The gold medal goes to…TEAM USA!!!
Words I had dreamed of hearing for over a decade! Over a month later, I still feel sentimental thinking about the winning moment after a 3-hour battle. I am pretty sure my heart rate was at 200 from watching the last 15 minutes unfold. It came down to the final frame of tennis against Hong Kong in an epic Challenge Cup Final, the first between two non-European nations.
My personal Racketlon journey began back in 2011 while still attending University in Oregon. Soon after finding out about the sport, I decided to drive 20 hours to the nearest tournament in Edmonton, Canada. I fell in love with the sport and its powerful ability to unite people across the world. Never being able to be still and focus on one sport, racketlon has been a perfect adventure as you can never run out of things to improve. This burgeoning crusade has taken me to many beautiful cities across 10 countries, with every tournament expanding my admiration for this special sport and community.
The journey for USA Racketlon has just begun. Shona Kerr led the first-ever national team in Bulgaria at the 2012 World’s event, finishing 11th overall. In 2018, we headed to Zurich and finished 5th in the Challenge Cup. The following year, 4th in Leipzig. After a couple of years off given the pandemic, the Graz event was our fourth showing on the world stage.
Inspired by the performances of a few American juniors making their international debuts the week prior in Vienna and Katrin Maldre bringing home a few more medals to her never-ending collection, Team USA was ready this time. With a strong collective of players in New York City and upstate New York, we had an opportunity to recruit and train. As a result, we fielded our strongest team thus far.
The competition was as strong as ever. We took part in hard-fought battles in the quarter and semi-final matches against Romania and Great Britain, and we persevered. We knew we were in for a tough final match against Hong Kong. Having performed in-depth data analytics and scouting the night prior, I knew we had to earn as many points as possible in the first two sports (table tennis and badminton) as those were their strengths.
“I knew this team was special”
After the table tennis segment against the Hong Kong team, we were surprisingly only down by 1 point. In badminton, they cranked up the pressure and won three out of four of the matches and were 16 up. After some hard-fought squash, we narrowed the gap to 9 going into the final sport of tennis. In a captain versus captain battle in the Men’s Singles 1, Steven proved to be steadier on the day to put Hong Kong up by 14 with three matches left. The masterclass then ensued with Steph winning 11-3. Joanne and Shree served up a perfect set in doubles (gotta love those NYC bagels), with Alex closing it out. All of that led to what I’d been dreaming about for a decade – not only our first podium finish but a first team competition gold for the USA!!
I knew this team was special. We all bonded leading up to the event and helped each other across all the sports. Everyone hustled across the city for court time and training! The grind never stops in New York, and we are keen to improve this coming year so that we can proudly compete with a new set of players and teams next year in the Nations Cup! As captain, I couldn’t be more proud of our win this year and where we as a team and country are headed.
Patrick Moran / Racketlon USA President & Team Captain
Image Credit / rubinfoto.com
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