Jesse VanValkenberg wins Men’s Open at Big Sky State Games racquetball
Jesse VanValkenberg won the Men’s Open title at the Big Sky State Games racquetball tournament in Billings, Montana, finishing ahead of Devin Stout in second and Kyle Taylor in third. The Men’s Elite bracket was equally clear at the top, with Spencer Cloward taking first, Jim Derrickson second and Hans Petrich third.
Big Sky State Games highlighted those finishes in a sponsor thank-you update on Aug. 5, tying the results to the event’s local backing and the sharp, two-way style that defines racquetball. The organization’s event page listed Racquetball 2026 for July 18-19, 2026, in Billings and showed Homestead Storage as the sponsor, while the thank-you post named Homestead Self Storage in its acknowledgment of the support behind the competition.
The posted results showed the tournament was built around at least two men’s skill tiers, Open and Elite, rather than a single combined field. That structure matters in a state-games setting because it gives competitive players of different levels a place to play for podium spots while still producing clear winners in each bracket. VanValkenberg’s first-place finish in Open and Cloward’s win in Elite gave the event two separate championship races to spotlight.
Big Sky State Games describes itself as an “Olympic-Style Sports Festival for People of All Ages and Abilities That Reside in the Great State of Montana (and Surrounding States),” and racquetball fits neatly into that model. The sport remains visible in smaller markets because it can be folded into a broader summer festival without losing its competitive edge. The update around racquetball showed that formula at work in Billings, where fast hands, hard swings and division-based play produced a full set of podium finishers instead of a single winner’s list.
For the players, the placements carry the usual state-games value: bragging rights, seeding implications and momentum heading into later events. For the sport, the Billings results showed that racquetball still has a home in Montana’s multi-sport calendar, where local sponsorship and a festival format keep the draws organized, visible and worth chasing.