2014 Pan American Racquetball Championships: Day 5 & 6

Three days into the tournament and I’m already dropping the ball on posts. This one is gonna be a little more to the point so hopefully we can get caught up in time for the elimination draws to begin. Speaking of which the draws are now up so I'll put them up at the bottom of this post as well.

Day 2 of competition for Team Canada went very well, as all members won their matches and did so convincingly. The results and scores will be summarized at the bottom of this post.

Day 3 was slightly more interesting as it was the final day of the round robin play and thus for all Team Canada members, was the day for the most contentious matches. I’m going to focus on two in particular, Coby Iwasaa’s men’s singles match, and our men’s doubles match.

I knew that Coby’s singles match had the potential to be close. I’ve seen Camacho play many times over the years and he has a very unique style that can get under a player’s skin. Pair that with his ability to cover the court and he has the potential to be a very tough opponent. That being said, I gave Coby the advantage because of his serve and shot making; as long as he played fairly well, he should come out with the win.

To his credit, Coby started well and had built a lead of 9-4 by the time we arrived to the court from eating lunch. He kept building this lead and served for the first game at 14-6. It looked like at this point he got a little bit tight mentally because he faltered a bit, missing a few shots and allowing Camacho to begin creeping back into the game. He would finally take the first after several attempts, 15-10.

The second game started in a similar fashion, with Coby building a lead early on 7-3. He tightened up much earlier in this game though, and after several very tentative misses on rally ending attempts, the Costa Rican had leveled the game. Things didn’t get better for Coby as the game wore on technically, although the score remained tight until 10-10, when Camacho went ahead by a few points. There were a few changes of serve here, as Iwasaa again appeared to tighten up when given the opportunity to win the rally. Ultimately the Costa Rican was able to finish the game and take the match to tiebreaker.

The tiebreaker didn’t contain the drama the previous two games did, but it was entertaining nonetheless. Coby recovered from his late-game lapse in the previous game and built an early lead that he never relinquished. He took the tiebreaker 11-5.

Our doubles match was set to be our first real test of the tournament. Coming in we were seeded second in our pool, sixth overall, with our Argentinian opponents seeded first in the pool and third overall. Even with this knowledge though, we felt like the favourites going into the match. We even played like it, for the first little while…

We built an early lead to 7-4, but both sides played extremely inconsistently. They began to play better as the game wore on though, and unfortunately we didn’t. The Argentinians chipped away at our lead until they had one of their own and eventually took the game 15-7. We were able to recover in the second and play smarter, if not better, while the Argentinians seemed to come out flat. We took the second easily 15-2. I’m not sure if we came out overconfident or whether our opponents just played better in the tiebreaker but even though the first half was tight, we found ourselves on the right side of a 3-point lead at 7-4. With the end in sight, I played slightly more aggressive than perhaps I should have. The reality is I can usually rely on my shooting ability, especially on my backhand, but for whatever reason that day just wasn’t my day. Not only did I miss the first two setups I had for points on our serve, but I skipped two out of three setups to get our serve back once we lost it. At 7-7 we got the serve back but again were unable to score. I would skip another two balls on our way to giving up the next four points to lose the tiebreaker 11-7 and the match.

This unfortunately means that we will have a tougher draw to the semi-finals than if we had won, but both Pedro and I agreed that the adversity we faced would be good for us later on and that there weren’t going to be any easy matches for us in the elimination draw anyway. We’ll have the Dominicans first and most likely Bolivia in the quarterfinals. They’re both good teams but we’re better, and we’re ready to go and represent Canada!

Day 2 Results:

Frederique Lambert d. Sofia Soley 15-13, 15-5

Jennifer Saunders d. Melania Sauma 15-4, 15-7

Vincent Gagnon – Bye

Coby Iwasaa d. Pablo Kurzbard 15-7, 15-6

Lambert/Grand-Maitre d. Vargas/Guillemette 15-8, 15-4

Landeryou/Castro d. Santiago/Jordan 15-4, 15-4

Day 3 Results:

Frederique Lambert d. Carla Munoz 15-11, 12-15, 11-3

Jennifer Saunders d. Maria Paz Riquelme 15-4, 15-2

Vincent Gagnon d. Andres Solera 15-4, 15-13

Coby Iwasaa d. Felipe Camacho 15-10, 10-15, 11-5

Lambert/Grand-Maitre d. Munoz/Riquelme 15-5, 15-11

Manzuri/Maggi (ARG) d. Landeryou/Castro 15-7, 2-15, 11-7

Elimination Draws:

Women's Singles

Men's Singles

Men's Doubles

Women's Doubles

2014 Pan American Championships: Day 4

Our fourth day in Santa Cruz marked the first day of competition for Team Canada, and the first day of competition for Team Canada went pretty well. The day began with women’s singles at 11 and 12, mens singles at 1 and 2, then the doubles at 430 and 530. Because we had the last match of the day we didn’t go over for any of the early matches and elected to stay back and relax in the room. For those just looking for the match results, I’ve summarized them at the bottom of this post.

We decided to head to the club on the 2pm shuttle, as there was food being offered at the venue. We figured we could eat and enjoy some racquetball before going on the court ourselves. Unfortunately for us, the day had other plans…

We arrived in the lobby at 1:50pm and while there was no shuttle waiting this wasn’t a surprise, as I’ve mentioned previously, in latin America things rarely run on time. By 2:10pm though, we were beginning to worry. This worry turned out to be justified when a shuttle showed up at 2:15pm, only to tell us that he wouldn’t be departing until 3pm. While waiting another 45 minutes wasn’t what we had planned, it also was really our only choice other than taking a cab, and since we didn’t’ think that we were in a rush, we stayed in the lobby.

3pm rolled around and another shuttle returned from the club carrying with it some of our teammates who had played in the morning. They carried with them, the unfortunate news that food was only being served at the venue until 3pm. Wonderful. With the opportunity to eat at the venue lost, we made the hasty decision to eat at the hotel and catch the next shuttle at 4pm. While not ideal, this would still get us to the club an hour before our match was scheduled to begin.

Our third attempt to take the shuttle was finally a success, and we arrived at the club around 4:15pm. We were surprised to find, upon our arrival, that one of our singles players, Vincent Gagnon, still hadn’t played! Apparently the two show courts were still incomplete and at some point in the morning, one of the glass panes on another court had come loose. Repairs were being made, but this put the facility down to 5 courts from the original 8 and had drastically pushed back the match schedule. When Vince and his Argentinian opponent finally took the court, it was 5pm. This meant the courts were 3 hours behind and we weren’t in any danger of playing soon. I suppose the silver lining was that we were still able to watch one of our teammates play.

As the match began, it was obvious that the Argentinian, Fernando Kurzbard, was fired up. He came out with reckless abandon, ripping the ball hard and finding the front corners often. Vince was able to steady the ship and begin to find his rhythm but still found himself in a hole midway through the game 5-11. It was hard to tell the exact moment it happened, but you could tell Vince shifted his strategy, realizing that the pace Kurzbard had set for himself could not be maintained, and made the decision to try and prolong the rallies, using passes to move the Argentinian around the court rather than hit outright winners. The strategy worked and Vince was able to claw back into the game. Kurzbard would miss several shots as the game became tight and mentally unraveled. Vince would take the game 15-12 and steamrolled through the second 15-4.

While the repairs had now been finished on the broken court, the schedule was still over 3 hours behind and so we decided to go back to the hotel for an hour instead of staying at the club where there was nothing to do. We estimated that we would get on court between 8 and 830pm so we took a cab back to the courts at 730pm. Due to some feat of South American temporal wizardry, the court repairs had not helped the schedule at all and they were in fact even further behind. We ended up not getting on court until 9pm. After all the drama of the day, I was half expecting our match to contain some as well but it was fairly straightforward. There were a few team hiccups but overall we played well, winning 15-5, 15-3.

Full results for Team Canada are below. Stay tuned for Day 2 results later today!

Team Canada Results: Day 1

Women’s Singles

Jennifer Saunders d. 15-0, 15-1

Frederique Lambert d. Mary Diaz 15-10, 15-6

Men’s Singles

Vincent Gagnon d. Fernando Kurzbard 15-12, 15-4

Coby Iwasaa d. Gustavo Farrel 15-0, 15-9

Women’s Doubles

Lambert/Grand Maitre d. Perez/Martin 15-2, 15-1

Men’s Doubles

Landeryou/Castro d. Troncoso/Suarez 15-5, 15-3

2014 Pan American Championships: Day 3

Day 3 in Bolivia was pretty uneventful but it was our second practice day as well as the opening ceremonies so I’ll recap our third day here and give the results of Team Canada’s first day of competition in a brief post tomorrow .

The day began with the team meeting downstairs for breakfast around 830am. Following this we packed up and boarded the shuttle at 930 for our 10am practice time at the club. Upon our arrival we were pleasantly surprised to find that a large portion of the outside entrance to the club had been finished, but this feeling was short-lived, as much of the inside remained the same as the previous day, dusty and unfinished. Some of the court floors had improved though and luckily one of the practice courts we had was one of these. This made for an improved quality and intensity to our practice, which I think benefitted everyone on the team. We practiced until noon and then caught the shuttle back to the hotel.

Upon our return to the hotel, I needed to stop by the front desk and change some American dollars for the local currency, the Boliviano. I had required some cash over the last couple of days and since I didn’t have any, had to resort to taking loans from other team members. The tab I had racked up was becoming substantial so I thought it best to balance the budget before getting too deep into the tournament. After doing this I grabbed a shower in the room before heading down with some of the team to grab lunch at the restaurant. Following our meal we went back to the room and I filled the remainder of the afternoon putting together a blog post for the first couple of days and taking some photos of the room that I’m going to put together for a virtual tour of our villa (stay tuned!).

The buses to the courts for the opening ceremonies were scheduled to leave at 6pm, so the team met down by the pool at 5pm to take pictures before we left. The best of these were posted to facebook yesterday so you should all be familiar with how the uniforms look. This took about half an hour, after which we headed to the lobby and after a short while, boarded the bus for the club.

I really wish I had more positive things to say about the opening ceremonies but the truth is they were pretty terrible. Now don’t get me wrong I understand that there is a lot of work, collaboration, and money that goes into putting an event like this on, especially when a new facility is built to house it, but normally (or at least for the few of these that I’ve attended) there is some form of entertainment mixed in to break up the monotony and/or some type of activity afterwards to promote the social nature of the event. In this instance, there was a local band, which played 3 songs before the ceremonies began, followed by the speeches, which lasted about an hour. After this, the ribbon was cut and the tournament was declared to officially begin. All in all, this took almost 3 hours as we spent about half that time waiting at the venue before the ceremonies began (in true latin American fashion). By this time even those who had eaten a meal shortly before departing were starving and a few of us vowed to get pizza once back at the hotel.

I won’t go into too much detail, as it’s just not that interesting to be honest, but we arrived back at the hotel around 10pm and promptly ordered pizza. For whatever reason it took almost an hour to arrive, and thus social conventions were completely disregarded and it was gone in less than 10 minutes. By this time it was almost midnight so I quickly said my goodbyes and retreated to the room where sleep awaited.

That’s day 3 in the books! I’ll post about day 4 tomorrow, as well as try to get some pics up. We don’t play until the evening so look for another post in the afternoon. Bye for now!

2014 Pan American Racquetball Championships

I'm back into posting about tournaments! This series will follow mine and Team Canada's shenanigans at the 2014 Pan American Racquetball Championships in Santa Cruz, Bolivia being held April 11-19, 2014. Hope you enjoy!

Well it’s been a fairly eventful 36 hours. Most of it was pretty uninteresting though so I’ll get you caught up point form:

Tuesday April 8:

4:10am – awoke following a 3hr “sleep”. Wanting to get work done as well as enjoy an evening with my wife AND get packed for a 2 week trip worked out to a later evening than I expected.

5:40am – following a drive through breakfast at Tim Hortons and an uneventful check in, my first flight took off for Toronto.

10:54am – a 3.5hr nap later I landed in Toronto. I had an almost 4 hour layover so I was in no rush when I grabbed a snack and found a spot to plug in my laptop and enjoy some Netflix while I ate. After about an hour I packed up and headed to my gate where the next leg of my journey to Miami would begin. My teammate Jen Saunders met up with me about an hour before departure and we were able to chat a bit before boarding.

2:45pm – The plane departed for Miami and while I had hopes of visiting with Jen a bit on the plane once we were in the air, I fell asleep immediately after takeoff and didn’t awake again until just before we began our descent.

6:05pm – We landed in Miami. Jen had been in this airport many times and more recently than I, so she knew a good spot to grab a bite. Since we were both in the mood for a burger, we made our way over to “The Counter”. For those unfamiliar, “The Counter” is a fully customizable burger restaurant. You choose your bun, your meat, your toppings, and your side(s). My order consisted of an all beef patty with standard hamburger bun, lettuce, pickles, and peppers for toppings. I also got a garlic aoli to go on top, with a side of fries and a milkshake to drink. It was a great meal to start a great trip! After eating, we headed to our departure gate where Cal Smith, Jack McBride, and Coby Iwasaa met up with us shortly before our departure for Bolivia.

11:00pm – the second last flight leg we had departed Miami for La Paz, Bolivia. This was a red eye flight that would arrive the next morning so we received the benefit of a meal and movie during the trip. I did eat the meal, although it was nothing to write home about, and slept the rest of the flight.

Wednesday April 9:

5:35am – we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia. Our flight would continue on to Santa Cruz in about an hour, but we had to land and let off about half the passengers for whom La Paz was their final destination. Once they had deplaned, the crew swept through the plan quickly to prep for our next leg.

6:40am – we departed La Paz for Santa Cruz. This last leg was the shortest and while I was excited to be in Bolivia, that feeling was completely overshadowed by the overwhelming exhaustion and stiffness that had by now permeated my entire body. I literally wanted nothing more than a bed and some decent sleep.

8:00am – we finally arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, our final destination! Of course our journey wasn’t quite over as we had to deplane, clear Bolivian customs, collect our luggage and find the local group who would be transporting us to our hotel. Luckily this process, while time-consuming, wasn’t especially difficult, and we were boarded onto the bus and on our way to the hotel in about an hour.

10:00am – after arriving at the hotel we were of course told that our rooms wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon so we got luggage tags for our bags and went to test out the hotel restaurant.

10:30am – after walking around to two different eating establishments on the premises, we were directed back to the first as the people who told us it was closed were mistaken… ugh… we were finally able to sit down and order but having been up since 5am it felt more like lunch than breakfast so I ordered a club sandwich. What I was presented with vaguely resembled a club as it did have the requisite 3 slices of bread, but never before have I been presented with a sandwich claiming to be a club with roast beef in it. I was too hungry to argue though, so I quietly scarfed down the misfit sandwich without complaint.

12:00pm – after we finished eating we decided, having no other options really, to head back to the lobby and check on the status of our rooms. The rooms were still not ready to go so we all found places to sit down in the lobby. As luck would have it I found what must have been the most comfortable couch in all of Bolivia as I was passed out on it within minutes. I awoke hours later to Coby poking my shoulder and softly informing me that our rooms were finally ready.

3ish pm? – I’m not entirely sure of the time here because we got into the room and unpacked but were greeted by beds in each of the three rooms housed within so without exaggerating too much I was again asleep within minutes.

6/7pm – I awoke several hours later feeling moderately better. My body was still not happy with the way I had treated it the last day and a half, but at least now that we had what resembled a home I could settle in. Coby and I headed back down to the SOHO restaurant, meeting up with Jen and Cal down there to grab some dinner before retreating back to the room. I’m not completely sure how, but I did manage to fall asleep before midnight and hoped that this meant my body wouldn’t be feeling the effects too much the next day.

Thanks for reading so far! I’ll update on the next couple of days tomorrow, including our first practices on the court as well as a virtual tour of the villa we’re staying in and pictures of the unfinished club! Opening ceremonies are tonight and I’ll have a post about those in the next couple of days. Cheers for now!