2023 Pan American Games Recap

Moscoso wins his 4th major IRF title in the last two years and establishes himself as the best international player in the world. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

Racquetball’s highest international honor, the Pan American Games, has completed its singles and doubles competitions. Here’s a recap of the winners:

Congratulations to the individual winners:

– Men’s Singles: Conrrado Moscoso: Bolivia

– Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria: Mexico

– Men’s Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya & Javier Mar: Mexico

– Women’s Doubles: Gaby Martinez & Maria Renee Rodriguez, Guatemala

– Mixed Doubles: Adam Manilla & Erika Manilla, USA

Five events and four different countries represented in the winner’s circle, a great testament to the spread of the sport and talent throughout the two continents.

R2sports link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41548

PRS links to Match Reports for this event:

– Men’s Singles: http://rb.gy/pq3qo

– Women’s Singles: http://rb.gy/6hk0y

I’ve run out of URL shorteners in my account for the month, so for the Doubles just got to www.proracquetballstats.com, click on IRF Doubles, then pull down for these three events.

– Men’s Doubles:

– Women’s Doubles:

– Mixed Doubles:

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Here’s a run-through of the notable results for me in each draw.

Men’s Singles:

In the 16s, three interesting results for me. Andres Acuña handled Canadian Coby Iwaasa in three straight, a solid win for the Costa Rican over a tough player in Iwaasa who we rarely see on tour. Mexico’s Eduardo Portillo was stretched to five games before advancing over Ecuador’s Jose Daniel Ugalde. Lastly, the toughest match of the round was USA’s Adam Manilla advancing over Argentina’s Diego Garcia in five games. Garcia regularly gets upset wins whenever he can get to a pro event, and this was a very solid win for Manilla despite the seeds.

In the quarters: #1 seed @Conrrado Moscoso handled Acuna as expected, but USA’s top player Daniel De La Rosa fell in five games to Portillo in a huge upset. Portillo won 13-11 in the fifth, with the final call being a disputed service return skip. The courts in Santiago unfortunately were constructed with a small gap between the floor and the front wall, and to this observer it looked as if DLR hit a perfect return that would have rolled out on a normal court but which “popped up” on this court; the call stood and Lalo had his win. On the other side, Manilla game Mexico’s Rodrigo Montoya a run for his money but fell in five. Lastly, the #2 seed Carlos Keller Vargas held serve against Big Canada Samuel Murray to move on.

In the semis: Moscoso blitzed Lalo, while Keller shocked Montoya (the 2019 Pan Am games gold medalist) with a 5-game win to make it an all-Bolivia final.

In the final, Moscoso and Keller, who annually seem to play for the Bolivian National singles title and who have gone back and forth for years, played another in their series. This time around, Moscoso came out on top in three games. Conrrado wins his fourth straight major IRF title (2023 PARC, 2022 Worlds, and 2022 PARC; Bolivia did not send teams to the 2022 World Games) and has really solidified his place at the top of the Men’s international game.

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Women’s Singles

The 32s and 16s went basically as expected. A couple notable round of 16 matches included Costa Rica’s Maricruz Ortiz topping Guatemala’s @Maria Renee Rodriguez by the score line of 9,7,17. third game: 19-17. The match of the round though was the 2-15 seeds Carla Muñoz and Maria Jose Vargas , who went the distance with the Argentine coming from 2-1 games down to win.

In the quarters, Ortiz continued to impress, topping the draw’s #1 seed Natalia Mendez 12-10 in the fifth to move on and secure a medal. Current LPRT #1 @Montse Mejia took out the 2022 PARC champ Angelica Barrios in three. Three-time defending champ Paola Longoria moved past USA’s Erika Manilla in three, and Vargas rebounded from her near-upset loss to grind out a great 3-game win over 2018 World Champ and 7-time IRF singles finalist Ana Gabriela Martinez to move on.

In the semis, the two Mexicans held serve, with Mejia shutting down Ortiz in three, while Longoria reversed a recent trend of losses to Vargas on tour with a solid 4-game win to set up an all Mexico Final.

In the final, Longoria won her 25th IRF singles title of her career, and her fourth straight Pan American gold, with a 3-game win over her new rival.

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Men’s Doubles

The clear-cut #1 Men’s Doubles team in the world Rodrigo Montoya and @Javier Mar cruised to the title, dropping just one game along the way.

The quarter finals featured two major results: the #2 seeded Bolivian team of Moscoso and @Kadim Carrasco was shocked by the Guatemalan team of @Juan Jose Salvatierra and @Edwin Galicia. Bolivia was the finalist earlier this year at PARC, but they were one-and-done here. Meanwhile, the battle of heavyweights in the quarters was team USA versus team Canada. Murray and Iwaasa won the 2022 PARC event together and are a very experienced team, and they pulled the 5-game “upset” over De La Rosa and @Alejandro Landa to send the US team home one-and done. Canada ran to the final to face team Mexico and took game one before falling.

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Women’s Doubles

The Guatemalan pair of Martinez and Rodriguez finally broke through at a major and took the title, topping the surprise finalists from Argentina Mendez an Vargas. Gaby and MRR have been playing together for a decade and have made a slew of major international Women’s Doubles finals but have always fallen short of winning. Not on the day today, as they played the veteran Argentine team tough and outslugged them for the gold medal.

Vargas and Mendez were in the final by virtue of a shocking upset of the #1 seeds and heavily favored team from Mexico Mejia and Alexandra Herrera . Team USA fell to the Argentines in the quarters, while team Bolivia (Barrios and Daza) lost to the Guatemalans in four close games in the other semi.

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Mixed Doubles

There’s not a long history of Mixed Doubles in IRF events, but the few that have been held have been dominated by Mexico. They’ve won 3 of the 4 such events and were the losing finalist to Bolivia in the other. So when both Mexico and Bolivia were upset in the semis, it sent some shock waves across the sport.

Team Argentina took out team Bolivia (Moscoso & Barrios) in one five-game semifinal triumph, while team USA shocked team Mexico (Portillo & Longoria) in the other, to guarantee a first-time winner in the final.

There, the Manilla’s took over and dominated, winning the Gold medal 4,4,6 with a great game plan of having Adam range over to cherry pick balls and Erika out-hitting fellow power-swinger Vargas along the right.

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Team Standings.

At the end of the five bracket competitions, the conventional IRF points tally was tabulated to determine the overall Team standings. This is different from the Team competition that followed all the individual draws, an event that seems to have been added on to make the trip more worthwhile to the players. These are unofficial standings and are not generally done for events that don’t feature group stages.

Overall Team Standings:

1. Mexico 760

2. Bolivia 540

3. Argentina 440

4. USA 380

5. Guatemala 370

Mexico cruised to the combined title thanks primarily to the Bolivian’s poor Women’s showing. Only the Mixed gold saved USA from being in 5th place behind Guatemala, a country that literally only has one facility in their entire nation.

Men’s Team Standings:

1. Bolivia 360

1T. Mexico 360

3. USA 200

3T Canada 200

5. Costa Rica 150

Mexico won doubles, Bolivia won singles, so perhaps the tiebreaker is Bolivia having the better runner’s up performances.

Women’s Team Standings:

1. Mexico 400

2. Argentina 300

3. Guatemala 240

4. Bolivia 180

4. USA 180

Bolivia would win a TB by virtue of better Doubles performance over USA, if we were awarding team medals.

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As was well discussed during the event, streaming/broadcasting was non-existent officially until the finals, and even then just the doubles was broadcast on the https://panamsportschannel.org/ channel. It is what it is; racquetball fans are just not used to participating in an event where the broadcast rights are sold as a package and free streaming is readily available. We did get some guerrilla streams from parents and players, which kept us satiated here at home.

However, during the doubles final, the streaming was magnificent. High quality cameras showed crisp, crystal clear images of the sport. If only we could get this quality week in/week out. That was a treat.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/

The IRT is in Boston in two week’s time, then the LPRT is in Chicago the week after, so we get all the pros in action in November.

International Racquetball Federation

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

2023 Pan Am Games Racquetball Preview

Longoria is the 3-time defending Pan American Games gold medalist. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

This weekend, the sport of racquetball competes in the Pan American Games. The 19th annual Pan American Games is being hosted by Chile, who built a fantastic new racquetball complex to host this competition. Absent the sport ever being put into the Olympics, this quadriennal competition featuring all the countries in the two American continents is the absolute highest level the sport currently competes.

Racquetball first appeared in the Pan Am games in 1995, in Buenos Aires. In that tournament, John Ellis topped Michael Bronfield in an 11-10 final to cap off his amateur career before turning pro, with Derek Robinson and Canadian Sherman Greenfeld making the semis. On the Women’s side, two legendary female hall of famers from the USA battled in the final, with Michelle Wolf (at the time, Michelle Gould) topping Cheryl Gudinas for the title.

Making it into the Pan Am games was a seminal moment for the sport; it meant we were finally to be recognized as an “Olympic-level sport” in the eyes of the USOPC and IOC (since Pan Am games rises to that level), and it led to an official relationship with the highest US sports organization that lasts to this day.

Racquetball has now been competed in 6 Pan Am Games, missing only one event since the 1995 event (that being Brazil in 2007, when no courts were built). On the Men’s singles side, players from the USA won the first 5 Pan Am golds, with Rodrigo Montoya topping Alvaro Beltran in the 2019 final in Peru to break that streak. See http://rb.gy/gjl3f . For those who remember this famous match, Beltran was ahead in the second game when he dove for a ball and shattered the back glass door, covering himself in shards of glass. He was on a roll but ended up losing the match.

On the women’s singles side, Paola Longoria has dominated the last three events as expected, and is in Chile to pursue a 4th straight. See http://rb.gy/0cav6 .

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41548

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They play singles, doubles, mixed and a team competition. We’ll do a quick preview of the draws with some predictions.

As is normally the case in International events, the seeding is not as fans of the game would expect. That’s because the seeds are done by country (not player), and the country performance for several past events is taken into consideration. Furthermore the #1 and #2 seeds per country are driven by National results. It means we’ll have matchups of top pros way too early as always, and unbalanced brackets … as we have with practically every IRF competition.

Men’s Singles

Thanks to poor recent performances, team USA is the 3rd ranked country, meaning its representatives (Daniel De la Rosa and Adam Manilla ) are seeded 5th and 6th. DLR will have to face Mexican #2 @Eduardo Portillo in the quarters to get a shot at #1 overall seed Conrrado Moscoso in the semis.

In the bottom half, Manilla gets dark-horse #11 Diego Garcia in his opener and could be looking at a quick exit. Defending champ Rodrigo Montoya probably has to contend with Garcia and then the winner of the Carlos Keller Vargas – @Samuel Murray winner to get back to the final. Still, the top half is heavily weighted.

Usually when I look at a possible Moscoso-DLR match, i take into account the elevation, the ball, and the court construction. IRF uses the Gearbox black (slow), and Santiago is at a decent elevation (1,800 feet). I don’t know the court construction but can guess its panel. These factors seem to cancel each other out, but the slower the game plays, the better the advantage for DLR will be. DLR is healthy, has the game plan, and the patience that Moscoso doesn’t have. Meanwhile, Moscoso has won the last three major IRF events (2023 PARC, 2022 Worlds, 2022 PARC) … but has yet to have to contend with DLR in these competitions.

I’ll predict DLR takes Moscoso out in the semis and then tops Montoya in the final. DLR didn’t switch sides to fly all the way down here to lose.

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Women’s Singles

Lots of top-10 LPRT matchups early on in this bracket, as Argentine Natalia Mendez gets a #1 overall seed but has to contend with former #2 LPRT pro Frederique Lambert in the 16s. If she can get past the Canadian, she may have to contend with Costa Rican dark-horse Maricruz Ortiz. Meanwhile, the following four players are all in the same quadrant: #1 LPRT pro @Montse Mejia, 2022 PARC champ Angelica Barrios, former top10 touring pro Veronica Sotomayor , and USA’s @Michelle key . Just a brutal draw for all involved, but its hard to see anyone but Mejia coming out from the top.

The bottom half features five of the top 10 on the LPRT tour right now, including several recent tourney winners. @MarMaria José Vargas is the #2 seed, but last time she faced #7 @AAna Gabriela Martinez she got beat 9,12. 3-time defending champ Longoria is seeded #3 (by virtue of her win over Mejia at Mexican Nationals earlier this year) and is set to face top American Erika Manilla in the quarters, a player she’s dropped games to but never lost to. I see Gaby taking out Vargas, then losing to Longoria in the semis.

I sense Longoria vs Mejia in the final, and even though Mejia is #1 in the rankings, Longoria is #1 in international play and wins her 4th PanAm gold.

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Men’s Doubles:

There are great doubles matches all over this draw, with all the top teams present. #1 Montoya/Mar will barely sweat before making the final, while the bottom half will be a dogfight. USA (DLR & Alejandro Landa ) vs Canada (@Coby Iwaasa & Samuel Murray ) will be a tough one, but the winner here will be favored over #2 Bolivia (Moscoso playing with @Kadim Carrasco ). In the final though I favor Montoya & Mar to defend their Pan Am gold from 2019.

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Women’s Doubles:

The #1 team of Longoria & Mejia is the clear favorite. Team USA (Manilla & Key) will have a tough quarter against team Argentina (Mendez & Vargas) to then take a crack at #1 seeds. From the bottom, the long-time Guatemalan pair of @Maria Renee Rodriguez and Gaby will be favored to get to the final, but will be tested by #3 Bolivia (Barrios and @Jenny Daza Navia ). Look for Mexico to win.

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Mixed Doubles:

#1 Moscoso & Barrios won the 2023 PARC event over Montoya & Longoria; now Mexico is represented by Portillo & Longoria and I think Bolivia is an even bigger favorite to win. #4 Argentina (Vargas & Garcia) will be tough, as will #3 USA (Manilla and Manilla), but I expect this to go chalk.

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After the individual events, all the players get together for a team competition. Those draws will come out later on, but its the individual matches that matter.

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A comment; i’m sure fans of the sport have seen the video put out by @Cristina Amaya this week, talking about what happened and why she and teammate @Maria Paz Riquelme were excluded from the competition. The pair finished 6th in Women’s rankings at the 2023 PARC and should have qualified, but (if I’m understanding the situation) their defunct/bankrupted national federation did not file the paperwork to include their delegation, and thus their spots were given away. This all apparently happened in May but was only found out recently by the understandably crushed Colombian players. What a sh*tty thing to happen, and honestly someone should have notified them or made an exception. It’s not Amaya and Maria paz’ fault their federation collapsed due to corruption and greed. Their two spots (apparently) went to the next team in line, which was Cuba (it also looks like the Dominican Republic snuck two players in thanks to two of the countries ahead of them giving up female spots). Its a shame, and a situation that should have been avoided.

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Streaming outlook: it looks grim for streaming options, in that this event (unlike practically every other racquetball tournament) features broadcast rights that have been sold elsewhere. I’m sure we’ll see guerrilla streams here and there, but don’t hold your breath for 100% coverage.

Associations

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

International Racquetball Federation

Pan American Racquetball Confederation – PARC

USA Racquetball

IRF Central American & Caribbean Championships wrap-up

A first ever international title for Portillo. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

The IRF hosted a regional tournament for the first time since 2018 as the Central American & Caribbean games were held this past week in the Dominican Republic. Technically the actual sporting event is based in El Salvador, but the racquetball component was sent over to the DR thanks to a lack of facilities in the host city/country.

This is the 9th iteration of these games that have had a racquetball component. The first one was in 1990, when Mexico hosted the event and its two singles components were won by Raul Torres and Hilda Rodriguez of Mexico, two very early pioneers of Mexican racquetball. In fact, Mexico has always dominated this competition, winning 12 of the previous 16 singles titles.

see https://rball.pro/ppk and https://rball.pro/jq9 for lists of past singles winners.

Congrats to your winners on the weekend:

– Men’s Singles: Eduardo Portillo

– Women’s Singles: @Paola Longoria

– Men’s Doubles: @Rodrigo Montoya and @Javier Mar

– Women’s Doubles: Montse Mejia and @Alexandra Herrera

– Mixed Doubles: Eduardo Portillo and Paola Longoria

A clean sweep for team Mexico; five events and five titles. Portillo gets the double, as does Longoria.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41377

Match Reports in the PRS database post-load:

– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/8y5

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

– Men’ Doubles: https://rball.pro/bze

– Women’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/i4r

– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/85r

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Lets review the five main draws:

Men’s Singles: In an all-Mexican final, and a rematch of Mexican Nationals from earlier this year, Portillo got a very solid win over countryman and #1 seed Rodrigo Montoya 7,11,13. Lalo wins his first ever international title. Recognition to Guatemala’s Edwin Galicia , who upset DR’s Ramon De Leon to get to the semis. Also shout out to Cuba’s Maikel Moyet for a solid win over former IRT touring pro Felipe Camacho in the knockouts.

Women’s Singles: Guatemala’s @Gaby Martínez upset newly crowned LPRT #1 @Montse Mejia in the semis, but couldn’t vanquish the long-standing #1 @Paola Longoria in the final. Longoria wins her 5th straight title in this competition. Props to CR’s Maricruz Ortiz for making the semis.

Men’s Doubles: this tourney was always coming down to Mexico vs Costa Rica in doubles, the two teams with significant pro experience, and the final did not disappoint. Team Mexico Montoya/Mar tookt he title over Andres Acuna and @Gabriel Garcia , but not without stretching the current top pro team to 5 games in the final.

Women’s Doubles: Team Mexico featuring the new power house team of Mejia and Herrera battled back from two games down to topple Team Guatemala, featuring the long-time partnership of Ana Gabriela Martínez and Maria Renee Rodriguez .

Mixed Doubles: Team Mexico featuring Portillo and Longoria had to dig pretty deep to top Team Guatemala featuring Galicia and Martinez, coming back from 2-1 games down to take the title in the 5th.

All three doubles finals went 5 games and must have made for fantastic viewing.

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There wasn’t a whole lot of streaming on the weekend; apparently per JT R Ball the tv rights were owned by the host country and all we got were some guerilla feeds from people onsite.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/

Next up on the calendar is the World Outdoor Racquetball Outdoor Nationals at Marina Park! This great event has been going on since 1974 and we help promote/support the event with data and broadcast materials.

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tags

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

International Racquetball Federation

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.

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.

21st IRF World Championship Wrap-up

Moscoso is your new World champ. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory


Congrats to your individual winners on the weekend:

  • Men’s Singles: Conrrado Moscoso
  • Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria
  • Men’s Doubles; @Alvaro Beltran and Daniel de la Rosa
  • Women’s Doubles: Longoria & @Samantha Salas Solis
  • Mixed Doubles: Salas and Rodrigo Montoya
    Obviously a huge week for team Mexico, which wins four of the five draws on home soil in San Luis Potosi, strongly taking back the crown of best Country in the sport.
    After the individual events, the countries played “team” events, which were both won by Mexico (Men’s over Canada, Women’s over Bolivia), further cementing Mexico’s reclaiming of their top-country status.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=39914

Here’s a quick recap of each draw, with some observations.
Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/9s5
Bolivia’s Moscoso took out USA’s long-time representative @RRocky Carson in the final to secure his third IRF title and his first world title. Rocky loses in the final of Worlds on the same court where he made his Worlds debut back in 2000, an amazing feat considering that he’s still making the back end of tournaments 22 years later.
Some of the storylines of the knockout draw for me:

  • Moscoso really dominated this event. He beat Landa 2,3,2 (the 2021 World Champ), then turned around the next day and beat Montoya 4,2,6 (the 2018 World Champ). These were absolutely dominant wins even by rally scoring standards, and its hard to understate just how well he was playing. His serves were as fast as I’ve ever seen in a pro or IRF event, thanks to altitude in SLP and where Conrrado is right now.
  • The biggest storyline besides Moscoso has to be the shock upset loss of DLR in the 16s to Guatemalan @Edwin Galicia . This is the currently ranked #1 pro in the world, who should have been in the final against Moscoso. It is really a shocking loss for the world’s top player.

– Rocky came from two games down in the semis to down @Andres Acuna , who continues to make the case that he belongs in the discussion of the top players in the world.

Women’s Singles: https://rball.pro/uw5
Longoria secures her amazing 23rd international singles title, losing just one game the entire tournament. Her first title was in 2006, and now in 2022 she’s just as dominant.
Other storylines for me:

  • I realize its the IRF and they make their own rules … but the women’s draw seeds show why you cannot seed by country. Your 1-4 seeds were Manilla, Mendez, Rajsich and Centellas, giving USA and Argentina the top four seeds based on their finishes last fall. All four players lost in the quarters. Seeding is important in tournaments, and time and again the IRF’s country-based seeding results in weird looking results (like the decade-long #1 LPRT player Longoria being the #6 seed here).
  • Manilla’s loss to Barrios wasn’t that big of an upset, in that they’re #6 and #7 on tour right now, but Manilla’s loss to Angelica (or is it Steffany now?) coupled with her loss to Enriquez at the pro stop last week does not portend well to her aims to challenge for the upper echelons of the tour rankings.

– The second straight week that #2 Herrera has lost to one of her top rivals. Last week it was Mejia, this week Gaby. Is she really ready to challenge Paola for the #1 title, or were her two wins last spring just a good run of form?

Men’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/1hb

  • DLR and Alvaro return to the top of the IRF doubles world, winning Worlds again. They were 2018 World champions together. This represents Beltran’s 11th career IRF doubles title, and he does it in his final appearance before retiring from play.
  • They certainly earned this title, taking out the very solid Ecuadorian team in the quarters, the US team in the semis, and then coming back from 2 games down to beat the excellent Bolivian team in the finals.

– Was slightly surprised the Canadian team didn’t get to the final, but its also an indicator of just how well Moscoso was playing this week. And @Roland Keller is a fantastic right-side player.

Women’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/8hc

  • First the obvious; Longoria and Salas of course are the most dominant pro doubles team, and continue to be the best team in the IRF. This title is their 16th IRF title together. to go with more than 30 pro doubles titles. Its really amazing.

– Bravo to the Argentina team, who beat the team i thought was a shoe-in to get to the finals (USA), then crushed an over-seeded team Canada to get there. And they nearly won; taking the champs to 5 games and a 12-10 5th game loss that could have gone either way. Would love to see what Mendez/Centellas can do going forward, and see if they can challenge the other top teams on tour (Mejia/Herrera specifically).

Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/g75

  • Montoya and Salas are clearly the best mixed team in the world right now, having won their second straight Mixed IRF major to go with their title in the 2021 Mixed pro event in Denver.

– Mixed doubles is a great addition to these tournaments and I hope we get more combined pro events so we get more full-strength mixed pro draws.

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend; thanks to IRT crew and @Pablo Fajre for making it happen, thanks to @Gary Mazaroff and Alexis Iwaasa for your time on the mike.

Thanks to USA Racquetball for streaming the USA matches when not on the main court, as well as other orgs/players who live streamed their matches for us to benefit from afar.

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

IRF Seniors is in Albuquerque next weekend (home of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul!), and then the pro tours kick into action with two straight weekends of Mid-Atlantic tournaments; the LPRT in Chesapeake VA on the 9/11 weekend, and then the IRT in Severna Park the 9/18 weekend. Both of these sites are drivable for yours truly (now living in Richmond), but we’ll see which ones I can get to.

tags

XXI 2022 Worlds Preview

Beltran goes for a title in his final Worlds. Photo US Open 2019 via Photographer Kevin Savory


Hello! I’m a few days late to this preview … but now that the knockout brackets have been set, i thought i’d set the stage for the rest of this week.
The 2022 Worlds tournament is the 21st iteration of the tournament. The first one was in 1981, held at the inaugural World Games in Santa Clara, then the second held three years later in 1984 in Sacramento (it didn’t move far). From there, it has been regularly held every two years at increasingly distant spots in the world from Racquetball’s origin in the states. Places like Germany, Venezuela, Bolivia, South Korea, Colombia, Guatemala, and Ireland have held the event over the years. The USA has now hosted it four times .. but none since 1996. Canada has hosted it twice.
But this year it is in San Luis Potosi, Mexico’s hotbed of racquetball, which now hosts this event for the third time. SLP was set to host in 2020 but Covid knocked the racquetball world for a loop, but here we are, back in SLP and at the amazingly beautiful La Loma Sports Center.
This being racquetball … it wouldn’t be an international event without some interesting stories. In the lead-up to this event, we discovered that:

  • The FMR (Mexico’s federation) is badly in arrears in its payments and paperwork with CONADE (the Mexican equivalent nationals porting body to the US’s US Olympic Committee). This was discovered when the entire Mexican team went to gofundme/facebook to ask for funds to cover their travel with a week’s notice. The FMR and CONADE traded accusations in the media, each disputing the other’s story.
  • The Colombian Federation apparently has dissolved, meaning that the two frequent ladies representatives Cristina Amaya and @Maria Paz Riquelme not only had to fund their own trip … but they had to cover their own and their association’s fees to the IRF which together are thousands of dollars). Not surprisingly, there are no Male Colombian competitors, robbing the worlds of the typical presence of @Mario Mercado , @Sebastian Franco , @Eduardo Garay (if he still even represents Colombia) , or lately Gerson Miranda , who just switched from Bolivia last year. Not good.
  • The European Federation announced that they were not sending any teams this year … but that didn’t stop @Fabian Balmori from coming to represent Spain. Balmori represented Venezuela at various international events from 1993 until 2008, and has two IRF Men’s singles titles to his credit (in the 1993 and 1998 Central American & Caribbean Games events).

The IRF has come to its senses and now uses R2; here’s the link https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=39914

Quick recap of the interesting machinations of the RR groups before we get to knockout predictions.
Note: the top 2 competitors from each group advance to the knockouts, while the non-qualifying players/teams move to the consolation knockout brackets.
In Men’s Singles:

  • #2 seed and defending World champ @Andres Acuna was upset in the RRs by Ecuadorian @Jose Daniel Ugalde in five games. Big-time upset and this will shake up the bottom-side of the draw.
  • Argentina’s Diego Garcia was surprisingly eliminated inthe group stage.
  • Japan’s @Michimue Kono upset the #1 seed @Ssergio.acun in his group, and then Canadian @Kurtis Cullen had an amazing down-two-games come-back to win the group and the top seed; final score against Acuna was (7),(7),9,0,0. Sounds like a possible injury here; we’ll see what the knockouts bring.
  • Most of the rest of the groups went chalk, with #1 overall seed @RRocky Cars and IRT #1 ranked pro @DanielDaniel de la Rosa giving up the fewest points (36 and 37 respectively) in the group stage.
    In Women’s Singles, only a couple of notable results in a very chalk-y RR stage:
  • I was surprised @VValeria Centellas got a win over Steffany Barrios (formerly Angelica) ; big win that hopefully propels her to success in the knockouts.
  • A solid win byAna Gabriela Martinez in the group stage to topple current #2 LPRT player @AleAlexandra Herrera , a 5-game see-saw affair.
  • Both Cuban entrants played their first couple of matches , then no showed. Turns out, they used this opportunity to defect. Bravo to them, and I hope they find success.
    In Men’s Doubles:
  • Kind of surprised the Ecuadorian Men’s team didn’t fare better, after their excellent runs in past events.
  • The Canada-USA match was the highlight of the opening round, with both teams really powering the ball. Hope to see this matchup again.
    In Women’s Doubles:
  • Two of the groups went chalk/predictably, but Group 2 featured three teams to go 2-1, beating each other up and forcing the places to go down to points differential.
    In Mixed Doubles:

– Slightly surprised that the Bolivian team of Moscoso/Daza outlasted the Canadian team of Murray/Lambert.

Predictions/Knockout Preview
Lets run through the knockout draws and make some predictions.
Men’s Singles: The quarters look to be great.

  • #1 @Rocky Carson , who owns 8 IRF singles titles, likely faces Keller, a 2-time PARC champ. Carson has never lost to Keller, and should advance here.
  • #5 @DanieDaniel de la Rosa , who owns 3 IRF titles, likely faces defending champ Acuna,, who should advance as the #13 seed in the 16s over Canada’s @Kurtis Cullen . I don’t see DLR losing here.
  • #3 @Alejandro Landa faces a very stiff challenge against #6 Conrrado Moscoso in what should be the best match of the round. Landa has downed Moscoso two straight events, but neither has been in the race-to-11 rally scoring method. I think the altitude and pace of Moscoso works to his favor and he gets the upset here.
  • For his excellent RR finish earning him the #2 seed, Ecuador’s @Jose Daniel Ugalde is set to face 2-time IRF champ Rodrigo Montoya , who always elevates his game in IRF events. Montoya to advance.
    In the semis:
  • DLR should advance past Carson, though Rocky skipped out on Doubles specifically to focus on singles here while Daniel is still pulling double duty. On paper this is a DLR win .. but Rocky got a win over DLR back in Chicago in March. Could go either way.
  • Montoya has shown a propensity to control Moscoso … but Conrrado has turned the tide. These two met in the semis of PARC in April, a close 3-game win for the Bolivian, and I predict the same here.

In the final: DLR vs Moscoso is a fitting final, a contrast in styles. I think DLR’s patience and maturity on the courts will earn him a close win, similar to the way he ground out a win the last time they played, which was in Denver, at altitude, in Aug 2021.

In Women’s singles, as with the Men’s, the quarters are going to be great:

  • #1 Erika Manilla will have her hands full with the likely play-in winner Barrios (who has to top Chilean vet @Carla Munoz first). Manilla topped Barrios in Vero Beach … but Barrios just won the PARC event (albeit on home soil). A coin flip, but Manilla is slightly favored.
  • The #1 LPRT player @Paola LPaola Longoria is seeded 5th in the knockouts but should have little trouble topping #4 Centellas.
  • #3 Rhonda Rajsich faces a tall task in #6 Gaby Martinez; this should be an upset by seed.
  • Despite the seeds, #7 Herrera should make quick work of #2 Mendez.
    In the semis:
  • Longoria over Manilla; Erika has exploded onto the women’s scene, but isn’t ready to beat Paola, especially on home soil.
  • Martinez over Herrera: this would be an upset by seed, and by LPRT ranking … but Martinez has had consistent success over Alexandra and is an excellent international player.

Final: a rematch of the famous 2018 worlds title for Gaby, her sole career win over Longoria. Not this time: Longoria will not be stopped in her home town.

Men’s Doubles prediction:
I think seeds will hold to the semis. There we get some awesome matches.

  • #1 Mexico should advance to the final over #4 USA. @Alvaro Beltran is seeking to go out on top in his final World tournament.
  • #3 Canada is looking really strong and should topple #2 Bolivia.

In the final, I like DLR/Beltran

Women’s Doubles prediction: its hard not to predict a Mexico-USA final, but these teams will have to beat some solid teams to get there.
Longoria/Salas are pretty unbeatable right now, unless their opponents are Herrera/Mejia, so i’ll predict them to top Lawrence/Scott in the final.

Mixed Doubles prediction: I think Mexico is a shoe-in for the final from the top, but any of three teams (USA, Canada, or Bolivia) could win from the bottom. Whoever advances though will be hard pressed to beat Montoya and Salas.

Streaming is being done by the IRT team for this event (thanks to Pablo Favre ) and the lead broadcasters are the excellent @Gary Mazaroff and @AlIAlexis Iwaasa . Follow @internaInternational Racquetball Federation on Facebook and sign up for live notifications.
Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
Associations
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Hashtags #racquetball #proracquetball #irt #lprt

World Games 2022 Wrap-Up

Acuna with the big win! Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory


Congrats to your winners on the weekend:

  • Men’s Singles: Andres Acuna
  • Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria


    A fantastic result for Acuna, who wins his first major title of any kind, and he beat a number of solid players to do so. Meanwhile, Longoria crushed the draw absent of her two closest rivals to take her third straight World Games title.
    Click here for the list of all World Games Quarters/Semis/Finals from 1981 to present, Men’s Open: https://rball.pro/9xe
    Same for Women’s Open: https://rball.pro/edc
    R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=39815
    Interesting tournament notes: for one of the few times that i can recall … we could not get live streaming for part of the tournament due to sport ownership/broadcast licensing issues. We’re so used to free streaming on FB that it was a shock to the system of most viewers when we found out that the broadcast rights were exclusive to … someone else for the Semis and finals. CBS Sports? Olympic Channel? It was not clear at the time of the match. Eventually we found that the semis were broadcasting live on the Olympic channel’s youtube feed … would have been nice to have the IRF actually tell us that.
    Then, in an apparent massive gaffe, the two semis ran so far over on time (gee, thought rally scoring was supposed to solve that!) that the professional broadcast team left, meaning no streaming or recording of the final? That seems inexplicable. Lets just hope we actually see these matches on a CBS sports network TV feed or somewhere in the future. Since that was kind of the whole point of standing up the portable court in the first place.

Lets review the notable matches in the Men’s Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/2il

In the 16s, because of the nature of this format, there were mostly blowouts. Only a couple of the opening matches were legitimately competitive:

  • in the 8/9 match, Argentina’s @Diego Garcia got a game off of @RoRodrigo Montoya but couldn’t push it any further, losing in four.
  • In the 7/10 match, Guatemalan #1 @JuJuan Jose Salvatierra took a very, very close 3-game win from Costa Rican @Felipe Camacho 14,14,13.
  • – #13 Canadian @Lee Lee Connell , who got into this event just in the last week, pushed #4 Jake Bredenbeck in a couple of games but fell in three straight.

In the Quarters, some major upsets.

  • #9 Montoya took out a visibly fatigued #1 Landa in four. Landa reportedly was ill heading into the tournament, and looked fatigued on longer rallies throughout the match. Montoya’s power and retrieving was on full display, and he ground down Landa over the course of four games.
  • #5 Parrilla “upset” #4 Jake in three, though this was certainly not an upset by IRT rankings.
  • #3 Mercado handled the tough Ecuadorian #1 Ugalde in three straight.
  • – #2 Acuna took care of business against hte Guatemalan #1 Salvatierra in three.

In the Semis, we got two solid matches with predictable results:

  • Despite Parrilla being #2 in the world, his bugabu is Montoya. Rodrigo improves to 6-3 in post-Junior results against Parrilla, taking him out in four.
  • Acuna solidly advanced past the dangerous Mercado in four to secure his third straight IRF men’s singles final.
  • In the Finals, Acuna won three close games 12,13,14 to take the title. Not that anyone could see it.

Lets review the notable matches in the Women’s Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/z7x
In the 16s, as with the Men, only a couple of matches were really close:

  • in the 8/9, two LPRT foes squared off with Chilean @Carla Munoz holding off Guatemalan Maria Renee Rodriguez in four games.
  • – In the 7/10, Two LPRT veterans faced off for the 20th time in their careers, with Mexico’s @Samanatha Salas taking out @AmaCris Amaya in three.

The quarters saw some solid action:

  • #1 Longoria handled #9 Munoz in three
  • #5 Barrios got a really solid win against #4 Mendez, winning in four games. This portends well for Angelica’s attempts to move up in the LPRT standings, if she can get a win against the current #4 ranked player.
  • #6 Gaby made fast work of #3 Rajsich 8,9,8, another “upset” by seed but certainly not by current LPRT ranks.
  • In the best match of the quarters, and the only match so far to go five games, #7 Salas upset #2 Lawrence in a great comeback. Lawrence was up 2 games to 1, but Salas dominated the 4th to force the tiebreaker, which she took 11-9.
    No Americans into the semis on home soil.
    In the Semis:
  • Longoria won a straightforward, if slightly closer than you may have expected, semi over Bolivia’s Barrios 12,12,9.
  • Gaby took down the red-hot Salas in four games to setup a rematch of the 2018 Worlds final against Paola.
  • In the final, Paola came out on fire to win the first game 15-2 before Gaby pulled back one for respectability. From there, Paola ground out the expected win to take her 3rd straight title.

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from primary broadcasters Gary Mazaroff and Alexis Iwaasa, your lead broadcasters. Thanks to the IRT crew (@Pablo Fajre) for heading to Birmingham to setup the streaming equipment; it looked fantastic all weekend.
A comment on the streaming: once the Olympic channel people got in, with their million dollar equipment and high-bandwidth capabilities … man did the sport look good. From here on out, I’ll be using what we saw on youtube as my defacto response to people who ignorantly claim that hte sport is “too fast to broadcast.” No it isn’t; you just need the right equipment.

An additional observation: perhaps we should have re-thought the qualification for this event. The top 4 racquetball playing countries are USA, Mexico, Canada, and Bolivia. You know who was not here on the Men’s side competing? All four of the current reigning champions from these four countries. Carson, De La Rosa, Murray, and Moscoso. It was only half as bad on the female side, with Manilla (USA current champ) and Lambert (Canadian champ) not here. If this is the biggest showcase the sport has had in decades (when was the last time the IOC president showed up to watch Racquetball??), if it was worth the tens of thousands of dollars of expenditure for a MASSIVE IRF staff, a slew of referees, the portable court, etc … maybe we should have had our best players there? The round of 16 was an abomination as compared to what we see day in and day out on the pro tour, and less than half the current pro top 10 on either side competed. Opportunity Lost.

Thanks to @BoBob Frazer and all the staff who helped setup and breakdown the portable court; it looked amazing and the setup was awesome.

Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.

Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/
Outdoor Nationals 2022 is this weekend! Its the second outdoor major of the year, the second leg of the Outdoor Cup series, and one of the longest running tournaments in our sport.

2022 World Games Preview

Kelani is the #2 seed in Birmingham. Photo USAR Singles 2019 via Kevin Savory


We have a rather unique tournament coming up this weekend; its the Racquetball Component of the World Games.
The World Games is a sporting event comprised of sporting disciplines that are NOT competed in the Olympics. Its meant to be the Olympics of non-Olympic sports. And that certainly includes our sport, which endeavored for decades to try to get into the Olympics and never succeeded.
The first World Games was held in 1981 in Santa Clara, CA. Racquetball as a sport used this platform as a way to initiate our own version of an international championship, therefore we also called the 1981 event the first ever IRF “Worlds” Six countries sent players (USA, Mexico, Japan, German, Ireland, and the Netherlands, but curiously not Canada, the 2nd biggest playing country at the time) and the tournament was not surprisingly dominated by American players. The top 3 Men’s and Women’s seeds at the event were all team USA, and the finals were both all USA affairs.
On the Men’s side in 1981, #1 seed @Ed Andrews defeated #3 @Mark Martino 15,18 to win the inaugural title. On the Women’s side in 1981, #1 seed @Cindy Baxter defeated #2 @Barbara Faulkenberry 6,(18),2 in the final (games back then were played to 21). Both Andrews and Baxter are now enshrined in the USAR Hall of Fame.

  • Click here for the Match Report from the 1981 World Games Men’s Open: https://rball.pro/4nn
  • And click here for the Women’s Open: https://rball.pro/bvd
    Since 1981, the World Games have been held every four years in spots rotating around the world … but the Racquetball component has not always been present. In 1985 future IRT star @AAndy Robert topped long-time Canadian #1 @Roger Harripersad in the final, while Baxter repeated as champion, topping Canadian Carol Dupuy in the final.
    However, the racquetball component was cancelled in multiple World Games events in the 80s and 90s due to the selection of sites with no racquetball courts. In Germany in 1989, in Finland in 1997, Japan 2001, and Germany 2005 all cancelled the racquetball components. In fact, the most recent World games from 2017 also cancelled racquetball when Poland couldn’t get the budget to build new courts. So, since 1981 there’s been just five events played …. and 2022 will be the sixth.
  • Click here for a full list of World Games Men’s Open finals: https://rball.pro/2ig
  • And click here for the full list of Women’s Games Women’s finals: https://rball.pro/tjb
    In 2022, @Paola Longoria has a chance to win her 3rd ever World Games title; she was the winner in 2009 over Rajsich and in 2013 over Amaya; all three of these players will be competing at the 2022 event.

Meanwhile on the Men’s side, the last winner of the World games in 2013 was @Polo Gutierrez, who defeated his countryman @Gilberto Mejia in the final 11-10 . Both these players retired from full-time play years ago, so we’ll definitely have a new champion this time around.

Here’s a preview of the 2022 event. We waited until the day of the event since the draws were just released. They’re also on R2 here:
https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=39815
The 16 Qualifiers on each side were determined by their exact finish at the 2021 IRF World games. The top 12 by all non-European/Asian countries, then the last 4 spots reserved for Europe and Asia’s top qualifiers.
However, on both the Men’s and Women’s side we did see some qualifiers decline the invites, and thus we had to go to the 13th and higher placing players to fill this event. They slotted into the seeding ahead of the European/Asian players in the draw. Here’s the replacement players:

  • #4 Moscoso was replaced by the 17th place finisher Cueva from 2021 Worlds, and Cueva slots into the #11 seed here.
  • #12 Manzuri was replaced by the #18 finisher from the DR Ramon De Leon; he becomes the #12 seed here.
  • Korea’s auto qualifier Mingyu declined to come, so the organizers went on down the line form Worlds and ended up with Canada’s Lee Connell, who slots into the #13 seed here.
  • Just one woman qualifier declined to come; that being the quite-pregnant Vargas; she is replaced by the 13th place finisher from Worlds, Bolivian junior @MMicaela Menese
    Unfortunately … they only have time for a single-elimination draw. So all these players are flying in for a one-and done draw. So tensions will be high. Here’s my preview:
    On the Men’s side, here’s how I see the competition going. round of 16:
  • #1 Alejandro Landa faces Ireland’s #2 @Eoin Tynan.
  • #2 @Andres Acuna faces South Korea’s #2 @LeeGunhee Lee
  • #3 Mario Mercado takes on Ireland #2 Ken Cottrell
  • #4 @Jake Bredenbeck , who gets the bump up with Moscoso’s absence (as well as everyone else here on down), now faces Canadian Connell in the opener.
  • #5 @Andree Parrilla will take on the DR’s De Leon in the opener.
  • #6 Ugalde will take on Cueva in a ridiculous situation where two players from the same country are flying thousands of miles to play a one-and-done tournament against each other.
  • #7 An interesting Latin American battle between Guatemala’s #1 Salvatierra and former IRT touring pro Costa Rican Camacho.
  • In the best match of the opener, Bolivian turned Argentinian Diego Garcia takes on the vastly under-seeded former Pan Am Games/World champion @Rodrigo Montoya. I like Garcia’s game, but Montoya should move on here.
    As you’re about to see, the seedings will end up giving us finals-quality matchups in the quarters. If I was re-seeding this event from scratch i’d probably go Landa, Parrilla, Montoya, Acuna, Mercado, Bredenbeck, Garcia, and then probably Camacho.
    Quarters preview:
  • #1 Landa vs #9 Montoya: Well, on paper this is a projected win for Landa. Landa is on “home” soil as the USA rep. However, Montoya always plays well internationally and has proven he can beat Landa time and again in their careers. I think this is going to be close, but Landa pulls it out in a 5th game thriller. Would not be surprised in the least if Montoya wins.
  • 4/5 Parrilla vs Bredenbeck: a tough draw for Jake, pulling the now-#2 ranked IRT player in Parrilla. Andree moves on.
  • 3/6 Mercado will take out the surviving Ecuadorian winner of Ugalde/Cueva.
  • #2 Acuna likely faces his countryman Camacho, who he’s played a thousand times before. Acuna should move on.
    Semis:
  • #5 Parrilla over #1 Landa: I think Parrilla has the confidence and the game to take out Landa at this juncture. However, if this is Montoya and not Landa … watch out for a very competitive coin-flip of a match.
  • #2 Acuna over #3 Mercado: these two faced off in the semis of 2021 Worlds, a fascinating 11-9 thriller taken by the up and coming Acuna. I think the result goes the same.

Final: Parrilla over Acuna. Acuna’s game has taken light year steps forward in the last two years, but Parrilla is the better player

Women’s preview:
The round of 16 for the women will give us a couple of fun matches.

  • #1 Longoria over Japan’s Hanashi
  • #9 Munoz over #8 MRR: these two LPRT regulars have met a few times over the years and Munoz has never lost.
  • #5 Barrios vs #12 Meneses: both the Bolivians meet in the first. A real bummer for the junior, who got in as a “lucky loser” but now will go down in the first to a player she plays a lot back home but cannot yet beat.
  • #4 Mendez over Korea’s Lee
  • #3 Rajsich vs #14 Hickey. This should be a win for Rhonda … but Hickey can play.
  • #6 Gaby Martinez should advance over #11 Canadian Morisette.
  • #7 Salas over long-time rival #10 Amaya
  • #2 Lawrence should advance over Ireland’s Haverty.
    In the quarters:
  • #1 Longoria is 18-0 over Munoz for their career and will make it 19-0. Carla will push for some points to make it close.
  • #5 Barrios over #4 Mendez: these two are 1-1 career, but Barrios took their last meeting on the pro tour. I like Barrios in rally scoring; she defends well and gets sneaky points.
  • #6 Gaby over #3 Rhonda: seedings aside, Gaby is one of the top women in the world right now and should advance past Rhonda, even though Rhonda always plays well internationally.
  • #2 Lawrence will have her hands full with #7 Salas; this could be an upset in the making here. They’ve only played twice, both dominant Salas wins, but they were both prior to 2020 when Samantha’s game took a downturn and Kelani stepped up. This will be a fascinating match. Salas got a ton of solid wins to make the semis in the KC Super max … can she continue that trend? Salas in 5.
    Semis:
  • #1 Longoria is unstoppable and will dominate Barrios to move to the final.
  • If Salas advances … she just beat Gaby in KC, and beat her handily 5,12. If Kelani ekes it out in the quarters, she’s never beaten Gaby. So its a hard one to predict. I’m going to go Salas in a continuation of her current form, making the finals.

Finals: Longoria tops her long-time doubles partner and rival Salas to win her 3rd straight World Games.

Follow IRF and IRT on Facebook for streaming: they’ll be doing early rounds. Its unclear what happens for the latter rounds; it may be on the IOC feed or somewhere else.
Looking forward to some international racquetball!

2022 PARC Team Standings

While the “team competition” is underway now, the PARC Team competition (as determined by the sum of all the finishes by all the participants) has finished.

Here’s how the standings shook out (these are unofficial numbers based on the worksheet seen here, but are consistent with past scoring methods and should be accurate unless the IRF has made a change without widely announcing it).

Men’s Team: Bolivia, Costa Rica, USA.

This is the 3rd time in the last 4 IRF events that the Bolivian men have taken 1st in this competition. Costa Rica eked out a 4-point win over USA to claim 2nd: this is by far Costa Rica’s best ever team finish; the only other time they placed was in 1990’s regional competition. Amazingly, Mexico did not place; they had won 5 of the 6 Men’s team competitions prior to 2019 (Bolivia’s first Men’s title).

Women’s Team: Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico.

Argentina gets 1st in doubles, 2nd in singles and easily wins the women’s competition, their first ever Team Women’s win in any IRF competition. Mexico falls to 3rd, their lowest team finish since 2010 worlds. No USA on the podium; team USA women have not won an IRF competition since 2010 (which is basically when Paola Longoria started regularly representing Mexico).

Combined/Overall Team: Bolivia, Argentina, USA.

Bolivia runs away with the combined title, with a singles win and a finals mixed appearance. This is the first ever combined/overall Team title for Bolivia. Argentina’s 2nd place is their best ever combined finish. After winning the combined title by a hair in the 2021 Worlds event (a result that had more than a few people questioning the scoring), USA fades to third here. Mexico finishes 4th despite taking the Mixed title and one has to wonder how these results would have gone had Mexico #1 Longoria played; Mexico won 7 straight Combined IRF titles, taking every IRF event held between 2015-2019 inclusive.

Click here for a worksheet of the 2022 PARC Team standings point totals:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rmqPcjrrgYkCMb8kcQDeM5kNdXYe_NliFlBLaElFN_Y/edit?usp=sharing