The MidEast Racquetball Conference has made its inaugural season an exciting one to say the least!  While the team points standings are still under review (to be completed within the next week), it became apparent at the last tournament in Cincinnati that the team competition is tight – in fact, only 4 points separated Cincy and Slippery Rock for 2nd place in the women’s division!  And, only 55 points was the spread between 6th-8th place in the men’s competition between CAL-PA, SRU and BW there as well! 

The regular tournament season will culminate with MERC #4 being held at Baldwin Wallace January 22-24.  BW should field their strongest team yet as the host for this event, with neighboring Akron U also looking for a strong turnout. Cincy’s men have pulled some surprises this season, pulling a “no one was looking” victory at Slippery Rock in October, and also being the 1st MERC team to field a 2nd men’s team due to the depth of their players.  Look out for OSU’s guys, too and those awesome women from Grove City and Slippery Rock – not big in number but huge in quality!  The same can be said for CMU’s guys as well. 

The MERC grand finale will be the MERC Regional’s to be held at The Ohio State University Feb. 26-28.  Due to the size of this tournament, all players should plan to play on Friday.  A banquet will be held Saturday night at this event, at which the regular season team awards will be given out along with others.   

Don’t forget, the Collegiate Nationals will be held in Missouri April 7-10, 2010 – we hope to see a large MERC turn-out there.  Akron, BW and Ohio State for sure will be in attendance – it’s a GREAT tournament – very fun and exciting!  Each school may bring 6 men and 6 women to this event  - singles competition in 6 divisions, doubles in 3 – very similar to the MERC.   

It has been suggested that at our last 2 tournaments that we have refs for our matches, since viewing is conducive for this at these venues.  Traditionally, losers ref – but we can discuss this. We can also discuss a point-penalty system for failure to show up to ref.  Winners having to ref also can insure that refs show up.  The ECRC does a raffle for prizes for ref-ing which they say is very effective as well.   But for anyone planning on going to Nationals, where ref-ing is mandatory, this will be good practice. 

Several MERC teams are also traveling to Penn State the weekend of January 29-31 to compete in the ECRC (East Coast RB Conference) tournament there.  Their events usually have close to 200 players competing in RB as well as side events like squash and skill-division racquetball.  The ECRC are the pioneers in collegiate racquetball and we look forward to a great time there! 

It’s been great to see some new schools at MERC tournaments – Miami (OH), Ashland, Grand Valley (MI) to name a few.  Dayton – where are you?  Hope to see you back soon! 

Hope everyone had a great winter break – see you in a few weeks at BW!

Hey everybody. hopefully everyone's semester is wrapping up nicely for them and you're all looking forward to taking your much needed vacation from school for a while. Well, be ready to play some intense College Racquetball when you get back! The next MERC meet is scheduled for late January/early February (still tentative). Stay tuned for more info regarding the where and when of MERC #4.

Results for the Cincy tourney are now on the rankings page (scroll down past the cumulative standings). All these results are going to be re-examined, re-tabulated, and made official in the near future. The cumulative results will then be updated accordingly.

In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season, and get rested up for MERC #4.

It's time for some MERC racquetball action in Cincy this weekend. This is the last MERC tournament of 2009 so don't miss it.
 
Can Akron hold onto the #1 spot? Will hometeam advantage help push the UC Bearcats past current #2 Baldwin-Wallace? You have to be there to find out first.
 
We will try to get pictures of this, and past, events up on the website. Look for a MERC youtube channel coming soon as well where we will try to get videos of as many finals matches as we can.
 
If you have any last-minute questions about the tournament email coccodt@gmail.com.

OK, so it took a while, but we finally have the official results from the Akron tournament. The results can be found under the new "Rankings" section at the top of the page. The home team advantage really came through for Akron as they took the top honors with Baldwin Wallace following in 2nd.
The tournament was a tremendous success with a whopping 66 participants!