DJ Mendoza sweeps Junior Nationals with rare Triple Crown

DJ Mendoza turned Junior Nationals into a personal sweep, winning boys 21-and-under singles, taking boys 21-and-under doubles with Cole Sendrey, and finishing the Triple Crown with mixed 21-and-under alongside Fatima Garcia Sanchez. In a sport where one elite weekend can redraw the junior hierarchy, that kind of three-event haul is the kind of performance that travels fast from the youth brackets to the national-team conversation.

The 53rd annual USA Racquetball Junior National Championships ran June 24-28 at the Wellmark YMCA in Des Moines, Iowa, and the draw size told its own story. USA Racquetball said the event produced unusually large fields in the mid-teen divisions, a sign that junior participation is holding up and that more players are getting real bracket pressure instead of being packed into tiny draws. Pro Racquetball Stats entered the full results across singles, doubles and mixed doubles, which matters because Junior Nationals is where the sport’s next true contenders start building a record, not just a trophy case.

Mendoza was the clear headline, but the field behind him was deep enough to point to the next layer of names. Grant Williams won boys 16-and-under singles and teamed with Evan Whitley to sweep boys 18U and 16U doubles, a strong marker for a player who is already winning across age lines. Naomi Ros took girls 21U and paired with Ava Kaiser in girls 21U doubles, keeping herself in the same bracket of players who can win in singles and handle the pressure of partner play. Yana Alegria made one of the cleanest statements of the tournament by winning both girls 14U and 12U, a rare double that suggests she is outclassing more than one age group at once.

Other champions filled out the map of the sport’s future. London Townsend won boys 18U, Scott Haacke captured boys 14U, Ryan Joeckel took boys 12U, Damian Gil won boys 10U, Finn McGrath won boys 10U doubles-ball, David Lopez claimed boys 8U, and Vaihbhav Gorthy won boys 6U doubles-ball. On the girls side, Alexis Boyko won 18U, Rebecca Christopher took 16U, Sameera Rai won 10U, Alyana Machado took 10U doubles-ball, Sasha Rai won 8U, Almira Pridatko won 8U doubles-ball, and Nainika Singi won 6U doubles-ball.

USA Racquetball has been clear about why this event carries so much weight: top finishers can qualify for Team USA and represent the United States internationally, and Junior Nationals has long been framed as a stepping stone to collegiate and professional racquetball success. That path got even more defined in 2026, when USA Racquetball created a High Performance Commission, named Pablo Fajre as High Performance Director in April, and said it is building a standardized training system to connect junior development to adult international performance. With Junior Team USA already producing 32 athletes from nine states in 2025, and 10 of them triple-qualified, the Des Moines results looked less like a one-week tournament and more like the sport’s next roster projection.