semifinalists and a first time champion.

10U: Hermann Gracia (not Garcia as r2sports shows it) follows up his 10U Mexican title with a worlds title, taking out USA’s Alejandro Robles Picon in a huge come-from behind effort in the final.

———-

Girls 21U

Current LPRT regular Angelica Barrios skipped the pro stop in Maryland to compete and secured her third ever Junior Worlds title. She was pushed in the knockouts by Argentine lefty Martina Katz before topping tough Costa Rican Maricruz Ortiz in the semis (a match that many thought was the true final). Mexico’s @Maria Gutierrez (who went by Mafer in this event) upset USA’s Shane Diaz to make the final.

Girls 18U

Bolivia’s LPRT touring pro Micaela Meneses repeated as 18U world champ and did not drop a game all event. She secures her 6th Career Junior World title. She topped both Mexican entrants en route to the title.

Girls 16U:

USA’s @Naomi Ros gave the US its sole gold medal at this event, beating both the Bolivian #1 and Mexican #1 to take the title. This is Ros’ second Junior world title; the first was in 12U when she was still competing for Mexico.

Girls 14U: Bolivia’s Adriana Noelia Blacutt wins her first junior world title.

Girls 12U: Another Bolivian first time girls winner in María Laura Villacreses took the title, defeating three of the top seeds along the way.

Girls 10U was taken by Mexico’s Michelle Gomez, who has now entered four junior events in her career and won four titles. She’s the two-time defending Mexico 10U champ, and now she’s the two-time defending World 10U champ.

——

Thanks to the International Racquetball Federation for hosting the event, thanks to the great hosts in Guatemala, thanks to all our the coaches and parents who sacrificed to get your kids down there, especially t his close to the holiday season, thanks to @Gary Mazaroff

for the streaming all tournament.

Tomorrow we’ll publish the LPRT summary, th en we’ll take a break until the end of the year when we’ll start posting some IRT season recap material.

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Weekend Event Wrap-up

Acuna got two solid wins against top 10 opponents to take the Minnesota Hall of Fame event. Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory

In addition to the LPRT Boston Open, there were a slew of other events this past weekend worthy of mention. Here’s a quick run through of what was a very busy weekend globally for racquetball.

US High School Nationals.


r2sports site: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=38151
One of the biggest tournaments of the year (by pure attendance) was held last weekend: the 2022 @USA Racquetball High School Nationals event, held at the Vetta Sports clubs in St. Louis.


Nearly 350 High School players from around the country were in St. Louis to compete for singles, doubles, and team competitions. Here’s a recap of the #1/Gold competitions on the weekend…

  • Boys #1 Gold Singles: #1 @Josh Shea from New York topped #2 @AnAndrew Gleason from Iowa. In a likely precursor to the 18U Junior Nationals final later this year, Shea won the first HS title for a New Yorker since … @sSudsy Monchik won in 1991.
  • Girls #1 Gold Singles: #2 @Naomi Ros from San Antonio upset #1 seed @Heather Mahoney. Ros recently relocated from Mexico and topped Mahoney in the 2021 Junior Nationals, setting up a rivalry that is set to run for a couple more years on the US junior national scene. She becomes the first ever titlist from a Texas HS on the girl’s side.
  • Boys #1 Doubles: Jacob Schmidt / Gabe Collins from Christian Brothers College High School in St Louis cruised to the title as the #1 seed.
  • Girls #1 Doubles: Heather Mahoney / Ava Naworski from Casa Grande High School outside of Santa Rosa HS took the title as the #3 seeds.
  • Mixed #1 Doubles: Ros teamed with DJ Mendoza (the #4 seed in Boys #1 gold) to cruise to the Mixed doubles title.
    The team competition was dominated by Missouri/St Louis area high schools:
  • Boys’ Team: St. Louis University HS
  • Girl’s Team: Lafayette HS
  • Overall Team: Kirkwood HS

Congrats to everyone who played, organized and participated. Thanks to @LLeo Vasque ‘s tireless work on the stream all weekend.

LPRT Boston Open Draws
r2sports site: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=38579


Connecticut’s top player @Jose Flores upset the #1 seeded @John Behm to take the 24-man Open draw from Boston this weekend.

Women’s Open: as noted in the LPRT wrap-up, Micaela Meneses had a great women’s Open tournament, topping LPRT regulars Lotts, Lawrence and Munoz to take the title.

PAC Pueblo Athletic Shootout IRT recap
r2sports: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=38852
Several IRT touring regulars traveled to Colorado to compete in the PAC shootout.
The four IRT regulars all advanced to the singles semis as expected. From there, #1 Andree Parrilla topped #4 @NNick Riff while @David Horn took out his colleague @Adam Manilla in the other semi to setup an All-WRT alumni final.
In that final, Parrilla cruised to the title, topping Horn 2,5.

In doubles, Horn and Manilla were unstoppable, cruising to the pro doubles title over #2 seeds Riffel and @Mike O’Brien in the final.

Minnesota Hall of Fame IRT Tier 3
r2sports: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=38807
A solid mid-western flair draw of top players descended to Fridley over the weekend for the Hall of Fame tournament. This included the IRT broadcast team of @DeDDean Baer and @PFPablo Fajre , who made friends with a local kangaroo and called some matches.
r2sports site: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=38807
Congrats to local open amateurs @John Goth , Blake Hansen , and Lee Meinerz , who joined the 5 touring pros in the pro quarters.
From there, Canadian #1 @Samuel Murray topped #5 Jordy Alonso in one semi, while #3 @Andres Acuña upset home-town favorite @Jake Bredenbeck in the other semi.
In the singles final…Acuna played solid ball to top Murray 10,7 to take the singles title.

In the Doubles draw, the Bredenbeck brothers took out Murray playing with Canadian Ledu Michael in the final.

Lastly, several countries have been holding Nationals events or National team selection events ahead of next month’s Pan American Racquetball Championships. Results are a little hard to come by since no international countries use r2sports outside of the “big 3” … but here’s what we’ve been able to glean from various Facebook Posts:

  • Costa Rica held their men’s championships last weekend; in the men’s final: Andres Acuna d Gabriel Garcia 6,7,5. This is somewhat of a changing of the guard, as @FelipFelipe Camacho has represented the country for many, many years.
  • Colombia held a Men’s Selection event in Pereia, COL over the weekend.
  • Guatemala held their Men’s Selection event this past week and weekend (Women’s will be next weekend). The 4 semi finalists competed (presumably) in a RR draw; here was the results:
  1. @EdwEdwin Galicia
  2. @Juan Jose Salvatierra
  3. Christian Wer
  4. Geovani Mendoza

The top 3 will represent Guatemala, with Mendoza as the alternate.

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IRF Junior Worlds Wrap-up

Erick Trujillo finishes off his juniors career with a world title. Photo 2021 US Open via Kevin Savory


Congrats to all the newly crowned Junior Worlds singles champions:

  • Boys 18U: Erick Trujillo, Mexico
  • Boys 16U: Jorge Gutierrez, Mexico
  • Boys 14U Eder Renteria, Mexico
  • Boys 12U: Sebastian Terrazas, Bolivia
  • Boys 10U: Gustavo Cordova, Bolivia


    Click here; http://rball.pro/043BA8 for a matrix of all Junior Worlds Boys champions for all of time.

    Comments on the draws:
    Boys 18U:
    A first (and only) junior world championship for Trujillo, who graduates from Juniors with a win at the highest level. We look forward to his continuing to compete on the IRT, as he’s had a decent debut so far. He topped fellow Mexican Sebastián Longoria in the final.
    Boys 16U
    Mexican champion Jorge Gutierrez topped Bolivian’s #1 Ezequiel Subieta in a competitive final that featured all Bolivia/Mexican semis. This is Gutierrez’s first ever world title.
    Boys 14U:
    Renteria captures his third ever Junior World Title in his age 13 season, winning the final over countryman Sebastian Ruelas in a rematch of the Mexican 14U final earlier this year.
    Boys 12U
    Terrazas wins his first junior world title in a draw dominated by Bolivians: all three entered advanced to the semis.
    Boys 10U
  • Cordova won an all-Bolivian final over countryman Matias Garabito.
  • Girls 18U: Micaela Meneses Cuellar, Bolivia
  • Girls 16U: Krystin Salinas, Bolivia
  • Girls 14U: Natalia Mendez (no relation), Bolivia
  • Girls 12U: Jamileth Sipec, Guatemala
  • Girls 10U: Michelle Gomez, Mexico
    Click here: https://rball.pro/BCE571 for a matrix of all Junior Worlds winners for all of time.
    Comments on the victors:
    Girls 18U
    Bolivia’s Meneses finishes a grueling two weeks in Guatemala, having also represented her country in the Adult competition. She finished in 13th place, just outside of the guaranteed spots for World Games 2022, but would be first in line if one of the top 12 drops out. She wins junior worlds in her age 17 season in dominant fashion, winning the final 5,2 and still has a year to go. She’s already a regular on the LPRT and we look forward to more from the young Bolivian. She tops the promising lefty Argentine Martina Katz in the final, who impressed all weekend.
    Girls 16U
    After a nail-biting semi win over Mexico’s #2 player @Angela Ortega, Salinas crushed Mexican’s #1 @Cynthia Gutierrez 3,5 to win her first ever Junior World title.
    Girls 14U
    Bolivian Natalia Mendez (no relation to the LPRT touring player Natalia Mendez Erlwein) captured her first ever Junior World title, topping Mexican champ and #1 seed Maria Fernanda Trujillo in the final.
    Girls 12U:
    Sipec broke the Bolivian stronghold on girls titles by vanquishing both Mexican top seeded players en route to the title.
    Girls 10U
  • Gomez avenged a loss to Costa Rica’s Larissa Faeth in the group stage by topping her for the 10U title.

Doubles: We have captured the doubles champions into the database; see http://rball.pro/943497 for a complete list of all Junior worlds doubles champions from 2021 and going back in time.

We have not seen team results posted officially, but it seems that Mexico just beat out Bolivia for the team competition. No idea who might have come in third.

Thus ends a long two weeks of competition in Guatemala. Congrats to all players, to all who competed. Thanks to the IRT broadcasting crew who spent the better part of two weeks in Guatemala City broadcasting. Dean DeAngelo Baer and Pablo Fajre should get some well-deserved rest.


Next up for IRF? The Pan American Racquetball Championships next april in, hopefully , Bolivia!
International Racquetball Federation – IRF

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IRF 20th World Championships Wrap up

Landa wins Worlds. Photo from 2020 USAR National doubles by Kevin Savory


Congrats to your winners on the weekend:

  • Men’s Singles: Alex Landa
  • Men’s Doubles; Rodrigo Montoya/Javier Mar
  • Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria
  • Women’s Doubles: Paola Longoria/Samantha Salas
  • Team: USA

All four draws have been loaded to the database (the official Team results are pending). Here’s those links:

Men’s Singles: http://rball.pro/5E56AA

Men’s Doubles; http://rball.pro/6A670B

Women’s Singles: http://rball.pro/F31645

Women’s Doubles: http://rball.pro/8F6654

Home page for the event: https://www.internationalracquetball.com/xx-world…/

Here’s some commentary and observations on the four draws.


Men’s Singles:
Alex Landa wins his second “major” IRF event (he previously won the 2017 PARC event in San Jose, Costa Rica) by cruising through the group stage as the #1 seed entering the event. In the knockouts, he overcame a first game 15-3 blow-out loss to my pre-tournament favorite Conrrado Moscoso to win that semi with relative ease the rest of the way (3),8,6. A great adjustment by Landa to get to the final form the top-half. Moscoso had taken a close quarter final against #4 seed Andree Parrilla to get to the semis.
From the bottom half, Andres Acuña entered the event as the #13 seed in the round robins before blowing out pre-tournament #2 seed Rodrigo Montoya Solis 5,4 to seize hold of the #2 seed in the knockout stages. But the bottom half was stacked with talent and the touring pros all beat each other up to make the final. USA’s Jake Bredenbeck got a great win over Montoya to vanquish him in the 16s, but then Jake fell to Colombia’s #6 Mario Mercado in the quarters. Mercado and Acuna played an absolutely fantastic match in the semis, a back and forth excellent display of shot making and cliff hangers before Acuna put Mario away to earn a spot in the final.

The final was anticlimactic, especially given all the “history” between Landa and Acuna. This is a frequent matchup as of late; the two have met in the 16s four times in the last five IRT pro events, with Acuna finally taking a match from Alex in Sarasota in the last event prior to Worlds. But the final turned into a route, as Landa played like the Landa we know from 2019-20, the one who took over the #1 spot in the world. Landa wins 6,6 to take the title and make his country switch all the more meaningful.

Women’s Singles

1 Paola Longoria blew through the draw, never dropping a game and only getting stretched to double digits twice, in winning the singles title. This title is her 21st international singles title overall; 4 Worlds, 3 Pan American Games, 8 PARCs, 2 World Games, and the rest regional titles.

The gulf between Paola and the rest of the professionals playing continues to be large. The current #2, #4, #5, #6, #8 and #10 ranked players on tour were all in Guatemala … and none of them even made the final to challenge Paola. That challenger was the surprising Kelani Lawrence, who got a couple of really solid wins over fellow touring pros Carla Muñoz Montesinos, Angelica Barrios and then against her fellow teammate Rhonda Rajsich in the semis to earn her spot in the finals. There, Paola cruised 6,1 to win the title.

Rajsich had a great tourney, rebounding from a 3rd place finish in the RRs and a #15 seeding in the group stage to oust #2 overall seed Maria Jose Vargas Parada in the 16s, then crush home-town favorite Maria Renee Rodríguez in the quarters to make the semis.

Men’s Doubles
The Mexican pairing of Montoya & Mar has now won three straight Mexican national doubles titles, twice beating the presumed #1 doubles team of Daniel De La Rosa and Alvaro Beltran in the final. And now they’ve won the last two IRF competitions together, both times vanquishing the top Bolivian pair of Moscoso and Roland Keller in the final. They’re a young pairing, but they clearly are making their mark on international racquetball.
Women’s Doubles

Longoria and Samantha Salas Solis continue to add to their amazing collection of titles by cruising through the draw and topping team USA in the final 14,6. This 2021 Worlds title is their 15th international title together as a team (4 worlds, 3 Pan Am games, 7 PARCs, and one regional title), to go along with 35 pro doubles titles since 2014 and somewhere in the range of 14-15 Mexican National doubles titles. Just amazing.

Team competition.
Despite taking 3 of the 4 titles, team Mexico was pipped at the top of the team rankings on the strength of Landa’s singles win, two finals appearances and the early round upsets by two Mexican men’s singles players. Bolivia was a distant third.

This is the first time team USA has taken a combined team win since the 2014 Worlds, breaking a streak of 7 straight team wins by Mexico.

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from the IRTlive broadcasting team Dean DeAngelo Baer, !Gary Ga Mazaroff, and Pablo Fajre.

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.

Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/

  • IRF World Juniors has already started and overlapped with the end of Worlds in Guatemala City; that tournament will run through the weekend.
  • Next weekend, the LPRT heads to my old stomping grounds in Severna Park for the last pro event of the season.
  • There’s also a lower-tier IRT event in Atlanta the weekend of the 12th.
  • then, two fun events for the 12/19 weekend: one is the return of racquetball to the outdoor courts in Hollywood Florida, the other is Court Wars, hosted by the Manillas and featuring a number of compelling matches, including a rematch of the World men’s singles final.
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IRF Worlds Knockout Draw Preview

Acuna with the big upset in the RRs. Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory


XX World Racquetball Championships Guatemala 2021


We’re through the RRS, and with no rest for the weary the knockouts start today at 9am Central.


Here’s a quick preview of the four draws:
Men’s Singles:
There was just one major upset in the Men’s Singles RR, which led to the inevitable question: which top seed would get screwed by having Rodrigo Montoya Solis drop to a low seed? The answer is: USA’s Jake Bredenbeck, who gets Montoya as a #14 seed in the round of 16 later today (presuming Rodrigo advances out of the 32s of course). These two have not met since the last of their 6 WRT meetings and they’re 3-3 h2h …but I think i’m favoring Jake here this weekend. Montoya has been nursing a shoulder injury and I don’t think he can hang with Jake’s power right now.
Other 16s that could be interesting include a possible all Guatemala matchup at 8/9 between @Juan Jose Salvatierra and Javier Martinez, #5 Conrrado Moscoso versus his former country-man Diego Garcia Quispe (who now plays for Argentina), and an all-Costa Rica matchup between doubles partners #2 Andres Acuña and #15 Felipe Camacho.
Predictions: I’m going Chalk to the quarters; hard to see any of the top 8 players getting upset. In the quarters:

  • Alex Landa over Martinez
  • Moscoso over Andree Parrilla; a great quarter final of contrasting styles. Parrilla has a win over Moscoso on the IRT, so this is no cakewalk for the most recent IRT pro champ. Look for this to go tie-breaker.
  • Mario Mercado over Jake: Mario really gets up for international competitions, and will be a dark-horse to advance.
  • Acuna over @Luis Aguilar, if he gets here. Aguilar is the most vulnerable of the top 8 seeds to get upset early, but if he beats Jose Daniel Ugalde Albornoz in the 16s he’ll face an uphill challenge to top Acuna.
    Semis:
  • Moscoso over Landa: Moscoso is hot, Landa is still not back to 100% form from his ailments of the summer.
  • Acuna over Mercado: wow; last time I have these two guys playing is in 2014 Junior Worlds 18u, when Acuna topped Mercado in the group stage before Mario raced to the junior 18U world title over none other than Moscoso, his likely opponent in the final. This is a tough one to predict, but i’ll go with Mercado.

Final: Moscoso over Mercado. They met recently in Sarasota, a very close 14,13 win for Moscoso, so this is no gimme. Look for an entertaining match as the spirited Mercado pushes the more talented Moscoso the entire way.

Women’s Singles preview
The women’s RRs featured a couple of group seeds fall, but not unexpectedly, since (for example) Chile’s Carla Muñoz Montesinos was seeded 17th despite being nearly a top 10 LPRT player. So the knockout se eds look pretty straight forward.
In the 32s, USA’s Kelani Lawrence faces the improving Ireland #1 Aisling Hickey in what looks like the toughest play-in of the bracket.
In the 16s, a couple of fun matches await:

  • Defending World champ Ana Gabriela Martínez projects to face tough Ecuadorian vet Maria Pazita Muñoz Albornoz.
  • Both Bolivians are drawn into the same 16, with Angelica Barrios set for a Bolivian Nationals final rematch with Micaela Meneses Cuellar.
  • #6 Munoz, for her troubles in winning her group likely gets fellow LPRT regular Lawrence … who beat the Chilean at the 2019 Pan Am games.
  • two long-time LPRT touring pros in Maria Renee Rodriguez and Amaya Cris face off in the #7/#10. MRR beat her 11-10 at the US Open a few months back, but generally Amaya has held the upper hand in the head-to-head. We’ll give the nod to the home-town favorite here.
  • Lastly, Rhonda Rajsich projects into the #2 seed Maria Jose Vargas Parada, a tough first rounder for the Argentine.
    My projected quarters:
  • Paola Longoria over her doubles partner Samantha Salas Solis
  • Gaby over Natalia Mendez Erlwein
  • Barrios over the winner of Munoz/Lawrence (who i sense will be Munoz)
  • Vargas over MRR. She may be on home soil but beating the #2 player in the world is tough.
    Semis; here’s where the rubber meets the road.
  • Longoria over Gaby; so, Gaby topped Longoria to win the 2018 Worlds in a huge shock, and Gaby is on home soil. But these two have played 19 times, that one win in 2018 remains Gaby’s sole victory over Paola, and the last few times they’ve played it has been a beat down, with Paola winning by scores like 6,5 or 1,7 or 2,5. Paola is very sharp right now and is destined to win this tournament.
  • Vargas over Barrios: another interesting matchup between two native Bolivians with really contrasting styles. In their last meeting, Barrios won the first game before Vargas figured something out and raced to the next two games. I’m guessing with hyper-involved coaching and national team members cheering her on, she won’t make that mistake twice.

Final: Longoria blitzes past Vargas like she generally does for the title.

Men’s doubles:
I’m liking Team USA vs Team Mexico in one semi; that’ll be great theater. I’m favoring Mexico to the final; they’re a more experienced team and did not struggle with inferior competition in the RRs like USA did.
On the bottom side, Team Canada is going to get a rematch with team Bolivia just to get back to the semis, and Team Colombia has a chance at revenge against team Argentina for the same. The bottom half is wide open, but i’ll go out on a limb and put team Canada in the final.

Mexico over Canada in the final.

Women’s Doubles:
I’m liking team Mexico over team Guatemala in the top half. In the bottom half i’m liking team USA for the upset over Bolivia in the quarters but then to lose the rematch against team Argentina in the semis.

Mexico over Argentina in the final

So far we’ve depended a ton on individuals streaming, such as Malia Kamahoahoa Bailey on the Team USA coaching staff or the individual players (Meneses, Barrios, Moscoso are always good for live streaming their matches). But the IRT crew has just arrived in town so look for Pablo Fajre and Dean DeAngelo Baer to get setup and start broadcasting today.