USA Racquetball (USAR) is sending a team of 9 players to the 2022 International Racquetball Federation (IRF) World Championships in San Luis Potosi, Mexico that begin on August 20. Supporting the players will be coach Jim Durham and athletic trainer Rodger Fleming.
Leading the team will be veterans Rocky Carson and Rhonda Rajsich, both of whom are playing singles. How veteran are Carson and Rajsich? Carson first played for Team USA in 1998, and Rajsich in 2002. Since their debuts, Carson has played 18 times for the USA - the most by a man - and Rajsich 28 times - the most by any player. That's a lot of racquetball experience, which has included playing on four continents: North and South America as well as Europe and Asia.
How much more experience do they have than their team-mates? By our unofficial count of the players who have played for Team USA beginning with the first World Championships in 1981, Carson was the 64th player to play for Team USA and Rajsich the 69th. The rest of this year’s team have three digit numbers, including rookie Hollie Scott, who by our count will be the 110th player to wear USA on her back in international competition.
Scott will play Women’s Doubles with Kelani Lawrence, who’s making her 6th appearance on the team. Erika Manilla, on the team for the 3rd time, will be the other singles player with Rajsich. Michelle De La Rosa will be making her 4th appearance on Team USA and first since 2016. De La Rosa will play Mixed Doubles with Alejandro Landa.
Landa, the reigning Men’s Singles World Champion, will also try to defend his title on his 3rd Team USA appearance. The USA Men’s Doubles team will be Charlie Pratt and Sam Bredenbeck, who we don’t think have played together. Pratt played with Carson and Bredenbeck with his brother Jake at the USA National Championships. So, it’s a roll of the dice putting a new team out at Worlds, but both have international experience. Pratt will be making his 6th team appearance, though it will be just Bredenbeck’s 2nd time on the team. He played doubles with his brother at the Pan American Championships earlier this year in Bolivia, where they were bronze medalists.
We suggested that the USA would get two or three medals at Worlds last year in Guatemala, and they came away from there with five: Landa’s gold medal in Men’s Singles, as well as silvers in Women’s Singles and Women’s Doubles, earned by Lawrence and the team of Manilla and Rajsich, respectively. Rajsich also got a bronze medal in singles and Landa and Pratt got bronze in Men’s Doubles. Thus, Team USA outperformed expectations (at least ours) last year, and it will be interesting to see how they do this year with many of the same players on the team.
The XXI IRF World Championships begin Saturday August 20 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. There will be three days of group stage matches follow by three days of medal round competition beginning Tuesday August 23 and concluding Thursday August 25. Only the top two players from each group will advance to the medal round, so every group stage match matters. There will also be a team event beginning on August 25 and ending Saturday August 27.
The team event will be a best of three matches: two singles matches and a doubles match. The order of the matches may vary, so, for example, the doubles match may be the first, second or third match between the teams. Player positions may change from the individual events to the team event, so the players who played doubles, for example, in the individual events need not be the players to play doubles in the team event. But once a team roster is set, it can’t change from one round to the next. Team rosters will be determined after the individual events are over.
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