The final event of the 2023 Karakal UK Racketball Series kicks off on Saturday 2nd December at Grantham Squash Club and we have a bumper National Racketball Doubles Championships draw for this year! The National Doubles is offering a variety of categories as opposed to the usual UK Racketball Series event, with Open, Mixed, Over 40s, 50s, and 60s events all up for grabs! With 25 different pairings across the draws this is the biggest Racketball Doubles event we have run to date, which is great to see for the progression of the sport. There promises to be some titanic battles in the Open, with 3 out of the 5 teams having won one or more Series events this year, and it features two of our top 3 Series players - Paul Norton (with Craig Chappell) and Alexis Smith (with James Allingham), going head to head in the race for the 2023 Series title! In the O40s, the duo will meet again, Norton (this time with Andy Beel) and Smith (with Allingham again) will clash once more, in a very busy draw of 11 teams. Also in the mix at the top end are the experienced pairings of Osborn/Fennell and Jenkins/Griggs, both of whom will be looking to upset the seedings. In the O50s event (a box of 4 sides,) the two standout pairings of Hall & Billington and Wase & Davies look to be the ones to watch. All 4 players are at the top end of the age group and are highly experienced and crafty campaigners. The O60s has another good group - 5 pairings this time, and the duo of Osborn/Cordeaux are definitely the ones to beat. The British Open Championships winning pairing are incredibly strong at this age category and with their left/right hand combination have a lot of variety to have to battle against. Finally, we also have a straight best of 5 game Mixed Doubles Final, between Patrick Osborn (again, busy man!!) and Zoe Fennell taking on Elspeth Edwards and Mike Harris. Osborn and Fennell are very experienced in playing together but will have to use all their skill and craft against the pairing of British Ladies National and Open Champs 2023 runner up Edwards and British Men's National and Open Champs 2023 winner Harris, who will be determined to provide an upset! We also have the usual UK Racketball Singles event categories running across the day alongside the Doubles too. A lot of players competing in both disciplines!
In the Open, Colin Griggs (British National & Open B Grade Champion) heads up the draw and will face stiff competition from the likes of Steve McLelland and Chris Burton along the way. Griggs' relentlessly consistent gameplay will prove a challenge for his opponents to break down! We have a 3 way Ladies Open playoff and it is great to see Series regular Amanda Wykes joined by two local players in the line up. As we look to drive the Ladies game forward in 2024 the more new players we can get involved the better! The O40s sees the return to the one of the top title winners in the Series history - Ryan Loska, who looks to get back to his winning ways in his first (and only) event of 2023! Looking to take him down are the crafty Nick Jenkins, and the local legend Nigel Truman, both doubling up in categories alongside Loska. Battle Royale recommences one last time in the O50s, with Chris Wase looking to close out another consistent Series with a win, but having to face off a tough line up of Hall, Billington, Buckle, Davies and Dodds. An outside bet for an upset is Mr iPRO Sports himself Andy Murray, who makes his return after nearly a year out due to surgery. Finally we have another well subscribed line up for the O60s and O70s events too. Both age groups really showing strength in depth and in numbers this year. With British Open Finalists Paul Halstead and Gary Preston in separate boxes and Robin Chipperfield heading the 3rd, there could be some really great games all the way through the day culminating in some top semis and finals! Graham Greensall looks to finish off a fantastic year of O70s action, having taking both British Open and Nationals titles, can he round things off with one more Series category win? With every single Series ranking point gained here making a clear difference to the end of Series final ranking, there is lots on the line for all involved and there should be a great demonstration of quality Racketball across the caregories. A huge thank you to Grantham Squash Club for hosting us, we are looking forward to getting stuck in at a new venue! Full draws and schedule can be found at Sporty HQ here: SERIES FINALS
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At UK Racketball we are always keen to develop and improve our Series where we can so that the players get as much fun and bang for their buck out of the events as possible! So we have a few new ideas coming into play for the next 2024 Series which we hope will help further boost what we already have to offer... Check them out below:
- LADIES ENTRY BOOST: All our 2024 events will be guaranteed a Ladies draw as all hosting clubs will be given THREE FREE Ladies player entries! We are doing this in the hope of encouraging more Ladies players to feel like they can play competitive Racketball in a fun and friendly environment, and therefore get involved in our UK Racketball tournaments. This coupled with a growing Ladies Intercounty Team Championships event will hopefully help to promote and develop the Ladies game going forward. So if your home club is one of our host venues for 2024, get in touch with them to see if you can get involved! - NEW DOUBLES PRIZE: In response to player feedback, coupled with the increased popularity of the Doubles Category throughout the 2023 Series, we are introducing a new Doubles Series ranking category! This means that while your Series event and British Open Doubles results can still count toward the main Series ranking list, the one exception is that the 2024 National Doubles Championships will ONLY count toward the Doubles Series ranking. This means there is now direct reward for those who are the top three ranked players in this category alone! Any queries please contact Mike at admin@uk-racketball.com - EVENT SPECIFIC SPONSORS: Going forward we will be aiming to have each Series event have it's own individual sponsor offering, to make each tournament unique and have its own selling point. So keep an eye out in 2024 to see who is supporting each event and see what exciting things they have to offer the players! If your business fancies getting involved in your local UK Racketball event and all the promotion and exposure that brings then get in touch with Mike at admin@uk-racketball.com to find out more. - RACKETBALL LEVELS: Squash Levels has brought a whole new level of meaning and interest to Squash participation across the UK and inded the world. It's system of ratings tracking with data coming from the points, games and matches you win/lose has meant that players are able to accurately track their improvement and compare their own game against others. We are really keen to have this match up with Racketball too, and we are working with the Squash Levels creators to make this happen across the board. In the meantime however we will be able to manually input results and check ourselves at A and B Grade Series Level to better balance out the two Grades for our events. This means that the B Grade events in particular will be better levelled out for the more amateur / first time event players who enter them, rather than getting put up against players that should potentially be in the A Grade events! Lots of positive steps to move forward with in the new year! We had a filled out draw and a busy schedule on Saturday 4th November at Chichester Racquets & Fitness Club for the penultimate Karakal UK Racketball event of 2023 - the South East Open.
It was really great to see a mix of the usual suspects across the draws, but also a lot of new faces / less regular attendees taking part. The Hamsphire/Dorset/Kent/Sussex region has always had a great Racketball community and this was very evident, great work everyone for getting involved! Kicking off the draws for the day we had the Doubles, which with 12 pairings in, was the biggest draw for a Doubles Series event to date! There were some big battles across the boxs (with many glad it was a best of 3 format and not anything longer!) In the end the powerhouse pairing of Paul Knocker Norton & Alexis Smith took down the 2nd seeds Callum Arnott & Alex Kershaw 2/0 in an entertaining final. We also had a good size draw for the O70s event which is great to see. And we had a big shock, with local player Chris Lock upsetting the seedings and taking down 2023 Series leader and British Open & Closed Champion Graham Greensall to take the title! Clearly one to watch for future Masters events... Another busy O60s draw saw current British O65s Champ Graham Holmes battle through to face Chichester ex coach & Racketball stalwart Mike Phillips in the final. Phillips (recently turned 65 himself) using his nous and courtcraft to full effect to take the win. (Another to watch out for in Nationals to come!) The largest entry of the weekend was the O50s, featuring many Series regulars and top dogs in the age group battling it out. Inevitably like the passage of time, the two titans of the category came to clash once more in the Final, in a repeat of their British Open Semi Final. Morris vs Wase, doomed to face each other forever, like Batman and the Joker (though I won't say who is who...) This time Morris came out on top with a 2/1 win, 9/11, 11/8, 11/7 so very close as the scoreline suggests. Great battle! Doubles darlings Smith & Norton made their way through their groups to meet in the Over 40s final, unfortunately the sburden of having to fight it out against his partner was too much to bear for Norton, who had to pull out. (He actually tweaked a previous injury from the B.O. but this sounds better...) A 14 draw in the B Grade event was great to see and there were quite a few new faces here which is fantastic. (We hope to see you all back in future events!) In the end it was a local player in Matthew Compton who came though strong, taking down the mercurial Nick Jenkins in the semi and then Dover's finest Nick Moore in the Final, both 2/0. Registering his first UK Racketball Series title! Finally the A Grade, featuring an all South Coast Solent vs IOW showdown! Callum Arnott managing to fight off his peers to retake the title he won in 2022 in clinical fashion, not dropping a game throughout his 3 matches. So a really great day of games for all, a huge thank you to Robert Dunford for taking organiser duties for this one in Mike's absence. Managed to battle through the day and finish pretty much on time which is always a win! Massive congratulations to all our winners. You can find the full results from the event on Sporty HQ HERE: https://www.sportyhq.com/.../Event-12-South-East-of... And the current UK-Racketball 2023 Series rankings here (up to date as of post Chichester) and it is TIGHT at the top!: https://www.sportyhq.com/ranking/group/1727 Just one event left - the Series Finals and National Racketball Doubles Championships Grantham Squash and Fitness Centre on Saturday 2nd December and with some top prizes and the coveted 2023 Series Champion title up for grabs, who is going to take it? To get your name down for our final event of the year enter through Sporty HQ here: https://www.sportyhq.com/.../Event-13-UK-Racketball.. With a very succesful 2023 Series nearly at an end we have some great plans in the works for 2024!
Our first half calendar is already open for entry online at SPORTY HQ and on top of that we can our largest number of UK Racketball events in the calendar to date! From the first event in Glasgow Scotland in January to the last Series Finals event in December there is definitely an event out there for players of all ages and abilities. We are hoping to encourage more Ladies players to get involved in our events by giving each hosting club 3 free Ladies entries into their home event. So there will always be a Ladies draw guaranteed in every UK RB Series and Major tournament. The KARAKAL Racketball will be used in all events as of 1st January 2024. They have been massively supportive in the development of the sport and have produced some fantastic equipment for players to get stuck in to. Their ball is WSF accredited and we look forward to using it going forward. Finally, we also introduce the Masters Racketball Intercounty Championships for the first time as its own standout weekend! The event is open to county teams at Over 40s, Over 50s and Over 60s age groups with both singles and doubles being played in fixtures. So get your teams together for what promises to be a top weekend of Masters action. Can't wait to get started, hope to see loads of you on the court! The third British Racketball Open Championships (this year's lead sponsor Sheffield Autogates) finished off with a fantastic set of finals on Sunday, with a lot of quality matches and broken bodies to boot! It was a very busy weekend with matches kicking off from 9am both days, with events from Men's & Ladies Open, through to Ladies O50s & Men's O75s, and also three different Doubles Categories! With over 110 players taking part there was plenty to keep Hallamshire's courts busy throughout the tournament. The club also laid on a really fun Oktoberfest themed player's party on the Saturday night, which proved very popular to the thirsty participants after a hard day's battling it out on court. Needless to say that there were a few sore heads in the Sunday morning matches! This will definitely make a re-appearance at next year's event... On to the matches! Starting off with the O75s where there were some great games all the way through the draw with both top seeds being knocked out early! In the end Martin Day managed to take down James Dubois in a high quality final 3/1 with very little in the game scores to separate them. The same can be said in the O70s with suprise finalist Joe Hely from Scotland taking down 2&3 seeds on his way to the final. Here he met Series regular and British O70s Champion Graham Greensall in what proved to be another fantastic tussle. Greensall coming back from 2/1 down to win 11/6 in the 5th game! I'm sure these two will meet again in the near future at this rate... Hely showing unbelievable stamina through the event as his matches went 3/1, 3/2, 3/2, a superb effort at that age and I'm sure something many younger players would aspire to be able to do! Upsets galore again in the O65s draw, with the top 2 seeds once more getting knocked out before the final. This time Paul Halstead and Gary Preston both doing the damage to meet in the final round. Here Preston managed to see off Halstead 3/1, capping a remarkable run through the draw. The O60s with a draw of 9 players ended up being played out as a three way final box between Patrick Osborn, John Cordeaux and Paul Haigh. All three matches between the players went to 3/1 or 3/2 highlighting the closeness in standard. In the end it came down to a winner takes all between Cordeaux & Osborn, with Patrick taking the win at 2/1 up as John unfortunately suffered an injury and had to withdraw. A real shame to end a quality battle like this but kudos to Osborn who was considering having to pull out a week beforethe event with a hamstring strain! In the O55s top seed and last year's Champion Jim Muirhead battled his way past Nick Billington 3/2 in his semi final to face Mark Francis who had a bit of a less physical route past Murray Scott in his semi. Francis getting the better of last year's winner this time round taking the win 3/0. Simon Parke was the top seed in the O50's draw, looking to double up on his British National Championship success in July. He had to face the winner of last year's final (Chris Wase vs Chris Morris) and it was Morris who managed to get past his club mate and regular adversary Wase 3/0 to get through to face him. It was a quality game with both players using all corners of the court to stretch the play but in the end Parke's nous and quality saw him through a worthy 3/0 winner. The Ladies Over 50s event took place on the Saturday only and its was great to have a group of three players involved. National O60s Champion Lesley Sturgess showing her class by taking out two players younger than her to win the O50s title, UK Racketball Series first timer Helen Midgley doing really well to finish second and Amanda Wykes third. Great effort to all three and we can hopefully look to build this draw more in the future! The O45s saw some tough Semi Final battles between Lowery & Davies and Talbot & Giles. Both going to 4 games and hitting close to the hour mark in doing so. In the end Matt Lowery and Adam Giles made it through the scraps to meet in the final, with Lowery proving to be too hard for Giles to breakdown with his hard hitting, taking the win 3/0. The O40s was a box of 5 players and gave us some really tight games across the event, with some new faces mixing in with Series regulars. It all came down to a titanic battle between Colin Griggs and Alexis Smith, taking well over an hour for the full 5 games. Smith's consistently quality attacking play and ball placement eventually seeing him past the solid straight lines and movement of Griggs. Last year's O35s Champion Chris Hall was back in action again in his first event post injury, and his fast pace and consistently hard ball striking proved hard for any of his opponents to get any joy against. Craig Chappell getting through to the final to face him but going down 3/0 in the process. We had three Doubles events - Over 60s, Mixed and Open. All well subscribed with some really good pairings involved. The O60s played out as a box of 5 teams and the O60s singles finalists Cordeaux and Osborn proved to be too strong for the rest, with their left/right hand combination also working wonders. Da Costa and Fleming doing well to get through the rest of the draw to finish 2nd. In the Mixed a few late changes in personell meant that a very strong pairing in Doubles regulars Amber Marshall & Paul Norton came together. While Charlotte Jagger & Olly Jansen played some great exchanges against them with some brutal points, Norton & Marshall proved too sharp and they took the title. Finally with 11 pairings in the Open draw there was a very busy Saturday of matches. All culminating in a three team shootout on the Sunday to see who could take the win. The Dorset duo of Smith & Allingham were in top form, taking down the pre event top seeds Norton and Chappell in their last match 3/0 to win the event. Kudos also to the last minute pairing of Cossey and Cording who having never played together before (and it was Cossey's 2nd time ever playing Doubles) for making it through to the final 3! Finally we come to the Men's & Ladies Opens and B Grades. The Men's B was a full 16 draw and there was no real standout top seed, meaning there was everything to play for! In the end Colin Griggs & Dan Hindmarch fought their way through the challenges, Hindmarch in particular having a great match against Cameron parry in their semi. Griggs however proved to be just a step too far in the final, taking the title 3/0 to add to his British Nationals B Grade title. (Safely ruling himself out of any further B Grade level events going forward, it's A all the way for you now Colin!)
The Ladies draw was topped by National Champion Amber Marshall, who faced stiff opposition from the likes of Nationals Runner Up Elspeth Edwards, local top players and e PSA Pros Charlotte Jagger & Fiona Moverly and several other quality Ladies Racketballers. In the end Moverly, Marshall and Edwards made it through to the Final box of 3, unfortunately at the cost of Moverly slipping a disk in her back and having to go to hospital. Leaving the other two to re enact their National Championship Final with Marshall playing some quality stuff to see herself through to a 3/0 win! Becoming the first Ladies player to hold National and Open titles in the same year! Finally it was left to the Men's Open to finish things off and it was Mike Harris & James Snell who managed to get through to the final in contrasting styles. Harris having a good battle with hallamshire coach and pro Adam Turner, taking a 50 minute 3/1 win after a slow start and some quality attacking from Turner. In the other semi final Snell started rapidly against Luke Bishop, winning the first 11/0! After that Bishop settled and they had some long exchanges across the net two games, Snell's retrieval and quality straight line hitting proving too much for Bishop to be able to breakdown. Snell winning 3/0. The final was not the first time these two have met having played each other since they were about 9 years old, but it was the first major final outside of the Devon County Championship that they have played each other in! It was a gruelling first game taking 30 minutes in total, with a real cat and mouse exchange taking place. There were mixed pace exchanges, with both players hitting with variety into all corners of the court. Mike eventually prevailed 13/11. After that the game opened up with both players looking to be more aggressive with a softer ball. Another close game this time went the way of Snell, 11/9. The third was touch and go all the way to 7/7, where another epic rally was won by Harris with a delayed boast to the front right, which caused Snell to twist his back awkwardly. After the break, the players came back on to complete the first rally of the 4th, before Snell had to retire injured. A real shame to end the match that way after over 65 minutes of quality free flowing game play. A fantastic weekend of matches, a great bunch of players and a top venue to be competing at. A huge thank you to everyone who was involved, from Hallamshire who hosted us once again, to our event sponsors: Sheffield Autogates (Lead event sponsor) Karakal UK (Singles and Doubles event prize provider and Series sponsor) Abbeydale Brewery (Doubles event mini keg prize provider) Birford Cable & Harness Morris & Co Property Intelligent OH iPro Sports (shirt provider) We are planning for next year already and can't wait to make it bigger and better! Full results can be found on Sporty HQ here: https://www.sportyhq.com/tournament/view/Event-11-Bluebell-Wood-British-Racketball-Open-7th8th-October-Hallamshire |
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