It's been a week of racquetball marginalization by outsiders.
Soccer, tennis, basketball, football, track and field, skiing, MMA, swimming, baseball, cricket, ice hockey, squash, golf, cycling, figure skating, Formula 1, gymnastics and rugby. These are the sports covered by this latest Business Insider article titled, "The most dominant athletes in every sport", written by Scott Davis.
Not every sport we would like to point out. As a sport, racquetball was left out of the "every". Note they did (rightly) included squash players Nicol David and Mohamed Elshorbagy. Squash has done a great job improving their reach and quality of their event coverage in recent years.
Earlier this week, Mr. Davis collaborated with Tony Manfred to put together a similar article for Business Insider titled, "The 50 most dominant athletes alive", where they broadened their inclusion of particular sports to include: Pole vaulting, cross-country skiing, college basketball, boxing, amateur and pro boxing, Ironman (triathlon), speed skating, and more track and field (shot put, running, sprint). Racquetball was also left out of the "alive".
Who did they miss? The articles are about dominance. Racquetball has arguably two of the most dominant professionals in any sport. They are, 10 Time US Open Champion Kane Waselenchuk and 5 Time US Open Paola Longoria, who both have been completely dominating in their respective tours and Longoria also dominates international competition and has become a media powerhouse in Mexico. Undoubtedly, they are greatest racquetball players of all time.
We can't really blame these gentlemen for racquetball not being on their radar.
Commnication, media and importantly, video, have not been strong points for us in
raquetball. Outsiders, (and insiders to some extent,) are just not able to see quickly engaging views of how fast and furious the sport actually can be. And if that is not available, then outside advertisers will remain frosty towards our numbers. They are writing for Insider Business after all.
Some of this also comes from log held perceptions and stereotypes by the general public, some of which is not flattering at all. Note the posting found on Twitter this week. Apparently, this is a real photo of an advertisement.
Naturally, we just couldn't let that go.
We can do better racquetball.