On the weekend of September 21-22, 50 players from New-York state, Massachusetts, Ontario and Quebec gathered in the Drummondville Olympique recreation center to participate in Sports Experts racketlon tournament.
The venue is top notch with a permanent table tennis facility, international level tennis court (ITF tourney was held there a month ago), nice badminton and pickleball courts). A douzains volunteers were on hand to help tournament director Nathalie Lamothe run this event.
Sponsors gracefully provided fruit beverage, health bars, sandwich, sport gears and prize money (see picture for sponsors). A players’ evening was held a a local brewery.
Down with the tournament results: The three big stars of the weekend are new comer (but not unknown to the ping-pong and pickleball community) Martin Côté. Mr Côté won every single event in which he entered: Men’s B singles, Over 45 singles, and Men’s A doubles (with Rod Bédard). Dominique Canale is the also star with two wins : singles and mixed doubles). The other star is Guillaume Blais who won both the u-21 and the junior doubles.
In the finale of the B Martin Côté faced Philippe Côté-Jacques an international level runner and good racketlon player and won a very close battle, junior player Anthony Bédard came in third.. To win the O-45 singles Martin had to defeat his double partner Rod Bédard and was able to do so with some good tennis. Men’s doubles was well contested with the lights of Pat Laplante and Jeremy Easterbrook in the event: A win by two points against Jeremy and Andy Stenson and 4 points against the Laplante and son team propelled Côté and Bédard to the gold.
Men’s A winner was the king of Canadian racketlon Pat Laplante jr with Jeremy Easterbrook second after a 1 point win against top tennis player Richard Soucy in the semi.
Women’s winner for the second tournament in a row is Dominique Canale (NY) with Line Bellerose second. Dominique had to defeat Line in pickleball (she is the current provincial champ in pickleball singles) to secure the win. In Mixed doubles with her partner JustinD’Antonio they defeated the pair of Bellerose and our president Marc Fortin.
U-14 There was a strong contingent of u-14 player with Antoine Champagne beating Victor Gauthier for first place.
Men’s C winner is Jimmy Terzian.
Men’s B doubles is won by the pair of Stéphane Lauzon and Jacques Bédard.
Women’s B winner is Chantal Verville
Junior doubles Winner is the pair of Blais and local player Gabriel Angers.
This tournament was very well organized and it will be back next year in September, so add it to to your calendar, We hope to have many more players from Ontario next time around.
Featured image is Martin Côté in the middle with the cheque.