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 [email protected] - 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 [email protected] 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.. |
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