All time women's professional tour wins

The history of racquetball has not been well documented, and this is true even for the professional tours. Here at The Racquetball Blog we've been trying to put together a complete list of results for the women's professional racquetball tour, which has had various names - WPRA, WIRT, LPRA, WPRO and currently LPRT.

But it's been difficult. Sometimes even when we've found articles for tournaments, the report has failed to mention scores for the matches, which is the second most important piece of information about a match after the knowing which player won.

From what we have found to date, we have the following table of players with the most wins on the women's pro tour. If you want to talk about who are the best women's racquetball players of all time, these are the players that need to be in the discussion.

Women's Professional Racquetball Career Records (unofficial)
(players in italics still active)

Player - Wins - 2nds - Win % - SFs - QFs - Total
Lynn Adams - 45 - 18 - 71.4% - 3 - 1 - 67
Paola Longoria - 45 - 11 - 80.4% - 3 - 4 - 63
Michelle Gould - 43 - 2 - 95.6% - 3 - 2 - 50
Cheryl Gudinas - 39 - 39 - 50.0% - 50 - 22 - 150
Rhonda Rajsich - 26 - 44 - 37.1% - 33 - 26 - 129
Heather McKay - 19 - 20 - 48.7% - 3 - 1 - 43
Shannon Wright - 19 - 6 - 76.0% - 11 - 0 - 36
Jackie Paraiso - 18 - 26 - 40.% - 19 - 19 - 82
Christie Huczek - 16 - 11 - 59.3% - 9 - 6 - 42

Notes: Win % is for final matches only (Win % = wins / wins + 2nds). Total = (Wins + 2nds + SF + QF), not total tournaments played as players may have lost prior to reaching the quarter finals.

As you can see, Paola Longoria and Lynn Adams are tied with 45 wins a piece, so if Longoria wins this weekend she could be the winningest player in women's pro racquetball history. "Could be" because we're unsure of how many tour wins Adams had.

We do know that when Adams was inducted into the USA Racquetball Hall of Fame is cited her winning 325 of 369 matches, but where that information comes from is a mystery. Also, Adams won a DP Nationals in the mid-80s that was a big money tournament with all the best players, but it doesn't seem like that was part of the pro tour at that time, so it's not included in the above total. There may have been other events like that.

Thus, our records aren't complete. For example, we're not sure what happened in the 1989-90 season, when Adams would have been at her peak.

Obvious from the table is how many tournaments Cheryl Gudinas and Rhonda Rajsich have played. Of course, this is a product of their longevity in the sport and also that there have been generally more tournaments per season since 2000, than there were prior to 2000.

Also, Michelle Gould's winning percentage of 95.6 is phenomenal. According to the records we've found, Gould only lost twice in the finals. Curiously, both of the losses were to Marci Drexler.

It might seem strange to cut the list at nine players, but these are the players who have double digit win totals. THe next most wins is Peggy Steding with seven. Other women with multiple wins on tour are Caryn McKinney (6), Dexler (5), Kerri Wachtel (4), Janell Marriott (2) and Malia Bailey (2).

History is made every moment of every day, but the history that could be made this weekend with a win by Longoria could be a little more special than usual.

You can be sure that we'll make a note of it.

Follow the bouncing ball….