IRT Minnesota HoF and Pueblo Shootout Wrap-up

Portillo takes the Mn HoF event. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

Congrats to your winners on the weekend:

In Minnesota:
– Singles: Eduardo Portillo
– Doubles; Blake Hansen/John Goth

In Pueblo:
– Singles; Kane Waselenchuk
– Doubles; Adam Manilla/Nick Riffel

R2 Sports App home page for events:
– Minnesota: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=31350
– Pueblo: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=32062

A note; lower tier IRT events are not stored in the PRS database, so no PRS reporting here.

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Here’s a recap of the Minnesota event:

In the Quarters, the top 4 seeds (all IRT regulars) all advanced as expected. Minnesota amateur Lee Meinerz pushed #4 Justus Benson 12,13, and Iowa amateur Blake Hansen pushed #3 Sam Bredenbeck 11,9.

In the Semis, the top two seeds both advanced with relative ease. #1 Lalo Portillo99 cruised past #4 Benson 2,3 while #2 Jake Bredenbeck advanced past his brother Sam 5,8.

In the Finals, Jake took game one, but then Lalo found another gear to take the second game 15-8 and then dominated the tie-breaker to take the title (12),8,0.

In the doubles, Blake Hansen and John Goth took out two teams featuring IRT touring players to take the title, beating the Bredenbeck brothers to take a well-earned title.

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Here’s a recap of the Pueblo Event:

The 31-man draw went mostly to form to the quarters, with two minor upsets in the 8/9 and 7/10 matches by seeds. #9 Matt Melster took out #8 A.J. Fernandez to earn a shot at the King, while #10 Andrew Clarke upset #7 seeded Kerry McLain (no relation to John McLain of “Die Hard” fame apparently) to earn a shot at the #2 seeded Montoya.

In the quarters:
– #1 Kane Waselenchuk cruised past Melster 1,4
– #4 Adam Manilla cruised past his good friend and frequent doubles partner Nick Riffel 13,3.
– #6 Erik Garcia was leading in the breaker of a close match against #3 David ” Bobby” Horn] when he had to retire with an injury.
– #2 Rodrigo Montoya Solís cruised past New Mexico’s Andrew Clarke 3,6 to move on.

In the semis:
– Kane took out Manilla in a rare meeting with a fellow Lefty 7,6. Its been nearly a year since he faced a lefty on the court (April 2019 against Thomas Carter).
– Rodrigo handled Garcia 7,6 to move into the final. Both players hit with a ton of pace, but Montoya was able to manage the match to move into the final.

In the final, Kane took a friendly, entertaining shot-maker’s paradise 9,6 for the delighted crowd.

In the doubles: Manilla/Riffel took out #1 Horn/Garcia in the final after topping the Montoya-led team in the semis.

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Thanks to all who did amateur broadcasting on the weekend so we could watch along. Too many to mention, but lots of fans streamed, plus the IRT setup a rudimentary streaming station in Minnesota to help out.

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Next up? KWM Gutterman in Chicago! Preview coming out tomorrow or the next day, as soon as the brackets are released.

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tags

International Racquetball Tour
USA Racquetball
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol

2019 Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot-out Wrap-up

Kane drops into a non-Tier 1 and is the double winner.

In addition to Mexican Nationals and High School Nationals, there were a couple of lower-tier IRT events this past weekend. This is a wrap-up of the best of them, the Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot out, a Tier 4 held in Pueblo, CO that featured a few familiar names and a couple of surprising results.

Here’s a wrap-up of the event.

r2sports link: http://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=30460

Reminder: we don’t load non-tier 1 or higher events into the PRS database; this post is just a wrap-up as a fan of the game. I’ll pick up the draw reviews at the latter stages when the familiar pro names start playing each other.

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Men’s Pro Singles:

The draw featured 30 players, and its top 4 seeds were tour regulars that included #1 Kane WaselenchukDavid Horn, defending champ Jake Bredenbeck and Nick Riffel formed the top four seeds. This is notable to me because I can’t recall seeing Kane play in a non Tier-1 IRT tournament in .. well a long time. It may be b/c I don’t generally track non-Tier1 events.

The 5th seed is the dangerous Erik Garcia, who beat touring pro Robert Collins before taking a game off of eventual champ Rocky Carson at the US Singles qualifier event in Tempe last month. The rest of the draw featured mostly local players, with a sprinkling of traveling players w/ enough IRT points to rate a seeding.

In the Quarters. a couple of surprises:
– Erik Garcia got a solid win over touring pro Nick Riffel in a tiebreaker in the 4/5 match. He earns a match against the King in the semis. I’d like to see Garcia play more pro events; he’s got some good results lately and I think he could make some noise on tour.
– Complete unknown (to me) Ruben Baez ousted #3 seed Jake Bredenbeck 10,(5),5. I can’t find Baez playing any match in any format that the PRS database tracks, and he was seeded 27th in this event, traveling up from El Paso to play it. I saw bits and pieces of this match: Baez plays a control game, has a very effective lob serve, and was completely non-plussed by Jake’s power, re-killing power DTL shots and anticipating power-pinches. He earns a match-up against #2 seeded Horn in the semis for his efforts.

In the Semis:
– Waselenchuk took out Garcia 8,3. Garcia kept up with the champ briefly, but eventually fell in typical Kane dominance.
– Horn took out the upstart Baez by the close scores of 13,14. Thanks to Matt Melster for streaming this one real-time; I watched part of this match as well to see how Baez matched-up with the different playing style of Horn, one which was much closer seemingly to his own … and as expected this was a very back-and-forth close match throughout.

In the Final, Kane turned up the heat and cruised by Horn 7,0, showing his typical dominance that the rest of the IRT tour sees on a regular basis.

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My take-away here: it isn’t often that a player just shows up without any prior pro experience and plays so well against two of the top 20 players in the world. I hope to see more of Baez in the future.

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Men’s Pro Doubles:

The Pueblo supporters were also blessed to have with them one of the two best doubles teams in the world. Kane teamed up with Ben Croft, and they’ve won more than a few major doubles titles in their day. They were the #1 seed, with Jake & Horn teaming up to be the #2 seeds and Riffel/Garcia being the #3 seeds.

In the semis, Bredenbeck/Horn took out Riffel/Garcia 11-9, while Kane/Ben took out the team with the surprising Baez teamed with Daniel Bautista.

In the Saturday night final, the #1 team did not disappoint and won in two 10,5 over the #2 seeds.

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Women’s Open: there was a small but solid Women’s open draw, with two touring LPRT pros in Carla Muñoz Montesinos and Adriana Riveros, joined in the draw by multi junior world champion Erika Manilla and periodic LPRT tour player Brenda Laime Jalil.

In the semis, Manilla took out #1 seeded Munoz in two solid games 11,12, while Riveros advanced past Laime 6,13.

In the Finals, Manilla made it two upsets in a row, downing Riveros 12,13. Great results for Manilla on the weekend, and I hope to see more of her on the pro tour going forward.