Category: 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.

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IRF Worlds Round Robin Preview

Landa is the #1 men’s seed at the IRF Worlds. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory


Welcome to the 2021 IRF World Championships, the 20th iteration of this tournament, one year delayed and oft-moved, but now upon us.
Draws are available from https://www.internationalracquetball.com/ , as the IRF continues to not use R2sports to run its events.
The format features several days of round robins with preliminary seeding done by virtue of the Country, not the individual player, who then compete for the actual seeding that’s done for the knockout stages. So, while RR losses are not fatal, they are impactful.
There’s a number of curious decisions by players who are here not to play singles versus doubles, especially since this tournament is a qualifier directly into the World Games event next summer. There’s also some interesting absences that we’ll note along the way.
Singles RRs to look for. Here’s some matches that look compelling in the early stages:

  • #1 Alex Landa vs #15 Felipe Camacho; these long-time IRT buddies are drawn into the same RR group.
  • #2 Rodrigo Montoya Solis vs #13 Andres Acuña; these two IRT regulars are neck and neck in the IRT standings, and Acuna is coming off of a big upset of Landa at the last pro event. Montoya has missed a number of IRT events lately but is here and always flourishes at international events, where he has structure and coaching resources.
  • #4 Andree Parrilla vs #18 Diego Garcia Quispe; so, Garcia was a junior international champion for his home country of Bolivia before switching allegiances, now playing for Argentina. He briefly played on the IRT before switching and impressed those who saw him; he’s a dark horse here.
  • #8 Set Cubillos Ruiz vs #22 Javier Martinez: both these players have been frequent participants on the IRT lately, and they get an interesting group here that includes Luis Aguilar, who surprisingly represents Bolivian here instead of one of several other more accomplished players.

Interesting omissions here.

I generally don’t like to dwell on who is NOT at an event, instead wanting to focus on who is there, but it is definitely curious who is in Guatemala from an international perspective. Reigning US national champ Rocky Carson bowed out due to Covid quarantine concerns; we knew this earlier and it costs him a shot at next year’s World Games. Curiously, Canada’s reigning national champ and #3 player on tour Samuel Murray has chosen only to play doubles here. Bolivia’s #2 singles player is Luis Aguilar … and not the national finalist Carlos Keller Vargas or regular IRT touring player Kadim Carrasco or even someone like MoMo Zelada, who competed in Bolivian nationals this past summer. Odd. Lastly, the #2 Colombian is not someone like Sebastian Franco or Eduardo Garay Rodriguez or even someone like Alejandro Herrera Azcarate, who continues to play at a high level. Lastly we’re missing delegations from places like Venezuela, Honduras, and Cuba, who normally would be present and have players playing. Hopefully we get back to normal sooner than later.

Women’s Singles RR to watch for:

  • #12 Micaela Meneses Cuellar versus Maria Pazita Muñoz Albornoz; an interesting matchup between the up-and-coming Meneses and the veteran pro Munoz. Meneses is representing Bolivia in both adult and juniors here.
  • #2 Maria Jose Vargas Parada vs #11 Kelani Lawrence: Lawrence has played Vargas tough before in the pros and this will be a good early test.
  • #3 Samantha Salas Solis versus #10 Angelica Barrios; the drastically underseeded Barrios will look to top this group by taking out its top seed Salas.
  • All 6 matches in the women’s group D will be compelling, as it features three LPRT regulars in Natalia Mendez Erlwein, Rhonda Rajsich, Amaya Cris, as well as Ireland’s #1 Aisling Hickey, who has really impressed in the last couple of LPRT events. I sense some upsets in this group, especially since Rhonda relishes international competition.

On the women’s side, also some interesting choices. Reigning Canada national champ Frederique Lambert choses only to play singles. Chile’s Carla Muñoz Montesinos is ridiculously underseeded at #17 but has a great chance to win her group. Colombia is not represented by Adriana Riveros for the first time in years, but also could have had Brenda Laime Jalil in the mix. Bolivia is represented by Meneses instead of Yazmine Sabja Aliss, who bowed out last minute (though I believe Meneses earned her spot at National singles by making the final against Barrios). We’re missing the top female Costa Ricans like the dangerous Maricruz Ortiz and @melania sauma (who is in college and might not be able to miss this much time).

Doubles preview: Because of the compactness of the draw, the doubles on both sides should be amazing. I especially look forward to these Doubles RR matches:

  • Mar/Montoya versus Wer/Galicia; one of the top doubles teams in the world gets its first test against two battle-tested Guatemalans.
  • Mercado/Gomez versus Manzuri/Garcia: two Bolivian natives now playing for new countries face off.
  • Murray/Iwaasa versus Moscoso/Keller: wow, great first rounder for both teams.
  • Longoria/Salas versus Martinez/MRR: the #1 women’s doubles team faces off against the Guatemalans, who have played together forever and are a formidable veteran team.
  • Rajsich/Manilla vs Lambert/Iwaasa: two former top LPRT players anchoring USA vs Canada.
  • Rajsich/Manilla vs Mendez/Centellas: another great matchup of four top LPRT pros.
  • Mendez/Centellas vs Lambert/Iwaasa: the last of three great RRs from this group of death.
  • Barrios/Meneses vs Amaya/Riquelme; four LPRT regulars face off.

Looking forward to the matches! Streaming announcements to come.

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World Juniors 2019 Doubles Wrap-Up

Congrats to all your Doubles team winners from the past week’s 2019 Junior Worlds competition in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Boys 18U: Tomas Sanchez / Pablo Freer, Costa Rica
Boys 16U: Adrian Jaldin / Hector Barrios , Bolivia
Boys 14U: Luis Renteria/Jorge Gutierrez, Mexico
Boys 12U: Eder Renteria/Sebastian Ruelas, Mexico
Boys 10U: Luis Medrano/Sebastian Ruiz, Bolivia

Girls 18U: Valeria Centellas/ Angelica Barrios, Bolivia
Girls 16U: Micaela Meneses/Camila Rivero, Bolivia
Girls 14U: Valeria Miranda/Krystin Salinas, Bolivia
Girls 12U: Yanna Salazar/Fernanda Trujillo, Mexico
Girls 10U: Nicol Mancilla/Suszel Pairo, Bolivia

—-
Total Doubles medals by country:
– Bolivia: 6
– Mexico: 3
– Costa Rica 1.

I think there was just one USA team that even made the final, and it was in one of the younger groups. Combined with the singles results, really another step towards Bolivian dominance.

—-
Quick narratives about each of the older age group draws:

In Boys 18U:
– The #1, #2 and #3 seeds all fell in the first round of the knockouts: the CRC team was the 9th seed and defeated the #8, #1, #4, and #6 teams to win the title on home soil. Great showing.

In the Boys 16U:
– Barrios is the double winner on the weekend, taking 16U singles and doubles. They defeat the American team of Prasad/Hansen in the final.

In Boys 14U:
– The story of the event was the Irish team of OGorman and Hanrahan, who topped the #1 seeded American team en route to the final. There though, the Mexicans won with ease to take the title.

In Girls 18U:
– the two dominant Bolivians Centellas and Barrios teamed up to dominate the doubles draw, making Barrios the double winner on the weekend in 18U. They defeat Mexico in the final.

In Girls 16U:
– As with the Girls 16U draw, the Bolivian top-seeded team met the Mexican team in the final and won in two.

in girls 14U:
– Once again it was Bolivia vs Mexico in the final, and another Bolivian two-game win.

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I think I may invest some time to at least capture the Junior Doubles winners. It seems like it comes up enough that I’d like to at least have a mechanism to highlight titles for various players. I’ll start with Junior Worlds and will post at a later date when the data is available.

—–
Next up on the schedule? LPRT in Chicago this coming weekend (also an IRT tier 5 so we’ll have some Men’s pros there too), and there’s an RKT event in Mexico that looks to have a solid draw worth watching.

—–
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora
Federación Costarricense de Racquetball

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Junior Worlds 2019 Singles Wrap-Up

Congrats to all your Junior World singles winners from this past week’s competition in San Jose, Costa Rica:

Boys 18U: Gerson Miranda, Bolivia
Boys 16U: Hector Barrios, Bolivia
Boys 14U: Jhonatan Flores, Bolivia
Boys 12U: Eder Renteria, Mexico
Boys 10U: Alvaro Guillen, Costa Rica

Matrix of all Junior world Boys Winners through 2019: http://rball.pro/043BA8

Girls 18U: Angela Barrios, Bolivia
Girls 16U: Maricruz Ortiz, Costa Rica
Girls 14U: Heather Mahoney, USA
Girls 12U: Sonia Shetty, USA
Girls 10U: Nicol Mancilla, Bolivia

Matrix of all Junior World Girls Winners through 2019: http://rball.pro/BCE571

We’ll run through the Doubles winners in a post tomorrow.

All the match data for 14U, 16U and 18U competitions are loaded into the database, along with just the finals of the younger competitions. Listed below are Match Reports for each division as we review them.

—————-
Summary of Singles results: 5 of the 10 junior world singles titles to Bolivia.

– Bolivian wins in Boys 18U,16U,14U, Girls 18U, 10U
– Costa Rica wins Girls 16U, Boys 10U
– America wins Girls 14U, 12U
– Mexico wins Boys 12U

In 2018 by way of comparison, Bolivia won 5 of the 10 junior singles titles, Mexico took 4 and USA took one.

—
Lets run through the results from the 14s, 16s and 18s divisions, citing notable results and upsets.

—
In the Boys 18U:

PRS Match Report: http://rball.pro/539FFE

– Just one top-8 seed failed to advance to the quarters: #3 Chilean Johan Igor was taken out in two close games by home-country favorite Pablo Freer 14,10. Freer was the unlucky recipient of a group stage that included drastically under-seeded Garcia and is clearly better than a 14th knockout seed. He faces his countryman Tomas Sanchez in the quarters, ensuring a home-country representative into the semis.
– Mexican Jose Carlos Ramos was stretched to a breaker by Guatemalan Nathan Martinez and faces his Mexican teammate in the quarters.

In the Qtrs:
– #1 Bolivian Gerson Miranda Martinez cruised over American #8 Ben Baron winning in two.
– #4 Argentinian Diego Garcia topped Ecuadorian Juan Flores, setting up the highly anticipated match with Miranda (which most observers think are the two top players in this draw).
– #6 Costa Rican Tomas Sanchez topped his team-mate Freer to advance.
– #7 Ramos topped his teammate easily, beating #2 Emir Mtz 6,7 to move into the semis and put himself in a great spot to advance to the finals.

In the semis:
– #1 vs #4 turned out to be kind of a dud, as #1 Miranda really outclassed his younger former countryman Garcia 6,8.
– #6 Sanchez won over #7 Ramos by the curious scores of 10,(0),10. It took him three shots at match point, but he eventually took the win and proved that “it only takes 26 to win.”

In the final, Miranda dominated the home favorite Sanchez to take the 18U world title 6,7. He improves on his semis finish last year and graduates from the junior ranks as the top dog.

—-
In the Girls 18U:

PRS Match Report: http://rball.pro/F53055

– No surprises or upsets-by-seed to the quarters.

In the quarters, chalk; all four top seeds advance in two games.
– #1 Centellas and #3 Barrios each eliminate a Mexican player early; there will be no Mexican girls even to the semis of 18U after having a Mexican win both of the last two 18U titles.
– Surprising Argentinian #4 Katz dominated USA’s Wargo in a battle of lefties to move on.
– #2 Ecuadorian Sarmiento downed USA’s Chauhan to move on.

Its a changing of the guard; no Americans or Mexicans in the 18U girls semis.

In the semis:
– Both Bolivians advanced to the final in dominant fashion as #1 Centellas and #3 Barrios vanquished Katz and Sarmiento by the cores of 5,3 and 4,0 respectively.

Fun fact; to this point in the event, here’s the total number of points allowed by the two Bolivian 18U players:
– Centellas: 27 points in 4 matches; that’s an average of less than 4 points a game.
– Barrios: 20 points in 5 matches. That’s an average of 2 (two!) points per game.

In the final, Barrios turned the tide on her country-woman from their nationals event, taking the title over the #1 seeded Centellas 10,13. Barrios improves on her semis finish from last year and graduates the junior ranks as the champion.

—–
In the Boys 16U:

PRS Match Report: http://rball.pro/19F6CC

– Two upsets in the round of 16: Chilean #12 Jaime Mansilla took out #5 Ecuadorian Josue Bermeo Solano in a tie-breaker. He moves on to face the Bolivian #4 seed Adrian Jaldin, who himself was stretched to a breaker in the 16s.
– Home-town favorite #10 Costa Rican Felipe Guillen took out #7 Canadian Nathan Jauvin in the 16s to move on.
– the 16s were robbed of potentially its best match when American Andrew Gleason had to retire due to injury ahead of his rematch versus #3 seed Mexican Aldo Caraveo Carrasco. You hate to see any player head out of a major event like this with injury.

In the quarters:
– Three of the top 4 seeds advanced in two games: #1 Sebastian Longoria, #2 Hector Barrios and #4 Adrian Jaldin. #6 American Timmy Hansen was the sole upset winner, taking out the #3 seed Mexican Aldo Caraveo in two games. Hansen is on fire in Costa Rica, having won all five matches and having given up no more than 10 points in any game.

In the Semis:
– #1 Longoria came from a game down to squeak by the Bolivian #2 Jaldin 11-8 in the breaker.
– #2 Barrios came from a game down to top American Hansen in 11-5 in the breaker to setup 1 v 2 in the final, the top Mexican vs the top Bolivian.

In the Final, the Bolivian #2 dropped the middle game but won the tiebreaker over the Mexican #1 to give the Bolivians another world junior title.

—–
In the Girls 16U:

PRS Match Report: http://rball.pro/47CC7A

Two “upsets” in the 16s, though they’re both probably not really upsets in that they’re in the 8/9 and 7/10 matches where its rather hard to separate players.
– American #9 Annie Roberts blasted #8 Cuban Sunlaris Rodriguez 1,0; she moves on to face the top seed in the quarters.
– American #10 Erin Slutsky took out #7 seeded Costa Rican Sofia Freer in a tie-breaker to move on to face the #2 seed in the quarters.

In the Quarters, we got one big upset.
– #1 Mexican Lupita Griffin, who was a semi-finalist in World 16U last year, was taken out by American #9 Annie Roberts
– #5 @ [100003954106579:2048:Maricruz Ortiz] took out #4 Katz 12,4. Interestingly, Katz has now made it further in the 18U draw than she will in the 16U draw, and Ortiz looks like the next big thing in Women’s racquetball.
– #2 Meneses and #3 Martinez each advanced to setup the expected semi-final.

In the semis:
– #5 Ortiz crushed the upset-minded Roberts 1,2 to advance to the final. Despite her seed, I’ve felt Ortiz was the favorite in this field and it will be interesting to see how she fares in the final.
– #2 Meneses cruised past the Mexican #3 Martinez 0,9 to advance to the final and setup a great show-down with Ortiz.

In the final, Ortiz mounted a furious comeback in the tie-breaker after dropping the first and blitzing Meneses in the second to take a thriller 11-10 and give the home country a gold medal to cheer for.

————
In the Boys 14U:

PRS Match Report: http://rball.pro/11D127

The #3 and #4 seeds were both upset in the 16s of the knockouts, but the top two seeds both advanced to the final without breaking a sweat.

In the final, Bolivian #1 Jhonathan Flores came from a game down to top American #2 @ [507188469660347:274:Nikhil Prasad] in a tiebreaker to take the 14U crown.

—————
In the Girls 14U

PRS match Report: http://rball.pro/7A77EC

– The #1 seed was toppled in the quarters 11-10 by #8 seed Mexican Angela Ortega, who advanced to the final. #2 American Heather Mahoney won a tight semi then took the final to win her 3rd World Junior title.

—————-
Another major IRF event in the books. Great job by Gary Mazaroff and his staff for their work on the broadcasts, and to Pablo Fajre for his streaming efforts.

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Org links

International Racquetball Tour
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball
Federación Costarricense de Racquetball

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Junior Worlds: RR review, Knockout Preview

We’re through the round robin phase of the event; lets do a quick re-cap of surprising results in the RRs and preview the knockouts.

Draws located at www.internationalracquetball.com website (click on the “Divisions and Results” button on the home page).

Live streaming is usually shared to the Facebook group “Live Streaming of Racquet Sports” when found, and the official streaming by the IRF is via their facebook page. I suggest you follow both.

We generally just focus on the oldest age groups at PRS (18U and 16U), but capture 14U and younger winners for the record books once the tourney is complete.

A reminder: The IRF seeds the draw for the RR stage, then re-seeds the draw for the knockouts based on the RR results. Sometimes the RR results don’t exactly match the knockout seeds (meaning, if you enter as #1 seed, win your group … you’re not guaranteed the #1 seed in knockouts). I don’t know what the criteria used is to flip around these seeds. But generally in the write-up below I attempt to distinguish between the RR seeds and the Knockout seeds; apologies if its confusing to read.

————
RR recap; here’s some notable results from the RRs:

In Boys 18U
– The top 2 seeds cruised through (Mexico’s Emir Mtz and Bolivia’s Gerson Miranda Martinez but for reasons unknown they’ll be flipped in the knockout draw.
– The 3rd and 4th seeds were beaten in the RRs and will drop; Argentina’s Diego Garcia Quispe won his group with the 3rd seeded Jose Carlos Ramos and will be the 4th seed in the knockouts while Chilean Johan Igor surprised everyone by taking his group as the 14th seed. He’ll slot into the 3rd seed in knockouts.

In Boys 16U:
– As with the 18u, the top two seeds cruised through the RR stage without incident. Mexico’s Sebastian Longoria and Bolivia’s Hector Barrios advanced without dropping a game.
– the 3rd seed, Mexican Aldo Caraveo Carrasco was stretched 11-9 by American Andrew Gleason, but took the group as expected. Gleason was upset later on and will be a dangerous 14th seed in the knockouts.
– The 4th seed, Bolivian Adrian Jaldin won the group, but was pushed by Canadian Nathan Jauvin
– American Timmy Hansen upset the 5th seed and dominated his group to advance as the group winner.

Girls 18U
– The #1 seed, Mexican Maria Fernanda Gutierrez Justiniano was upset by Ecuadorian Ana Lucía Sarmiento 11-10; she ascends to the 2nd seed in the knockouts.
– As expected, Bolivian Valeria Centellas dominated her group as the inexplicable 7th seed, dropping just 10 points in four games to win the group; she’ll be the top seed in the knockouts.
– Argentinian Martina Katz upended her group as the 11th seed, topping 3rd overall seed Mexican Anna Rivera and ensuring that neither Mexican would be a top 4 seed in the knockouts.
– Also as expected, Bolivian Angelica Barrios dominated her group even more thoroughly than Centellas, giving up just four points in six games (!) and handing out four donuts en route to winning her group going away.

I know I keep harping on the seeding here, but really. Centellas and Barrios advanced by winning their combined 5 matches/10 games while giving up a combined 14 points between them. Tell me again why they weren’t the two top seeds going into this draw?

Girls 16U
– the top 3 seed’s RR groups went completely chalk, with Mexicans Lupita Griffin and Ximena Martinez along side #2 seed Bolivian Micaela Meneses Cuellar advancing unscathed.
– Argentine Katz (who also won her 18U group in an upset) blitzed her way to a win in her 16U group too. What a great tournament she’s had so far.
– Unsurprisingly, Costa Rican Maricruz Ortiz won her group but will only improve her knockout seed slightly. What was surprising was to see Cuban Loraine Felipe finish in 2nd place as the 17th and lowest seeded player.

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Knockout Previews/Predictions

Boys 18U:

Top 4 seeds go: Miranda, Martinez, Igor, Garcia.

There’s some fun matches in the early rounds to watch for:
– Garcia has to play his former countryman Charlie Chavez the 16s
– the two Mexicans (Ramos, Martinez) likely have to face each other in the quarters
– #1 Bolivian Miranda likely eliminates both Americans; one in 16s, the other in the Quarters, as he seems set to face Micah Farmer in the 16s and Ben Baron in the quarters.

Otherwise I feel the draw goes chalk to the semis.

In the semis, I’m going with Garcia over Miranda in a dog-fight, Martinez over Igor, and whoever takes the Garcia/Miranda semi winning.

—–
Boys 16U

top 4 seeds go Longoria, Barrios, Caraveo, and Jaldin.

Early round Matches to watch for:
– Caraveo has to play American Gleason in a RR group rematch right out of the gate. They played close in the group stage; can the lefty Gleason learn from his loss and force the upset here?
– If Gleason can’t beat Caraveo, then his teammate Hansen could; they’re projected to meet in the quarters.

In the semis, i’m going Longoria over Jaldin, Barrios over Hansen, and Longoria over Barrios in the final. But to be honest, this is a deep draw and i’m not confident that the knockouts will go chalk at all. Look for upset runs.

——
Girls 18U:

top 4 seeds: Centellas, Sarmiento, Barrios and Katz.

Early round Matches to watch for:
– #4/#5 Katz vs American Graci Wargo in the quarters could be a solid match
– #7/#2 Sarmiento vs American Nikita Chauhan could also be interesting. Both are upset potentials.

In the semis, i’m predicting that both Bolivians advance over whomever comes out of the other side, and i’m going with Barrios over Centellas in the final.

—-
Girls 16U

top 4 seeds: Griffen, Meneses, Martinez and Katz.

Early round matches to watch for:
– 8/9 Annie Roberts versus Cuban Suniaris Rodriguez: Rodriguez upset the pre-tourney 4th seed from Bolivia in the group stage: this could be a tight match.
– #3/#14: @ximena martinez will have her work cut out for her taking on the Bolivian @fernanda mendez in the 16s.
– 4/5 in the quarters: The surprise Argentine Katz set to take on last year’s finalist Ortiz, playing on home court. Tough match-up; i’ll go with Ortiz to ride the crowd to victory.

In the semis, I’m going with Ortiz to upset Griffen, Meneses to hold serve against Martinez, and for Ortiz to win the title on home soil in the final.

—-

Knockouts are starting today, going all day. Should be an exciting tournament.

International Racquetball Tour
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
International Racquetball Federation
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball
Fecoracquet Fecoracquet
Federación Costarricense de Racquetball
Asociación Argentina de Racquetball

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2019 World Juniors Preview

Welcome to the biggest stages for Juniors every year; its World Juniors. Every country in the IRF can send two representatives to compete for the title of Junior World champion.

Click here for a Matrix of all past World Junior Boys titlists: http://rball.pro/043BA8
Click here for the same for Girls: http://rball.pro/BCE571

Draws for the Round Robins are now available via www.internationalracquetball.com, with RRs having started Saturday morning 11/9/19.

The structure of the event is as follows: several days of round robin competition, with pre-tournament seeds dictated by last year’s results-by-country (in other words, if a Mexican 18U boy won last year, which is what happened with Lalo Portillo took out countryman Sebastian Fernandez in the Boys 18U final, then Mexico would be seeded #1 in this RR draw, which is the case this year as we’ll discuss).

Once the RRs are complete, then the draw is re-seeded based on the results of each RR group and a knockout competition is played to its completion a week from today, Saturday.

In this post, we’ll preview the big names to watch for, then we’ll do another “preview” predicting the knockout draw. Thanks to the late release of the draw, some of these key RR match-ups may have already happened.

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Boys 18U:

18 players in the 18U boys draw.

Top seeds: #1 Emir Martinez (Mex), #2 Gerson Miranda Martinez (Bolivia), #3 Jose Carlos Ramos (Mexico) and #4 Charlie Chavez (Bolivia). In 2019, the semis were both Mexican players and both Bolivian players, hence the top four seeds here.

Unfortunately, this draw is significantly weaker than it should be: presumptive top 18U player in the world Fernandez (last
year’s runner-up, the reigning 18U Mexican junior champ and currently ranked 16th on the IRT who just made the quarters at the US Open) is not present. Nor is US 18U champ Antonio Rojas, who announced his decision not to attend this event earlier this year.

Emir Martinez was the losing Mexican finalist and ascends to the #1 seed here, but you have to think Miranda (who made the semis last year as a 17yr old) is the favorite in this draw. USA’s two representatives are seeded 5th and 7th in Micah Farmer and Ben Baron respectively, and they’ll have their work cut out for them in the knockouts if seeds hold. Baron in particular has a nice chance of improving his seed in the RRs; he has a group with 4th overall seed Bolivian Chavez, who is newer to this stage and gets in by virtue of Garcia’s absence. #3 Ramos was last year’s losing 16U finalist and could be a sneaky force here to watch for.

One last post-publishing correction: I had thought mistakenly that Diego Garcia Quispe​ was missing from the draw; upon looking closer he’s there … he’s seeded dead last 18th out of 18 and is representing his new country. Garcia is the reigning 16U world junior champ and switched countries this year; he’s going to be a force in this event and I wouldn’t put it past him to make the final and face off against his former country-man Miranda.

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Girls 18U

There’s 13 players in the 18U Girls draw.

tops Seeds: #1 Maria Gutierrez (Mexico), #2 Nikita Chauhan (USA), #3 Ana Rivera (Mexico) and #4 Graci Wargo (USA). Both the Bolivian players are outside the top 4 ( Angelica Barrios and Valeria Centellas).

A big changing of the guard in 18U from last year, when two of the world’s best young players ( Montse Mejia and Ana Gabriela Martinez) met in a final that looked more like the back end of a pro event than a junior title.

Missing from this draw is the USA 18U champ from earlier this summer Briana Jacquet, who won the title w/o dropping a game. And also missing is the Mexican 18U champ Ana Laura Flores Saavedra, who beat Gutierrez 1,1 in the Mexican 18U final. So like with the Boys, we’re missing both the reigning Mexican and USA champ from this draw.

I have to question the seeds in this draw. I fail to understand why neither of the Bolivians are seeded in the top 4, based on Barrios’ 2018 performance (she was the #2 seed last year and made the semis). Both the Bolivian players entered here have made serious impressions in major pro events: Centellas lost 11-9 in the 5th to eventual Bolivian Grand Slam winner Maria Jose Vargas Parada and is the current reigning World Doubles champion, while Barrios made the semis in that same event, defeating two current LPRT top-8 pros in the process.

Going into this RR stage, I think both under-seeded Bolivians (seeded 5th and 7th respectively) will be forces to reckon with. Centellas is in #2 Chauhan’s group and could easily be #2 in the knockouts, while Barrios may very well upset Wargo in their group to improve her knockout seeding as well. The first couple of days of knockouts here will be telling. Gutierrez is last year’s losing 16U world junior finalist and has the chops to compete but I think she’ll fall before the final.

———————
Boys 16U

18 boys in this draw.

Top seeds: #1 Sebastian Longoria (Mex), #2 Hector Barrios (Bol), #3 Aldo Caraveo (Mex) and #4 Adrian Jaldin (Bol). As with the Boys 18U, all four top seeds from Mexico or Bolivia. But the next 4 seeded players all come from either Ecuador or USA, thanks to strong showings in last year’s 16U event.

Mexico’s 16U finalist Erick Trujillo and USA’s 16U champion Rojas (also the 18U winner) miss this event, weakening the draw. But Longoria and Jaldin (who made the semis last year) should be strong candidates to make the final. USA’s entries Andrew Gleason and Timmy Hansen should prove tough outs too: Gleason made the world 14U final last year, and Hansen won USA 14U last year.

——————
Girls 16U

17 girls in the draw.

Top seeds: #1 Guadalupe Griffin (Mex), #2 Michaela Meneses, #3 Ximena Martinez (Mex) and #4 Fernanda Mendez (Bol).

The two top Mexican seeds were the 16U finalists this year. #2 seed Meneses was last year’s 14U winner and is a strong candidate to take the title here. Also in this draw: #6 Maricruz Ortiz, who made the final last year in 16U yet somehow only rates a #6 seed; rough path for the seeds in her way. USA 16U champ Annie Roberts is seeded 9th, probably a bit low. Missing is USA’s Heather Mahoney, who was the work 14U runner up and 16U USA runner-up (she’s competing only in 14Us at worlds); she’s replaced in the 16U draw by Erin Slutzky, seeded 11th.

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Notables in the younger draws:

– In Boys 14U #1 Nikhil Prasad and his countrymate #3 Vedant Chauhan both just competed ably in the IRT Tier 4 Bay club open pro tournament; they run a good chance of meeting again in the final. Standing in the way though are a couple of solid Bolivian juniors (as always) and #5 seed Luis Renteria, who just made the semis of the IRT Tier 5 Bi-national event in El Paso.

– In Girls 14U, Heather Mahoney goes for her 3rd junior world title since 2015.

– In Boys 12U, both the 2017 and 2018 Boys 10U world champions are in the draw, both from Mexico in Eder Renteria and Sebastian Ruelas. Neither is the #1 seed; that goes to American Joseph Marshall.

– In Girls 12U: 2017 10U world champ American Sonia Shetty is the #2 seed behind Mexico’s Fernanda Trujillo.

– In Boys and Girls 10U, the draw is dominated by Bolivians and Mexicans, all new to the world Junior stage.

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Word on the street is that streaming won’t officially start til the knockouts; we’ll be on the lookout for parents and associations doing streaming on the side. As always, follow the Facebook group “live streaming of Racquet sports” for notifications.

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International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Racquetball Canada
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball
Fecoracquet Fecoracquet
Federación Costarricense de Racquetball

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Pan Am Team Results and new IRF Team Queries at PRS

Congrats to the 2019 Pan Am Games Team winners:
– Men: Bolivia over Colombia in the final. Mexico and USA semis
– Women: Mexico over Argentina in the final. Bolivia and USA in the semis.

Per-country notes:
– This is Bolivia’s 2nd major Men’s title, after taking the Men’s title earlier this year at the 2019 PARC. 
– This is Colombia’s highest ever finish in an IRF team event, men or Women.
– This is Mexico’s 17th Women’s team title.
– This is the third time Argentina has finished as runner-up in the Women’s team division.

Team Results in the database: http://rball.pro/FEC7C5

(Note: i’ve just put all the quarter finalists as finishing in “5th” place for now; if they are eventually ranked to determin a 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th place I’ll update the data).

—————–

And, since I never announced the fact that I did historical IRF Team results loading earlier this year. .. here’s the announcement and some context.

A few months back, Racquetball Canada reached out to PRS and IRF Media Relations guru Timothy Baghurst asking if we had Team standings from the historical International Racquetball Federation events. PRS had never pursued such data, but thought it was such a great idea that we’ve spent the past months digging up and compiling team results going back in time to the very first IRF events in the early 1980s, and the writing reports to query and display the data we found. Much was online, but much required digging into the magazine archives.

Today, i’m happy to announce the first release of this data research and inclusion to the database officially, and to note that we’ve loaded up the latest IRF events from this year, namely the 2019 Pan American Racquetball Championships and the 2019 Pan American Games events into the database.

The team queries are available in the the IRF Match database off of www.proracquetballstats.com. I put a couple of the team query examples in the Pan American wrap-up as a teaser, but here’s the official announcement with some more detail.

I’ve created several Team-based queries for your consumption:

– Per event: you can now select “Team Results” per international event to get a full list of the team standings for Men, Women and Combined Example report for the most recent 2018 Worlds: http://rball.pro/3E3571

– On the main pages for IRF Match, there’s a new section where you can select a “Team Category” and get all the historical Team winners sliced and diced any which way; All Men’s World championship winners, all Women’s Pan Am winners, all combined results across all tourneys, etc. Here’s an example of all Women Team Worlds winners from the first World’s championship in 1981 to the present: http://rball.pro/585BA0

– I’ve created some Matrix queries as well; showing all Team finishers per Event type (Worlds, PARC, etc). This is a quick way to see how countries have fared over the years. Here’s an example: this is the all-time Worlds Matrix for Men’s Teams: http://rball.pro/BD934A

– I’ve created some Country-specific queries: you can get a list of every result in the database per country. Here’s a list of all of Argentina’s team results throughout time: http://rball.pro/AE770C

– I’ve created a “Best ever finish” query too per country, since the IRF team competitions have basically been dominated by the three primary rball-playing countries. Here’s the Best ever finish in Men’s, Women’s and Combined for Bolivia: http://rball.pro/702BD2

– I’ve created counting queries: most Men’s team wins, Most Women’s and most combined. This has been divided into the various int’l categories too. For example, here’s a list of who has the most Team Combined titles at the Pan American Racquetball Championships over the past 30 years: http://rball.pro/F7D761

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As with most racquetball historical data … the early records are sometimes sparse. The magazines of the early 1980s barely covered the first IRF events, to the point where we literally don’t know who won at the first ever Pan American championships event (in 1986). I’ve had to recreate a number of Team results from scratch by literally counting up points from the event. Others i’ve kind of made assumptions of who the team winners were by looking at the four singles results (usually this was early on when the USA was winning all four competitions anyway). We’ve also had some ties in the past, which makes some of the results look odd until I figure out an elegant way to show ties in the matrixes.

I hope I havn’t made any mistakes while doing this data collection; if so please don’t hesitate to email me if you feel there’s errors.

Next steps: Regional competitions (South American Games, Bolivarian Games, etc). We will also enter the Junior team data and include the same reports for adults into the Juniors area. We also hope to get better results from country federations for older events. We’ve had some luck getting data out of the magazines of the eras, but more research there is probably needed too.

Enjoy!

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International Racquetball Federation – IRF
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Tour
LPRT
USA Racquetball
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball

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2019 Pan American Games Wrap-up

Congratulations to all the winners on the weekend:

Men’s Singles: Rodrigo Montoya
Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria
Men’s Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya/Javier Mar
Women’s Doubles: Paola Longoria/Samantha Salas

A sweep for Mexico, establishing their dominance. Two double gold medalists in Montoya and Longoria. The finalists in the four categories: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Guatemala, demonstrating how diverse the talent pool is in our sport. The two historically dominant countries of USA and Canada ended up with bronze medals at best.

We’ll cover the team results after they wrap-up in a separate post.

See these links for full results on IRF and official Pan Am sites:
– http://www.internationalracquetball.com/lim-019/
– https://www.lima2019.pe/en/results and click on Racquetball schedule.

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Here’s a review of the Men’s Singles draw; there were a slew of great matches and unexpected results.

PRS match Report, Men’s Singles: http://rball.pro/B2835D

In the 16s, a few notable matches/surprises:
– #8 Coby Iwaasa got another solid win, topping IRT top-10 player #9 seed Colombian Sebastian Franco in a tie-breaker.
– #6 Samuel Murray took out #11 Bolivian Carlos Keller Vargas, ensuring that we’ll have a new IRF Men’s singles champion at this event (Keller was the PARC champ earlier this year). 
– #7 USA Charlie Pratt was taken to a breaker by Dominican #1 and 10th seed Luis Perez before advancing.

In the Qtrs:
– #1 Alvaro Beltran advanced over the challenge of Iwaasa by the thinnest of margins, winning 14,13. Great showing by Iwaasa in a major yet again.
– #4 Mario Mercado and #5 Jake Bredenbeck had a great back-and-forth match, with Mercado advancing 8,(8),8. Both players were blasting the ball and really making shots, but Mercado pulled it out in the end.
– #3 Rodrigo Montoya Solis advanced in 2 solid games over #6 Murray 7,10. Montoya has quietly put together a really solid tournament, not yet dropping a game to this point and having Murray’s 10 points being the most scored against him in any game.
– #2 Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo got revenge against #7 Charlie Pratt for his loss in the qtrs of PARC19 by beating him handily 7,7 to move on.

So much for my predicting powers in this event: I predicted all four top seeds to fall here; instead all four top seeds advanced into the semis. In fact … the entire men’s knockout draw has gone chalk so far, with zero upsets into the qtrs and all four top seeds advancing.

In the Semis…
– Beltran d Mercado 7,5 in a match that was far closer than the scores suggested. They were on the court for well over an hour for these two games. Mercado just couldn’t get his serves working against the shot-maker Beltran, and Beltran time and again put away shots and setups to pick away at the game. 
– Montoya d Moscoso 14,10. This is a match-up i’m always wanting to see; power versus power. Two of the best young talents in the world who rarely meet. I’ve got just one prior meeting: Montoya winning a tiebreaker in the qtrs of 2018 worlds en route to the title. Montoya holds on for game 1 and then gets the win to move to the finals again.

(Historical oddity of this match: Moscoso nearly forfeited the match after getting caught in 2+ hours of traffic; he hitched a ride with a motorcycle cop to get to the venue just in time; had the ladies semi finals before him not gone on as long, this would have been a walk-over).

In the finals:

It was an all Mexican affair … and also a generational one featuring Beltran at the age of 40 versus Montoya at the age of 23. Beltran first competed in an IRF event in 1996; Montoya was born in 1996. Montoya is 3-1 in my database over Beltran in his career, and the one loss was an 11-10 match.

Beltran took game one and then, with a diving hip check, slammed into the door in game two, shattering it. After recovering, he seemed to have the wind taken out of his sails, dropping game two and getting blanked in the tiebreaker. Montoya wins (9),6,0 to improve to 4-1 over his countryman and take the title.

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Women’s Singles Knockout Draw review

PRS match Report, Women’s Singles: http://rball.pro/363FE3

In the 16s, a slew of great matches and surprising results:
– #9 Kelani Lawrence eked out a strong tiebreaker win over #8 Carla Muñoz Montesinos 11-7. 
– #12 Colombian Adriana Riveros got a solid win over #5 Bolivian Valeria Centellas in a tie-breaker. 
– #3 Argentine Natalia Mendez got a career victory, topping the reigning World Champ Guatemalan Gaby Martinez in a tie-breaker.
– #6 Ecuadorian Pazita Muñoz Albornoz got a great win over #11 Montse Mejia in a tie-breaker. Despite the seeding, I had Mejia favored in this match based on past results, including her defeat of Frederique Lambert in the RRs.
– #7 Angelica Barrios advanced past Amaya Cris by the thinnest of margins, 11-10 breaker. Amaya managed to lose to both Bolivians in this event; one 11-9 and the other 11-10.

So, despite a couple of top-level players as double-digit seeds in the 16s, we had just two upsets by seed into the quarters.

In the qtrs:
– #1 Maria Jose Vargas Parada advanced in two solid games over USA’s Lawrence 9,13. fun Fact: This was a rematch of the 2010 world Juniors 16U final. 
– #12 Riveros continued her great tournament, topping American veteran Rhonda Rajsich in two, ending Rhonda’s great tournament.
– #3 Mendez topped #6 Maria Paz Munoz in a tiebreaker. 
– #2 Paola Longoria made quick work of the Bolivian youngster Barrios 6,4 to advance to the semis.

In the semis:
– Riveros’ run ended at the hands of Vargas 8,9
– Longoria had to work for it a bit, but downed Mendez 10,10 to advance to yet another international tournament final.

In the final, the two top seeds faced off, also the two top LPRT pros represented here in Peru. Longoria improved her career record over Vargas to 33-1 across both IRF and LPRT by taking the final in two games 7,9.

Longoria wraps up her 19th career international title. Those 19 titles include 3 Pan Am games, 8 PARC titles, 2 World Games, 3 World Championships and 3 Central American/Caribbean games titles.

(see this link for her 19 career international titles: http://rball.pro/8F4146)

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Men’s Doubles wrap-up

PRS match Report, Men’s Doubles: http://rball.pro/205C38

The draw went basically chalk to the semis, where the #4 seeded Mexican team of Montoya/ Javier Mar came from a game down to top the #1 USA team of Rocky Carson and Pratt. On the bottom half, the #2 Bolivian team of Moscoso/ Roland Keller also had to come from a game down to beat the quality Costa Rican team of Andres Acuña / Felipe Camacho to make the final.

In the highly anticipated final, the Mexican team dominated the Bolivians, winning 10,1 to take the title.

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Women’s Doubles wrap-up

PRS match Report, Women’s Doubles: http://rball.pro/616FAA

The #1 seeded Mexican team of Longoria/ Samantha Salas Solis blitzed their way to the final, winning in the qtrs 2,0 over the Dominican Republic team, then dominating the semis 6,1 over the USA team.

On the bottom half, the #3 Guatemalan team of Maria Renee Rodríguez and Ana Gabriele Martinez took two tiebreaker wins over Colombia and then #2 Argentinian team to make the final.

In the final, the Guatemalans looked like they might pull off another upset, taking game one, but the Mexican pair battled back to win games 2 and 3 for the title. Final score 5,(11),5.

Salas secures her 17th career int’l doubles title, Longoria her 15th, to creep ever closer to record holder Jacqueline Paraiso-Larsson‘s 18 career IRF titles.

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Association links

International Racquetball Federation – IRF
International Racquetball Federation
International Racquetball Tour
LPRT
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora
Pan American Games 2019
Pan American Games 2019

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Pan Am Games RR review, Knockout Preview

The Pan Am games round robin rounds for both singles and Doubles are done and the knockout draws have been published.

Lets do a quick run through of the notable/interesting RR results, then preview the knockout Draws.

An editorial: I think IRF needs to go back to having the two top seeds in the group play last, not first. I hate that the best match of the group stage happens on the opening day, when nobody knows the courts, everyone’s still jet lagged or perhaps rusty, and nobody has any tournament play under their belt yet.

Online brackets/results: http://www.internationalracquetball.com/lim-019/
or, on Pan Am Games official site here: https://www.lima2019.pe/en/results…

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Interesting Men’s Singles RR results:
– USA #1 Jake Bredenbeck got a solid win over IRT top-10 and Colombian #1 Sebastian Franco in their RR opener. Jake improved to 4-3 and broke a string of three straight losses to Franco. 
– Bolivian and #1 overall seed Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo was stretched to a tie-breaker by the dangerous Costa Rican #1 Andres Acuña. 
– Cuban #2 Enier Chacon took out Argentinian #2 Fer Kurzbard 12,12, a solid win for the Cuban #2.
– Colombian #2 Mario Mercado got a great win, topping the 2-time reigning Pan American Racquetball Championships (PARC) champ Bolivian #2 Carlos Keller Vargas 14,11. Mercado gets the inside track to jump his pre-tourney seeding from 12 to a 3rd seed in the knockouts.
– Canadian #2 Coby Iwaasa got a career win, topping USA #2 Charlie Prattin a close tiebreaker. Iwaasa lost two close matches to Mercado in PARC19 and nearly won the last pro event held in Canada … but the last time we saw him on the IRT was in 2015. Would love to see him more.
– Ecuadorian #2 Jose Daniel Ugalde Albornoz in a huge upset, took out top overall seed Moscoso 11-10 in the final RR, throwing Group A into chaos with all three competitors finishing 1-1; by points differential Costa Rican Acuna is left out by just one cumulative point.
– DR #1 Ramon De Leon took out Cuban #1 Maikel Mollet in an 11-10 breaker as well, securing his passage to the knock outs.

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Interesting Women’s Singles RR results:
-Argentina’s Natalia Mendez​ got a solid win over Colombian Adriana Riveros10,13.
– USA’s Rhonda Rajsich destroyed Mexico’s Montse Mejia 4,7, a pretty surprising result. I thought Rajsich might win, but certainly not by these scores.
– Bolivia’s Valeria Centellas topped Colombia Amaya Cris​ by the incredibly close scores of (14),14,9. One point from the perfect match, and the youngster Centellas saved of match point against at 14-14 in the second to win. 
– Ecuador’s Pazita Muñoz Albornoz​ topped USA #1 Kelani Lawrence 5,6 in a match that still took nearly 50 minutes. (coincidentally: I love the timing provided in each match on the Pan Am website). Munoz later held on over improving Costa Rican Maricruz Ortiz 13,14 to secure the group.
– Argentina’s #1 overall seed Maria Jose Vargas​ met reigning world champ Gaby Martinez 11-9 in the tiebreaker. Tough opener for both; Martinez is clearly better than a double digit seed.
– Improving DR international player Merynanyelly Delgado took out LPRT touring vet Maria Renee Rodriguez in a tiebreaker.
– In the “Group of Death” Rajsich beat Canadian #1 Frederique Lambert 10,5 to top the group. Mejia salvaged 2nd place by topping Lambert herself 9,8. This knocked Lambert out of the knockout stages … a tough break for the former #2 player in the world.

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Men’s Singles Knockout round preview and predictions:

Unlike in other IRF competitions … the RR performance matters and qualified just 14 of the original 25 competitors to the knockouts. And, I have to be honest, I don’t entirely understand the knockout seedings. Beltran was elevated to #1 over Moscoso (who dropped from 1 to 2) despite Moscoso winning his group (albeit by the skin of his teeth). Mercado should have had the #3 seed but instead is 4th behind Montoya. Lastly, inexplicably, Pratt retains his 7th seed ahead of Iwaasa (who is seeded 8th) despite the fact that Iwaasa beat him head to head literally three days ago. I don’t get it.

Best players left out of the knockouts? Probably Acuna (the unlucky odd-man left out of the Group A logger-jam, who misses the knockout stages by two cumulative points over 3 matches). It was a bummer to see both Cubans knocked out; they have really improved lately. Otherwise the seeds mostly held and the top players are in the round of 16.

Here’s a preview of the Men’s singles knockout; Beltran and Moscoso get byes into the quarters.

– #9 Franco vs #8 Iwaasa: Iwaasa’s present for winning his group is to get a lesser seed than Pratt and to play into the current 7th ranked pro on the IRT. Tough match, but if Iwaasa keeps playing the way he has been, he could move on.
– #5 Bredenbeck gets a tricky opener against #12 De Leon but should advance.
– #4 Mercado gets a familiar opponent in #13 Felipe Camacho; they’ve played 4 times in the past three years and Mercado leads 3-1.
– #3 Rodrigo Montoya Solis who cruised through the group stage, gets the Moscoso-beating Ugalde; can the Ecuadorian keep it up?
– #6 Samuel Murray, for his troubles of winning the group, gets two-time defending PARC champ Keller as the 11th seed, a match Keller probably wins.
– #7 Pratt gets a heck of a lot easier opener than Iwaasa, going against DR’s Luis Perez.

Projecting the Quarters:
– #1 Álvaro Beltrán vs #8 Iwaasa: Beltran has his hands full here. Iwaasa can beat Franco, and Iwaasa can beat Beltran too.
– #4 Mercado vs #5 Bredenbeck: I like the way Jake is playing, I think his win over Franco in the RRs is proof enough of his focus and he should beat Mercado here.
– #3 Montoya vs Keller: Tough matchup for Montoya; last time they played was the semis of PARC18, and Keller got him in the breaker. I’m not entirely sure what to make of Keller’s loss to Mercado in the group stage; is he still hurt from earlier this summer? Montoya wasn’t really challenged in his RR group, making it tough to gauge how he’s playing. I think Keller advances here.
– #2 Moscoso vs #7 Pratt; great re-match of PARC19 quarters, when Pratt shocked the rball world and took out Moscoso 11-10 just weeks after Moscoso had won the Bolivian grand slam. Can he do it again? On the one hand, Moscoso has shown some chinks in the armor here (taken to tiebreaker by Acuna, beaten by Ugalde). On the other hand … so has Pratt shown he’s vulnerable with the Iwaasa loss. Pratt out-strategized Moscoso in Colombia and I think he can do it again.

Yes; i’m predicting that all four top seeds fall in the quarters. This is a testament to the depth of the international game these days.

Projected Semis:
– #8 Iwaasa over #5 Bredenbeck; I just like the way Iwaasa is playing.
– #11 Keller over #7 Pratt; a rematch of PARC19 final, won by Keller in a breaker. If Keller is healthy, he advances again.

Final: Keller over Iwaasa, cementing Keller’s international status by winning his third major title in the last two years.

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Women’s Singles Knockout round preview and predictions:

Unlike in the Men’s knockout draw … there seemed to be no discretion taken with the Women’s seeds; they are exactly driven from the group stage results, no deviations. (Again, why would the Men’s singles draw deviate from this formula?)

As with the Men’s draw; the top 2 seeds earn byes in the 16s and only 14 of the original 24 players advance to the knockout stages. Best player left out of the knockouts? Lambert obviously, then Rodriguez from Guatemala.

Here’s a preview of the knockout round:
In the 16s:
– #9 Lawrence over #8 Carla Muñoz Montesinos: despite the fact that they met in PARC19 and Munoz won, I like the way Lawrence is playing and think she can take this.
– #5 Centellas over #12 Riveros: the 17yr old continues to play well over her head; if she can bet Colombia’s #1 player (Amaya, as she did in the group stage), then she should be able to beat Colombia’s #2 player in Riveros
– #4 Rajsich should hold serve against #13 Delgado.
– #3 Natalia Mendez has her hands full with #14 Martinez. On paper this is a no brainer win for Martinez: she’s 4-0 lifetime over Mendez, including an 8,3 semis win at the 2018 Worlds en route to her currently held World title. But … Martinez hasn’t played competitive rball since January while Mendez has been showing solid results both internationally and professionally. I’ll go with Martinez here but it’s going to be close.
– #6 Maria Paz Munoz vs #11 Mejia; another brutal match-up for a top seed. Munoz’s award for winning her group is a match-up with a player who beat three of the top 5 players in the world en route to the Mexican national title earlier this year. I’m not sure what to make of Mejia’s loss in the RRs to Rajsich, but do think she can regroup and advance here.
– #7 Barrios vs #10 Amaya; a South American duel that, surprisingly, hasn’t happened before. Its the second Bolivia versus Colombia match-up in the round of 16 here; Amaya dropped a close one to Bolivia’s #1 player in the RRs, but Barrios may be just as good. I expect another close one here, as Amaya has really stepped up her game lately, but think Barrios still advances.

In the Qtrs:
– #1 Vargas makes quick work of #9 Lawrence
– #4 Rajsich gives a veteran lesson in tournament play to the youngster #5 Centellas
– #11 Mejia over #14 Martinez: these two have met over and over throughout the years; they’re the same age and met in the finals of Junior Worlds at least 7 times. Martinez owned their earlier match-ups … but Mejia has won three straight and should win here as well.
– #2 Paola Longoria cruises over the youngster #7 Barrios.

Semis projection:
– #1 Vargas over #4 Rajsich: these two have met no less than 30 times on the LPRT and internationally … and they’re 15-15 against each other. Vargas dominated Rajsich when they met in PARC19 and I think she’ll win again.
– #2 Longoria vs #11 Mejia: I don’t see Longoria losing to Mejia at this stage, not when it comes to winning titles.

Finals prediction: Longoria improves to 33-1 over Vargas in a rematch of the PARC19 final to win her 19th IRF tournament.

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Doubles Knockout round predictions:

On the Men’s side: no elimination at the RR stage, which is a sigh of relief for some of the teams who took surprising losses.

Also, more completely inexplicable seedings: Montoya/Mar destroyed Acuna & Camacho 2,0 in the RR stage, and won the group as the 3rd seed going in … then are seeded below them in the knockouts?? How does that happen?

I like Montoya/Mar over Carson/Pratt in one semi, Moscoso/Roland Kellerover Acuna/Camacho in the other semi, and for the Bolivians to win the final as they won the PARC final earlier this year.

On the Women’s side:

I like Longoria/Samantha Salas Solis over USA’s Rajsich/Lawrence in one semi, and for the Guatemalan team of Martinez and Rodriguez to upset the Argentinian team of Vargas/Mendez to make the final. however, in that final Longoria and Salas should capture their 14th international title together.

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Phew! Lots of matches in a short amount of time, but now we’re to the “business end” of this event. Lots of streaming available; individuals, country federations, etc. Check the regular places on Facebook for streaming notifications.

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USA Racquetball
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Racquetball Canada
Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
International Racquetball Tour
LPRT