January 25, 2010

The 2010 State Doubles Championships are in the record book and we congratulate our new Men’s State Doubles Champions Jason Thoerner and Keith Minor. They defeated Brian Berkelhamer and Jorge Ortiz in a Sunday afternoon tiebreaker to take their first State Doubles Championship. The talk of the tournament was the doubles team of Krystal Csuk (WPRO #12) and Cheryl Gudinas (WPRO #3) who had a run to the semifinals of the Men’s Open division before falling to Berkelhamer and Ortiz. Krystal claimed a gold medal, though, when she and Patrice Calvi prevailed over Renee Roux and Somberg in the Women’s Open finals. Congratulations to all the new State Champions in the 20 divisions played, and thanks for competing!

Make sure you check out the tournament listings to the right and sign up for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre at Forest Park and the ISRA State Singles coming up at The Glass Court. A number of our players will be competing at the USAR National Doubles Championships in Tempe, AZ over St. Valentine’s Day weekend – but for most of us, the tournament at Forest View will provide some great competition in both singles and doubles.

The ISRA Travel League is in full swing – and competition is happening Monday through Thursday night at clubs all around the area. If your club is NOT sponsoring a Travel Team – this is your chance to help make it happen! Just talk to one of the Board Members at State Singles and we’ll help you make it happen. We know that we have great players at the East Bank Club, Northwestern University, DePaul, Lake Forest College, the Lake Forest Recreation Center, Bally’s, L.A. Fitness (several of them), The Five Seasons, and a number of YMCA’s and JCC’s that are not competing regularly. It’s a lot of fun, and with a twelve-player team, only five are competing each week (three singles and a doubles). The ISRA Travel League is one of the oldest in the country – Geoff Peters claims to have played his first match in it in the fall of 1974 (he probably didn’t win that one either) and has been continuously contested since that time. We are looking to set up collegiate and/or high school divisions and would love to be able to split into North and South divisions to minimize the travel. Let us know – we’d love to help your facility/team get started next season! Email Geoff Peters at Petersgeoff@hotmail.com or Pam Grace at pgrace@cata.info.

Make sure you tell everyone that www.illinoisracquetball.com is the place to go for up-to-date information on where to play and when to play in Illinois!

Make it your resolution this winter to bring one new player to the game and/or into tournament play. See you on the courts…

Your ISRA Board of Directors