The Digital Office British Racketball National Championships draws and schedules are out!

The full line ups and all the matches for the 19th/20th/21st July British National Racketball Championships at Edgbaston Priory are out, and what a weekend we have in store for our players.

With entries from all over the UK this should be a really fantastic event and we can't wait for the action to start. A mix of returning Champions in as top seeds looking to regain their titles, to new faces and challengers looking to cause some upsets and take the glory! You can find all the necessary info on our Sporty HQ event page via the below link:

https://www.sportyhq.com/.../The-Karakal-British-National...

A massive thanks to our amazing event sponsors for their support and allowing us to make this our biggest and best offering to our entrants to date. From top quality tournament shirts, entry gift bags, Saturday night party and end of event prizes, we have been able to do so much this time round!

Look forward to seeing over 200 of our UK Racketball community across the weekend, all supporters and spectators very much welcome and we will also be trying to provide as much as we can in terms of live streaming and photo updates as we go.
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Not long to go...

LEAMINGTON LOOMS - THE LAST SERIES EVENT PRE NATIONALS ON IT'S WAY 6TH JULY...


That is right! The last event of this first half of the 2024 Karakal UK Racketball Series is here and we are back to one of our longest hosting venues - Leamington Tennis & Squash Club. It is always a great place to visit, with 6 fantastic Squash Courts and a lovely and welcoming bar and club area.

This year's event is another Series sellout with some big draws across the various categories. Clearly lots of our fraternity looking to get some last minute matchplay before the British Nationals later in the month!

Outside of the normal service of Series ranking points being up for grabs (more on that later,) there is added spice to this event for several players, as this is the last qualifying tournament for the Road to selection to represent England in the inaugral Home Internationals Racketball team event in September in Glasgow. While most of the line ups have already been selected, there a very literal Head to Head for selection between these players:

Over 40s - Colin Griggs & Barry Talbot
Over 50 - Jason Russel & Nick Billington
O70s - (fighting it out for 2 spots) Stephen Uttley, Hans Billson, Geoff Wright, Francois De Villiers

So pending the results from the event, the above could be selected for England! Good luck to all of them and we can't wait to see who battles through.

On the Series ranking front, there is a rare chance for the chasing pack in both the Singles and Doubles rankings to catch up with Paul Norton as he is away for this event. This means that Ryan Loska who sits in 2nd in the Series and 3rd in the Doubles will be keen to steal back some ground. Robin Chipperfield, Patrick Osborn, Alexis Smith and Paul Dodds (the next in line in the Series) will all be looking to push their cause forward too! 

With some very busy draws - 16 in the O60s, 12 in the 40s, 50s and B Grade, and 8 in the 70s, it is going to be a great day of matches. Can't wait to get stuck in.

Thanks to Jason Pike and the team at Leamington LTSC for hosting us for another year, keep your eye out on the day for some more live stream action, and of course the usual photo and Instagram update shenanigans!

You can find the full draws and schedule on Sporty HQ here:

https://www.sportyhq.com/tournament/view/Event-6-West-of-England-Racketball-Open-6th-July-Leamington

*DEVON RETAIN THE OPEN TITLE, WILTSHIRE & YORKSHIRE GRAB THEIR FIRST*

A busy weekend of Intercounty team Racketball matches took place at Wolverhampton Tennis & Squash Club on the 15th & 16th June, with the Open, B Grade and Ladies Intercounty titles up for grabs. It was our busiest year to date of Intercounty action, with 18 teams battling it out across the event, and there were some brilliant games for all to watch across the 6 courts at the venue.

In the A Grade, the standout battles were:

- brutal first round battles between Morris and Haggarty in Shrops vs Warks (Haggarty managing to overturn a 0/2 deficeit to take down the O50s top dog,) and between Moverly and Cutting in Yorks vs Kent, where Fiona did likewise come back from 2/0 down to take a 12/10 in the 5th win vs a very valiant effort from Josh. Dives included!
Bonus note to the Jones vs Norton battle at #2 string which was another 5 set throwdown, which ultimately decided the overall tie result in Yorkshire's favour as Knocker won 3/2.

- a really high quality battle at #1 string between Miles Jenkins (Surrey) & Guy Pearson (Warks) in the afternoon, with Jenkins' physicality and relentless pace of play proved too much for the ball skill and creativity of Pearson, beating him 3/1. 

- A very tight Final between Surrey and Devon, where Surrey took 3rd & 4th string to put a huge amount of pressure on the reigning Champions, but Devon through solid performances from Snell, Gregory and Harris, managed to see it through with a 3/2 overall team win!


The Ladies had four different teams in for the first time and with such a positive weekend of games we are hopeful of building on this success and introducing more next year! Some of their highlights were:

- Cornwall taking down Devon 8 games to 6 in the all Southern jam first vs cream first derby battle!

- A brilliantly entertaining Lincs vs Yorks fixture with a great 5 set Doubles match win to Yorkshire to round off the match.

- Devon doing well to push Yorkshire close in the final match on the Sunday, only just losing out to the overall Champions 7 games to 10 with several tight 3/2 battles involved.


And finally the B Grade, where it was great to see lots of returning faces from last year's inaugral event, plus some new sides and line ups. Events of note were...

- Wiltshire's ability to grind out the result they needed! This year's Champions were pushed all the way in each of their fixtures, taking down Derbyshire 10/8, Yorkshire 10/9 and then ''chopping'' (not really) Surrey 11/5 in the Final! Kudos to Nev Buckle's side with some big perfomances from all throughout, notably Adam Giles & Calli Smith at 1 & 2 who went undefeated all weekend, with Calli using the experience to spend approximately 453667278463 hours on court each match... (Schedule destroyer...)

- The Surrey B & Shropshire B Semi final was another tight battle, finishing 8/6 to the eventual finalists, coming down to overall games countback after it finished 2/2 in match wins!

All in all, a really great weekend of Racketball and catching up with loads of our Series regulars and not so regulars. A huge thank you to Wolverhampton Club and Mike Harris (Mr Squash Mike Harris that is) for hosting us so excellently. It's a lovely venue and they are really pushing hard on all things Squash & Racketball there so an incredibly positive set up.

Also thank you to all of our county Captains and Managers for their hard work in getting sides together and chasing up players. It is a thankless task sometimes and your efforts are greatly appreciated! 

We will be back on the same weekend next year (14th & 15th June 2025) so get the date in your diaries, we hope to build it bigger and better!

Full results can be found on our Intercounty page here: https://www.uk-racketball.com/inter-counties.html

Pictures and video clips from the matches can be found on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1390864495194434&type=3

After a successful Masters Intercounty Racketball weekend it was time to return to mainstream Series action, and we visited the Peterborough Sports Club on the 1st June for the Cambridge Open event!

It was brilliant to see this event following the foosteps of many other this season by filling out it's entry list with time to spare, and we had a load of new faces mixing in with the UK RB Series regulars across the day. The Peterborough Club has always been a really welcoming venue and with it's fantastically set up show court, it provided the players with a great viewing and playing experience. A huge thanks to the efforts of Andy Ruff for helping drive things at the club forward (and stepping in late notice to fill a B Grade drop out spot too.) On to the results!

A busy O70s draw with 7 players brought us some really tight games, with the likes of De Villiers vs Dubois and Livingstone vs Billson going the distance. In the end though, Geoff Wright came through dominant in the day, not dropping a game at all on the way to his title win, Terry James making it through to the Final and putting in a good shift to no avail. The O60s event lost a few entries in the lead up which mixed the draws around slightly. Still with the likes of Osborn, Chipperfield, Cordeaux and Holmes in the line up there were some tough fixtures across the day. Those four made it through to the semis, where the perenially strond duo of Cordeaux and Osborn managed to fight through to the final. Their 6574374583th match against each other over the years (*figure may not be entirely accurate.) This match up did not disappoint, with Cordeaux playing some high quality Racketball to take a 9/6 lead in the deciding 3rd game. However, Osborn was not to be deterred, and he showed his class and experience to drag himself back into the match, eventually taking the win over his regular Doubles partner 2/1 in one of the matches of the day. Very high quality!

A packed out and very strong Over 50s draw saw the return to action of Shropshire's Chris Morris for the first time this year, and he had a punchy line up to contend with, with the likes of Billington, Dodds, Smith, Hambrook and Millington alongside many others looking to take him down. The three box stages were very keenly fought, with Dodds in particular having to work very hard to come through 2 x 2/1 wins and a tiebreak 2/0 win to reach the semis. He however lost out to the big lefty Steve Smith, with Morris taking down best second place finisher Rob Hambrook. In the Final, Smith battled hard in the first to just lose out 11/9, but after that the pace and intensity of Morris' play was too much, and he went through to win the title 2/0! Gathering pace for a British Nationals push in July it seems...

We saw our strongest Over 40s entry for a while this time round, possibly as strong as the upcoming National Championships event! All the top dogs were in the mix battling it out, leading to some enthralling (and sometimes a bit spicy) encounters. Chappell, Alexis Smith and Loska all won through their respective boxes, with Colin Griggs coming out as best second placed finisher having pushed Chappell all the way in their box encounter. In two very well matches encounters, the relentless and consistent play of Loska took down the similar style of Griggs in the semi 2/0, while Smith's attacking nous did the same to Chappell's creativity and ball skill. The final was always going to be tough, Smith having won their previous encounter at Broxbourne this year, but Loska never one to shy away from a challenge. With a strong referee in the chair (kudos to Nick Jenkins for taking the unenviable task) this was a bit of a fractious encounter, but only in the competitive sense, with both players working at absolute maximum to get the win, inevitably therefore causing some friction between the two. In the end Smith came through once more with a 11/13, 11/6, 11/9 win in a battle that kept everyone on edge throughout! Alexis really looking strong this year backing up from his Series Title win in 2023... Loska I am sure will be back for revenge very soon.

It was great to have another Ladies draw, with two local players taking on the travelling Amanda Wykes in a box of three. Tanya Ruff took the title over her Peterborough compatriot Louise Field but both were pushed hard by Wykes, whose Racketball play is improving event by event! Really good to see a couple of new faces in this category and we hope to see them at more in the future. The B Grade was busy as always, with two boxes of 5 players getting their money's worth with 4 matches each across the day. In the end it came down to an all Kent and Dover Racketball Club show down between the two Nicks - Moore and Barnes, a Nick-off to see who could nick the most nicks! In the end Barnes proved to be too strong for his compatriot, taking the title with a 2/0 win, and (I believe) the first UK RB Series event win for the Dover massive this season!

Finally to the A Grade and the Doubles, and neither event disappointed. The Doubles had some really strong teams in box boxes and some very experienced campaigners. Osborn/Fennel and Kershaw/Norton both eventually making it through the day to meet in the final. Kershaw/Norton in particular getting a great win vs last year's Doubles National Champions Loska/L. Truman in their group. The North & South pairing managed to continue the good form by taking down the Essex duo 2/0 in the final, though the 2nd went 13/11 so could have very easily gone either way. Norton continuing his fine Series and Doubles Series form at the near halfway stage of the year with another win squeezing him further away from Loska in the title race.

The A Grade featured a few local new faces which is super, and it was one of these - Callum McGurk who battled his way through for a first UK Racketball Series title! The U19 player managed to do this without dropping a game throughout, though was helped in the final a bit when Norton started suffering from cramp in the start of the 2nd game. He will definitely be one to watch though as he has entered the Nationals in July, and his mixture of attacking play and sharp retrieval skills will definitely make the top seeded players a tad ancy...

Full results can be found on the event page here: PETERBOROUGH

And what it does to the Series and Doubles ranking positions here:

2024 Series - www.sportyhq.com/ranking/group/1727

2024 Doubles - www.sportyhq.com/ranking/group/1995/2024

Another top UK Racketball day at Peterborough and we hope to be back in force again next year! 

A THANK YOU TO OUR AMAZING SPONSORS!

We are incredibly lucky to have a number of companies supporting our UK Racketball Series and Major tournaments. Some of whom are run by our Series regulars, and some of whom are external contributors.

We wanted to give you all a big shout out for your support over the years, but certainly this year in particular where our set up and events seem to be going from strength to strength and it wouldn’t happen without the backing from businesses like yours.

On the Series front we have been able to push to a larger Intercounty Racketball competition with more categories across two different weekends, offer free Ladies entries at our Series events to build that side of the game, and also start up the very first Racketball Home Internationals event later this year.

On the Major event side, we have got the biggest and best offering for players at the British Nationals this year which should make it a really enjoyable weekend for all. Player gift bags, top quality tournament shirts, great prizes and trophies and more all included.
Wouldn’t happen without you guys so thank you from all our Racketballing community for your support.

Onwards and upwards!