Ten Years Later

Ten years ago - July 7, 2008 - the first article of The Racquetball Blog was published, so July 7, 2018 is our 10th Anniversary. Yay! We haven’t looked back on our history for awhile, but anniversaries always good for that.

The Racquetball Blog’s mission is stated above: “independent writing and reporting on racquetball.” This outlet isn’t tied to one organization or company or tour. We’re trying to cover everything, and to do so in a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of way.

Recently, someone was critical of us for not taking more of a stand on things, making predictions and being more opinionated. However, we’re not interested in stirring the pot unnecessarily. We’ll make arguments for things when there’s a sound basis for it. For example, it should have been clear what we thought of the International Racquetball Tour (IRT) changing their match format (spoiler: it was dumb and unnecessary). And we’ve often expressed concerns about the number of women playing racquetball, including in junior tournaments.

We often did predictions in the early days, but with the dominance of Paola Longoria and Kane Waselenchuk that began to seem a bit unnecessary. If one of them in the draw? If so, then we predict that they will win.

However, after Waselenchuk won the 2008 US Open, we wrote about who had the best chance to beat him, arguing that Alvaro Beltran was mostly likely to defeat Waselenchuk. In the 2009 California Open - next IRT event that happened after our analysis came out - Beltran beat Waselenchuk. Waselenchuk’s only lost once since.

Since 2008, there have been 2718 pieces on The Racquetball Blog (this is 2719). Racquetball is a great game. Yes, there are issues, and things that could be improved, although most of the problems would likely be resolved if there were, say, 20% more players. More players could create other problems, but those would be nicer to deal with.

Will The Racquetball Blog be around for another 10 years? That’s hard to say, as 10 years is a long time. Sometimes it seems we’re a bit of a voice in the wilderness, but if you are reading this, and know other racquetball people who might like it too, let them know. We appreciate the word of mouth.

Also, if you want to give us feedback on what you’re reading, you can contact us via email - theracquetballblog at gmail.com - or on Twitter @racquetballblog. Comments can also be left at the bottom of articles, although they may not show up immediately, as there’s a spam filter on them.

Regardless of whether you comment or not, we hope that you continue to enjoy reading The Racquetball Blog, and continue to ...

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