Category: IRT

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– Singles: Conrrado Moscoso

– Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball & Javier Mar

TL/DR Executive Summary: Moscoso wins his 4th straight IRT event, but took a 15-0 donut from Kane while doing so.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=52146

——————

Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/d06f93

—————-

In the 32s:

– Garcia blanked Sam Bredenbeck in the opener before he made a match of it; the Argentine moves on 0,12

– Trujillo topped Miranda 13,10 in an expected solid, close game.

– Carrasco crushed Sendrey 9,1; Cole may have to go back to the drawing board if he doesn’t turn around these results.

– Carter crushed Mendoza 5,3 to send a message to us pundits who continue to count him out.

– Gastelum topped Collins 14,14 in a match that was as close as it sounds.

—————-

In the 16s:

– Adam Manilla rebounded from a 15-1 stomping in game one to save match points against in game two and advance. Score: (1),14,9

– Bolivian U21 star Flores certainly made a statement, beating @andree Parrilla 1,4 after having lost to him twice last season 11-10. Wow.

– #4 Jake Bredenbeck got by Trujillo by the skin of his teeth, 11-9 in the breaker. Looks like Trujillo is ready to get his top-10 ranking back.

– The bottom half went chalk, with all four seeds advancing rather easily.

—————-

In the Quarters

– Kane took out Manilla 4,10 as Adam the technician worked some points but couldn’t really challenge the king

– Flores took out Jake 8,12 to make the semis and setup a dream matchup with Waselenchuk

– Montoya trounced Acuna 7,5 as predicted on the IRT Club Fantasy fastbreak podcast.

– Moscoso cruised past Mar in game one 15-6 and Mar felt something in his back and forfeited to save himself for the doubles run.

—————

In the Semis

– Flores/Kane was one of two matches I watched with intent this weekend. Here’s my report.

In Game 1, Flores jumps out to early lead; Kane makes several uncharacteristic errors. The Bolivian has sneaky power, with mechanics eerily similar to Carlos Keller (no surprise, they’re both from Santa Cruz). Kane stepped up the pressure, jumped right back in; heavy balls, put-aways, and a couple of Flores balls left up and its 5-6. Flores got a couple aces but generally had a very low 1st serve percentage, not a recipe for winning. Kane continued to grind out points, jumped to 11-7. Flores back, nearly ties it at 10-11 down, but Flores just isn’t handling Kane’s lob serves, either skipping them or giving Kane 3rd shot kills in the front court. Flores buries an overhead splat forehand for some wow factor, but Kane got to game point first at 14-10. Flores somehow escaped a 12-14 rally to get the serve back. Suddenly Flores buries a ceiling ball off the back wall for 14-14. On the ensuing serve, Kane hits a swinging kill shot on the service return that had us gasping. At 14-14, Kane gains control of the rally and buries a backhand for the 15-14 win.

Second game, Flores’ body language is terrible, he loses two ill-advised appeals quickly, he’s over hitting … and he’s looking like the game is going to get away from him fast. Flores also looks tired, as he very well might since he played a Men’s Open match a few hours earlier in the day (he didn’t forfeit out of Men’s Open despite being in the Pro semis). It’s one-way traffic, as Flores’ mental letdown of letting game one go and his overall fatigue catches up to him and he can’t stop the Kane train. Teaching moments all around. Kane ends up winning the game 15-1, emblematic of a game that Flores checked out of early.

– From the bottom half, Moscoso wasn’t terribly troubled by Montoya, really showing what the gap is between himself, Kane, and the rest of the tour right now.

—————-

The Finals was one of the more interesting matches i’ve ever seen. Again, I took notes as I watched. Here’s how it went.

Kane wins the toss, opens up drive serving and gets three very fast points. He mixes several aces, gets a couple of 3 shot rallies and is in complete control in the early part of game one, jumping out 8-0. He’s hitting absolute missile drive serves to Moscoso’s forehand that are unreturnable. The Bolivian finally calls time out at 0-9 down … this game is probably a lost cause already. The few rallies that Moscoso is getting into he’s error-prone and misses a slew of shots .. but this is as good as i’ve seen Kane serve in months. The normally athletic Moscoso has just one dive in the game … which indicates just how dominant Kane has been. 15-0 Kane win and he screams as if he’s just won a major title; he’s definitely got something to prove here and is playing with an intensity rarely seen.

Game two starts more of the same, he’s hitting the crack ace serve to his right side over and over. At 0-4 in the second, Moscoso finally scores on an ace to Kane’s forehand, ending a 19-point run. Amazing. Moscoso grinds it back to 4-4 but it looks like tenuous comeback. Moscoso settles down and the pair battle it out for most of Game 2, with Moscoso holding a slight lead throughout the mid game. Moscoso turned his ankle at 13-9 up, bad enough that Kane ran over to him, but after a brief break he quickly served out the game and we’re in the tiebreaker.

Kane jumps ahead again in the TB, but once again Moscoso grinds back, grabs the lead. At 6-3 up, Kane lands on his knee awkwardly and is very clearly hurt. He also takes a medical TO, but comes back barely able to put weight on the leg. Despite that, he guts out the rest of the game and even scores a few points as Moscoso makes some mental gaffes (a double fault on a lob serve?) and struggles to

put the game away. Eventually he serves out the tiebreaker and wins the match. final score: (0),9,7 in one of the weirdest matches I’ve ever seen. Kane could barely put weight on the knee and I’m kind of surprised he chose to even give it a shot and risk further injury, and it amazed me he was even able to score points given what he was dealing with.

Quick donut trivia: Here’s a list to every final in the history of the tour: https://rball.pro/000f20 . It’s just the 3rd time ever that the winner of a tour

final has taken a donut-against: it happened in the 1986 Ektelon Nationals final, when Yellen gave Hogan a donut but lost in five, and it happened at the 2009 Kentucky Pro-am, when Huczek donuted Mannino in the 4th to extend it to five but then lost the match.

Also, this is just the second donut of Conrrado’s career; the first was in this event last year, when he badly hurt himself in game one against Bobby Horn and played out the entire second game instead of forfeiting, losing 13,0. So, technically this is the first time Moscoso had a donut put on him when he was healthy and trying.

As an old friend once said … it only takes 26 to win.

With the win, Conrrado wins his 4th straight tournament and is now on an 18-match win streak on tour. That streak now includes 3 straight h2h wins against Kane … but by no means should anyone think that Moscoso now “owns” Kane. Not when Kane can turn it on like he did in Game 1 to not only win but to absolutely dominate.

—————-

Points Implications of results

With the win, Conrrado continues to tighten the lead that Kane has at the top. Using the 10-best results logic that will determine the 2025-26 champ, Kane’s lead is now down to 243 points on Moscoso. Which sounds like a lot … but here’s the rub: there’s 3 tournaments left on the schedule, so Conrrado has those 3 events to replace three tourneys from March-April last year where he got hurt and had a round of 32 loss, a missed tourney, and a round of 16 loss. Just making the finals in the remaining 3 events represents a 735 point swing, more than enough to eclipse Kane. However, Kane has a zero result that he can replace as well, and if he wins one of the 3 remaining we’re going to be looking at a very, very close race. In fact, if Kane manages to win one of the 3 remaining and make the finals of the other two, I think that would guarantee him the year end title. The loss of the US Open suddenly makes the last 3 events incredibly important.

Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.

men

—————-

Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/31a568

Mar & Montoya cruised to a win over a depleted Moscoso & Carrasco in the final, which was played right after the singles match.

—————-

Open Singles, other notable draws

Flores ended up not only staying in the Men’s Open singles draw but winning it. He had to play the semi just before playing Kane in the biggest match of his pro career … and it showed. I can’t blame these traveling South Americans for entering three draws and getting the most opportunities to make money though.

—————-

Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up:

I had a banner weekend: my four picks in Fantasy were Trujillo, Flores, Montoya, and Moscoso. Three of my four made the semis, and I picked the correct winner. Probably my best fantasy showing yet.

—————–

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, and the entire IRTLive crew. Great job announcing the players from Minnesota legend Matt Miller.

——————-

What’s next on the Racquetball calendar?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

We have a week’s break, then the IRT heads to Chicago for the Papa Nicholas Shamrock Shootout. After that, March also features Beach Bash, NMRA nationals, PARC, and the WTR in Louisiana. Great month.

——————-

tags

After a month of National championships and a satellite last weekend, we get a full Tier 1 stop at the University of Minnesota for the 2026 Minnesota Hall of Fame event.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=52146

Big draw this weekend, with 31 pros in the singles draw. Just two top 20 players aren’t here: Portillo fresh of his 1st Mexican national title and his fellow Mexican Jordy Alonso. Otherwise, the entire top 20 plus a big chunk of the 20-30 guys plus a slew of internationals are in town.

——————————

Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:

In the round of 32:

– Garcia/Sam Bredenbeck is a tough one for both players, as one would expect in the 16/17 seed match.

– Trujillo is here again, and plays into a very tough Miranda in the opener.

– Sendrey and Carrasco meet again; they played in the 1st round of the Sioux Falls event a few weeks ago; will Cole have learned anything?

– Mendoza v Carter: DJ played great at USA Nationals; can he get an upset?

——————————-

round of 16:

– Waselenchuk v Garcia: would be a rematch of Sioux Falls round of 16 if Diego gets by the younger Bredenbeck brother. Kane handled him 5,9 then; would Diego be able to improve on that result? It just goes to show how tough it is to break out of that range of rankings.

– The 8/9 projects to be Manilla/Natera: Natera is coming off an upset early loss in Portland, while Manilla took out Lalo in the last event; advantage Adam.

– The Trujillo/Miranda winner takes on Jake, who’s fresh off a national championship and playing on his “home courts” so to speak. that’s a tough round of 16 for the big man.

– Portland’s champ and everyone’s favorite dark horse plays into Andree Parrilla … who beat him 11-10 twice in the span of a couple weeks last year. Flores just took out Acuna and one would think he could beat Parrilla as well, but he has to get over that mental hump.

——————————

Projected Qtrs:

– Kane over Manilla in an all-lefty battle

– Flores over Jake: might as well stick to my dark-horse upset guns.

– Montoya over Acuna: Even though Acuna is the higher ranked player I think Montoya is the better player.

– Moscoso over Mar: fun fact; these two first played at Junior Worlds in 2014 as 18U. Other players at that event? Mercado, Acuna, Iwaasa, Manilla, Mar, and Garay. Phew; that was a stacked event.

Semis:

– Kane over Flores: remember, Flores took a game off of Kane in March 2024 in their first meeting, the first time people really took notice of the Bolivian. Would love to see another matchup to see what happens now.

– Moscoso over Montoya: would love to see this firepower semi.

Finals: another Moscoso vs Kane meeting. We’ve gotten it twice in two tournaments, and it’d be only fitting if we got another one. Their last meeting was a dominant 9,3 win for the Bolivian, who seems like he’s turning the mental corner against the long-time #1 player. Based on what I saw in Sioux Falls, I’m predicting another Conrrado win.

——————————-

Doubles review

Mar & Montoya just got upset in the Mexican nationals by Parrilla/Portillo, but there’s no Portillo here this weekend, so they are the #1 seeds and favorites. There’s some fun teams in the draw: Flores/Martell, the young-gun mexican team of Gastelum/Trujillo, Sendrey/Mendoza, the Bredenbecks playing together, Manilla/Parrilla, the Argentine national team of Garcia/Miranda, and the rising Bolivian team of Moscoso/Carrasco.

All will be gunning for Montoya/Mar, but none can get them.

———————————

Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Look for Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, some guest shots from Minnesota native Matt Miller, and Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew behind the scens all weekend on the microphone, calling the shots!

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.

IRT Club Fantasy: If you’re in the IRT Club, sign up to play Fantasy Racquetball along with myself, Brian Pineda, and other club members. Also, be sure to tune into our Fantasy Fast Break podcast, which we do before and after every IRT Tier 1 event!

Associations

@International Racquetball Tour

Pelham Memorial Tourney of Champions quick recap

There was an IRT-600 level satellite last weekend with some very solid international players making the trip up early to get in two IRT events along with next weekend’s Minnesota HoFame event; lets do a quick recap.

The Pelham Memorial in Portland has served as a Tier 1 in the past but has downgraded over the past couple years so as (per my understanding) to give more to the charities it supports. This year, the 600-level means that half the top 8 can enter along with anyone outside the top 8, which gave us a 21-man strong field.

r2sports link: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=50667

Reminder: we don’t load non-Tier 1 events into the PRS database.

Your top 4 seeds here were Acuna, Natera, Carter, and Martell. They were set to face a stiff challenge from a slew of South Americans who made the long flight up. Lets recap what happened.

From the top half, #1 Acuna cruised into the semis, where he faced #4 Martell. Martell got a very solid win over #5 Miranda in the quarters, making this trip worthwhile since he missed Mexican Nationals for it. Acuna cruised past Martell in the semis to make the final from the top-side.

Meanwhile, the seeds in the bottom half ran into South American trouble early, as #2 Natera was taken out in the quarters by Diego Garcia, and #3 Thomas Carter was dominated by Bolivian Jhonatan Flores in the other quarter. In a battle of two of my favorite dark horses, Flores topped Garcia 7,8 in the bottom semi to move into the final.

There, Flores didn’t seem too troubled by Acuna, winning 9,6 to take the title. Flores has mostly been ousted of IRT tournaments lately by the likes of Waselenchuk and Parrilla, but Acuna is by far the biggest scalp he’s taken so far in his pro career, and sets him up nicely from a confidence perspective for Minnesota in a few days’ time. Not to spoil the Minnesota Preview, but Flores’ seed and pathway gives him a solid chance to go deep.

Flores also entered in the Men’s Open singles draw (instead of doubles), winning that over former Bolivian junior Ezequiel Subieta for a dual singles title winning weekend.

In Doubles, the Argentine national doubles team Miranda/Garcia took the title over Alan Natera and super-sponsor Mark Frank.

—-

Next up; Minnesota. We’ll be publishing a podcast for the IRT club later this week and I’ll do a preview once we have the draws and matchups.

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– Singles: Conrrado Moscoso

– Doubles: @Eduardo Portillo & @Andree Parrilla

TL/DR Executive Summary: Moscoso wins his 12th career title in dominant fashion, while Portillo and Parrilla get a solid win in the lead-up to Mexican Nationals in a few weeks.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=51976

——————

Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/16c211

—————-

In the 32s:

– Garcia took out Sam Bredenbeck, but needed a breaker to do so.

– Trujillo’s return proved fruitful, taking out Gastelum in the 32s and (as we’ll see later on) winning the Men’s Open title.

– Parrilla was pressed by the Canadian Connell but moved on.

– Carrasco gave Sendrey a setback 11,9.

– Former touring pro Pratt gave Portillo a lot more than he wanted in a round of 32 match but fell in two.

—————-

In the 16s:

– My two favorite players to choose for upset wins early (Garcia and Flores) ended up playing the tourney’s two top seeds, and neither came much close to an upset. Kane beat Garcia 5,9, while Moscoso beat Flores 13,8 to move on. As it turned out, this was the closest match Moscoso would have in South Dakota.

– Natera made a statement against Alonso in the 8/9 game, cruising to a win.

– Trujillo pressed Parrilla but fell 12,13.

– Manilla got a great win, topping Portillo 9,7 to move on.

—————-

In the Quarters

– Kane blew past Natera 5,2

– Parrilla dominated his long-time Rival Montoya 9,6

– Bredenbeck did not seem troubled by Mar 8,7

– Moscoso cruised past Manilla 5,2.

This setup a pure chalk semis.

—————

In the Semis

– Kane utterly destroyed Parrilla 2,0

– Moscoso wasn’t too troubled by Jake and won 6,9

In the Finals, we got the match most were looking for; 1v2, Kane v Conrrado. Legacy champ versus the up and coming possible replacement. The pair met in the semis of the SoCal Open in December, with Moscoso putting together a comprehensive game one and holding on for dear live to win in two .

On this day, Moscoso looked unstoppable. Game one was close for a while, but instead of Kane pulling away after a long mid-game period of closeness, it was his opponent, who turned a close game into a 15-9 win. In game two, it was one way traffic. Conrrado could do no wrong; he blitzed service returns, he hit his lines, he put away pinch shots, he played great defense, and Kane had no answers. Conrrado won game two 15-3 to take the title. Its Conrrado’s 3rd straight title, 14 match wins in a row, and his 12th in his career, tying him with DLR for 12th all time.

—————-

Points Implications of results

With the win and with Acuna’s missing the event, Moscoso edges a bit closer to Kane and now sits in 2nd place. I’ve got them about 400 points apart, which seems like a lot, but the way the tour is going to determine the 2025-26 champion makes this race a ton closer.

At the end of June, presuming the US Open happens, the tour will have had somewhere in the range of 13-14 Tier 1s in that time along with a bunch of satellites. But, only the best 10 results will contribute to your final ranking. So, Right now Conrrado trails Kane by a ton of points, but their Tier 1 results since Jan 2025 look like this:

– Kane: 3 wins, 2 finals, 1 semi, 1 missed event

– Conrrado: 3 wins, 0 finals, 2 semis, 1 round of 16, 1 round of 32, 1 missed

So, if Conrrado has the opportunity to turn those last three results into a bunch of semis and finals, even if he doesn’t win out between now and June he’s got a ton of opportunity to catch up. This title race may very well come down to the last event.

Elsewhere in the top 10: Jake also jumps Acuna for 3rd, meaning that if i’ve got my spreadsheet estimate right, Acuna plays into Kane in the semis at the next event. Also, Natera now moves into 8th ahead of Lalo, Carrasco is up to 14th, and Gastelum drops down to 16.

Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.

men

—————-

Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/6d76e5

This was a super fun draw. Two legends flew up to SD to play in Alvaro Beltran and Rocky Carson and they put on a show. Beltran teamed with the young phenom Flores and nearly took out the Montoya/Mar top pair, losing 11-10 in the quarters. Eventual winners Parrilla/Portillo barely got out of the first round, advancing over the Bredenbeck brothers by 14,14. Meanwhile, the legendary Carson teamed with lefty Adam Manilla and went on a huge run, upsetting the #2 seeds and making the finals before falling 14,7.

—————-

Open Singles, other notable draws

– My two favorite youngsters Trujillo and Flores made it to the Open final, where they played a barn burner won by Trujillo 11-7 in the third, a pretty significant win for a player who’s taken some time off, and over a guy who a lot are looking at as the best of the next generation of players.

—————-

Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up: Sam Murray is back on top after pipping me in the results this weekend.

—————–

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Favio Soto, Steve Schulze, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew

——————

Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

We’ve got one big event each weekend this month: Canadian Selection event next weekend, then USAR Nationals, plus Mexican Nationals is sometime in Feb, and then we get another IRT Satellite at the end of the month.

——————-

tag

International Racquetball Tour

One of the longest running events in the land, and one of the most important and most popular events on the Men’s schedule each year is upon us: the 46th annual Lewis Drug Pro Am in sunny, warm Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

This player favorite provides great hospitality and camaraderie and is always one of the best attended events on the calendar. This year is no different, with 35 singles pros and a slew of legends playing doubles only making their way to Sioux Falls. Thanks as always to tournament director and part IRT owner Mark Gibbs for making this event happen year after year.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=51976

top20 players missing include #2 Andres Acuna (out for a travel issue) and #13 Argentine Gerson Miranda. Past that, the entire top 20 and a bunch of the 20-30 ranked players are here, making this a really solid draw top to bottom.

——————————

Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:

——————————-

In the round of 32:

– Right off the bat, the 16/17 is a banger, with Diego Garcia taking on hard-hitting Sam Bredenbeck. I’m always favoring Garcia to make deep runs in events on account of his international success; lets see if he can take the first step.

– Montoya takes on Emir Martinez, a doubles specialist veteran from Mexico who used to have solid success on the old WRT.

– Erick Trujillo is back after some time away; he’s seen his ranking plummet and he has to face tough countryman Diego Gastelum first round.

– Cole Sendrey, fresh from World Doubles in December, gets veteran Bolivian Kadim Carrasco to start. If Sendrey wants to move up in the rball world, this is the kind of match he needs to win.

– Former Bolivian junior champ and now DC suburb resident Ezekiel Subieta faces off against Javier Mar in a tricky match.

– World 16U junior finalist Santiago Castillo makes his IRT debut against Adam Manilla, who’s been pulling double duty helping with tour operations and trying to play. A distracted Manilla could take a shock loss here.

——————————-

round of 16:

– The two players I always favor to get upsets (Diego Garcia and Jhonathan Flores) are routing right into the #1 and #2 seeds here in Kane and Conrrado, which takes away some of the fun. Anyone else in the draw, i’d think about picking an upset, but these two would have to pull a massive upset to move on.

– Alonso/Natera in the 8/9 could be a fun one.

– Parrilla takes on the Gastelum/Trujillo winner.

Otherwise the 16s looks pretty straight forward for the upper seeds this week.

——————————

Projected Qtrs:

– Kane over Alonso: I will say this, as i said on the podcast. If Kane is to lose this weekend, it’ll be highest likelihood in this QF match here, against a guy whose beaten him in the past and in the second of a back to back round day. Kane’s got to win his 16s against a tough opponent in Garcia, then rest, then recover, and then play another guy who can play him tough.

– In the 4/5 Montoya vs Parrilla for about the 1,000th time in their long careers.

– Bredenbeck plays into Mar this event. Mar has a couple wins over Jake, but Jake beat him in Sept, so advantage USA

– Moscoso, if he gets past Flores, has to fend off Portillo in the quarters, a trouble spot versus a player who gets wins every time he shows up.

Semis:

– Kane over Montoya; I just don’t think Montoya has the consistency to beat Kane, despite having the athleticism and power.

– Moscoso over Jake: too much firepower

Finals; So, last time we saw Conrrado-Kane the Bolivian pitched a near perfect game in game one to blow away Kane, then held him off for a win. Can he do it again? We have a new ball in SD that should play faster, plus concrete walls, which could make for some fireworks. Nonetheless, if kane gets here i’m favoring him to win.

——————————-

Doubles review

Love seeing Alvi and Rocky in the draw; they’ll shake things up. The top half of the draw is stacked; if Montoya/Mar can get past Alvi and Flores in the quraters, they’ll cruise to the win. On the bottom half, I love what Rocky and Adam might do to the field and like them for the final.

———————————

Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Look for Carrie Reitmeier, Favio Soto, Samuel Schulze, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the mike, calling the shots!

IRT Club Fantasy: If you’re in the IRT Club, sign up to play Fantasy Racquetball along with myself, Brian Pineda, and other club members. Also, be sure to tune into our Fantasy Fast Break podcast, which we do before and after every IRT Tier 1 event!

Associations

@iInternational Racquetball Tour

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– Singles: @Conrrado Moscoso

– Doubles: Moscoso & @Kadim Carrasco

TL/DR Executive summary: Moscoso gets a big win over King Kane, then finishes off the event for his 11th career singles title, then gets the upset win over top seeds Montoya/Mar for the double in Fullerton.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=50749

——————

Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/8322db

—————-

In the 32s, no real upsets. We had a couple closer games from Gatica and Bear, but otherwise the seeds held.

—————-

In the 16s, a couple of notable results:

– #9 Portillo topped #8 Natera in two closer games; not an upset for me necessarily, as Portillo’s ranking is more about his limited schedule than his talent.

– #7 Mar crushed Alonso 6,5 for another statement win defining the top 8 versus the next 8.

– Biggest match of the round: Thomas Carter gets a career best win over Montoya i11-9 in the breaker.

—————-

In the Quarters

– Waselenchuk was pressed by Lalo in game one, then cruised to win 10,1

– Moscoso destroyed the elated to be there Carter 5,2

– Parrilla dominated Jake 7,4 to move into the semis; this was a pretty solid win for Andree, something he followed up on in the next round, and is part of a pattern for the SLP product of having spurts of success on tour.

– the best match of the round was Mar-Acuna, which was back and forth and featured some really fun rallies especially at the end, as Acuna pulled it out 11-9 to move on.

—————

In the Semis

– The match of the event was Kane vs Conrrado, and the Bolivian put on a show. He ran of 12-straight points unanswered in game one, with 4 service winners and another 6 3-point rally kill shots wherein he missed just one first serve. Kane had no answers, either getting handcuffed on the serves or flailing them to the ceiling defensively. Kane did a better job in game two and looked to be pushing towards a breaker, but Moscoso held firm, and got a come from behind win 15-14 to advance. It’s awfully hard to beat someone who’s hitting 160mph bullet first serves on concrete without ever missing, and that’s what we saw all weekend from Conrrado.

– Parrilla improved to 5-2 lifetime against Acuna on tour to move into the final.

In the Finals, Conrrado picked up where he left off, giving Andree a rare finals donut in game one before taking the title with ease.

—————-

Points Implications of results

With the win, Conrrado moves into #2 on tour. Other top players will move down a spot, while Montoya’s early loss dumps him to #6. No other real movement of import amongst the top 16, even given all the missing junior players here.

Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.

men

—————-

Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/5542be

It’s been a minute since we had a real Pro doubles draw; not since March in Lombard has the tour done one, mostly because all the events in the interim have been combined events where the prize money that would have gone to doubles ended up going to the ladies, or to Mixed pro.

Moscoso, clearly feeling his oats this weekend, carried partner Carrasco over the top seeds Montoya & Mar to claim the title.

—————-

Open Singles, other notable draws

– Diego Gastelum topped fellow round of 32 loser Gatica for the Open title, taking the big RR event.

– Bear & Alonso took out top SoCal outdoor team Myers & St. Clair for the Open Doubles title.

– Arizona’s Damien Zamora took the 35-50+

—————-

Fantasy Racquetball Competition Wrap-up

We don’t know the results of the IRT Club Fantasy FastBreak competition this past wekeend, but yours truly (who was in 2nd place) definitely took Moscoso to win, so i’m expecting big things.

—————–

Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, Thanks to the tourney sponsors, and thanks to the players for supporting tournament racquetball.

——————

Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

We have a break to the Sioux Falls Lewis Drug next year, but we may have a satellite event in January.

——————-

tags

The International Racquetball Tour is back in action, hosting its first full Tier 1 stop since last month’s Mile High Open, with the 2025 SoCal Open. The tour returns to Fullerton for the first time since the 2019 Los Compadres open, and returns to what used to be the Meridian Sports Club and one of the largest (if not the largest) clubs in terms of functional racquetball courts. As of 2023 there were still 24 courts operating at this facility, though the club went under, was taken over by new management, and has apparently repurposed some in the time since we last got information.

We’ll know soon enough, as the tour returns to one of its premier locations, which used to host national events and major pro events in the early 2010s.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=50749

draw size, observations; the top 11 on tour are here, but a decent chunk of the 11-20 guys are missing due to this event’s proximity to World Juniors, which kicks off this coming Saturday in the Dominican Republic.

——————————

Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:

In the round of 32, there’s only 5 matches because of the smaller draw, but a couple of interesting ones:

– #12 @Thomas Carter is the highest seed that has to do an early round; he goes against relative unknown Mexican Javier Gonzalez , a 16U Junior player from Chihuahua. Sometimes these juniors come out of nowhere and shock regular tour players.

– #14 @Kadim Carrasco has to deal with @Alejandro Bear, who has a few results on tour over the past 5-6 years.

——————————-

round of 16:

– The 8/9 is brutal: @Eduardo Portillo versus Alan Natera. Tough draw here; Portillo has been much better than a 9-seed over the past couple of years, while Natera continues to work his way back from a knee issue earlier in 2025.

– In the 6/11: Parrilla vs Manilla. these guys met in the quarters last month, an 11-9 win for Andree. Can Adam flip the script here?

– 7/10: Mar vs Alonso: a great match for the neutrals, two classy tactical players who rely on shot-making versus power. They’ve played twice already this year, both Mar wins, including an 8,0 beatdown in Highland Ranch in August.

——————————

Projected Qtrs:

– #1 Kane Waselenchuk likely faces off against Lalo Portillo, who played Kane pretty tough in the semis back in early September. Lalo was also on the court with Kane when he blew out his Achilles tendon in sept 2022.

– #4/#5 Moscoso vs Montoya: I love this matchup. Power, athleticism. It’s always close; they’ve played twice this fall already, both 3-game Moscoso wins. But early in their careers, Rodrigo owned him.

– 3/6 Bredenbeck vs Parrilla: it looked for a while in 2022-23 like Jake had really taken the reigns on this h2h matchup, but then Andree beat him for the Boston title in Dec 2023. Jake won their last meeting in Chicago in March, but these two always play tight.

– 2/7; Acuna vs Mar: Mar leads this matchup 4-3 in their careers, but Andres has the last two, including a dominant 9,5 win back at World Singles & Doubles. Can Mar get back the upper hand here? My upset pick is Mar winning here.

Semis:

– Kane over Moscoso: what can Conrrado do to make adjustments and get a win here? He’s got one thing going for him: the qtrs and semis are both on Saturday, so he may be able to get a tired Kane and take advantage from an athleticism perspective. Still, Kane’s the favorite.

– This could go several ways: Acuna and Jake haven’t met in years. Jake and Mar just met in Eugene, a straightforward 10,9 win for Mr. Minnesota. I’m going with jake.

Finals; Kane over Jake. Jake does have two legit h2h win over Kane in his career, bu t has to be playing well to do so. If he gets here, he’ll have been playing well.

——————————-

Doubles review; draws not published as of this writing.

———————————

Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live.

Look for Favio Soto, Samuel Schulze, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the mike, calling the shots!

IRT Club Fantasy: If you’re in the IRT Club, sign up to play Fantasy Racquetball along with myself, Brian Pineda, and other club members. Also, be sure to tune into our Fantasy Fast Break podcast, which we do before and after every IRT Tier 1 event!

Associations

International Racquetball Tour