The Reaching Your Dream Foundation is raising money to help support its Dream Team members, including male and female athletes from the United States and internationally, to attend the 2021 US OPEN Racquetball Championships. Your donation will help make this a reality for these emerging players, who for the last 18 months, have been unable to play competitive racquetball because of COVID-19. A great US OPEN will help re-energize racquetball. Thanks in advance for your contribution to this cause, assisting these athletes, and bringing back racquetball!
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Bolivia is the world’s hotbed of racquetball. At the recent IRT/LPRT Grand Slam in Cochabamba, hundreds and hundreds of fans showed up for matches, many of whom were not players and bought tickets to watch. It was an incredible event. One of the players/coaches who has been at the forefront of making racquetball the sport it is in Bolivia is Felipe Mercado. We asked Felipe to share a little information about himself and his incredible passion for racquetball. In Felipe’s words:
Having started our program late last spring, it has been almost 10 months since we were first mentored by Dave and John Ellis in the re-start of our Junior Racquetball at Prime Time Athletic Club in Burlingame, California. Ranging in the ages of 6-15, our students meet every Tuesday from 5:30pm - 6:45 pm. We have had moderate growth. We began with 5 junior players, and we now average 11-12 players weekly.
On Tuesday February 26th, 5-time World Champion Rocky Carson hosted a Pro-Am Fundraiser for the Reaching Your Dream Foundation at the club where he plays and teaches. Rocky recruited several of the local area pro players (e.g., Luiz Avila, Brandon Davis, Scott Davis, Greg Solis, and Josh Tucker) and club players and was able to raise $10,000 for RYDF! We’d like to thank Rocky, the pros, and the donors who gave their time and money to support the Reaching Your Dream Foundation. We’d especially like to thank the owners and management of ClubSport Aliso Viejo. If any of those who read this want to consider doing the same thing for RYDF, please contact Mike Lippitt at 510.504.2494 and we will help you set it up. Thanks!
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into racquetball. Growing up I played a lot of baseball and soccer. But I got to the point where I got tired of playing the same sport. I was a little bored and wanted a new sport. I came across racquetball through my dad who showed me the basic concepts of the sport. Darrell Warren really was the one who introduced me to the fundamental basics of racquetball. I was about 15 and started getting the hang of it.
RYDF is excited to share Gerardo Franco Gonzalez’s inspirational story. Gerardo is 19 years old and is currently ranked #7 by the World Racquetball Tour (WRT). He was also awarded the WRT Sportsmanship Award in the 2016-2017 season.
Unfortunately, racquetball is not a well-researched sport in comparison to other racquet sports such as tennis or table tennis. Much of the data available regarding calories burned during a game, for example, come from data acquired in the 1980s and 1990s when equipment and gameplay was very different. However, we were delighted to learn of a racquetball study that was recently completed by Mexican LPRT racquetball player and university student Carolina Rivera Luque. Her thesis, as part of her physical therapy degree, was about racquetball injuries. Therefore, we asked her to share a little about what she found.
I provided commentary with the support of Mitch Brayley throughout the tournament. Photo credit: Jan Hanson
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
July 2022
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