Kurtis Cullen faces tough competition in Guatemala at Pan American racquetball championships

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This article was published 15/03/2024 (755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kurtis Cullen knows he’s in tough on the racquetball court in Guatemala at the Pan American championships.

The 31-year-old Brandonite is among six members of Team Canada who will be facing stiff competition coming out of Mexico, Bolivia and the United States.

“There are going to be 16 top professionals competing there,” he said. “I know I can compete once I’m on the court, but I don’t (play racquetball) as a full-time job. These guys I’m up against are on the pro tour … we all know each other, so I’m not going in thinking I’m going to beat some of the top ranked international (pro) players.”

The Vincent Massey graduate who will wear Team Canada’s colours is ranked third on his team among the three males following three qualifying events. The top two Canadian men will play doubles, while the No. 1 Sam Murray will also be among the singles players like Cullen.

“It’s tough to play professionals because that’s their job,” he explained prior to teaching teenagers signed up with the Brandon Blasters as they prepare to play during this weekend’s open tournament at the Sportsplex. “That’s all they do when I think of what I do.”

Besides, Cullen is too busy with what he does having five jobs on his agenda, which keeps him busy, but still able to play at a high level by attending Team Canada tryout camps.

He’s considered a professional player, but he’s not full-time travelling the world to racquetball hotbeds in South and Central America where this racquet sport is huge in comparison to Canada.

While he only picks up shifts on occasion, he’s still doing a job he first started as a dish washer in 2007 at Montana’s Restaurant. Now he’s a bartender and the longest-serving staffer at the Brandon establishment.

He’s also head coach with the Brandon Racquetball Association since 2018 when he was pivotal in reviving a program that once thrived in the 1990s. That’s when he fell in love with the sport, and the four courts at the Sportsplex and one at the YMCA were constantly busy with diehard players like him looking for court time.

“I love coaching,” he said. “It’s great to see the growth of the club here from what it was when I was younger to now, with 45-plus members. I can remember back on 1997 when racquetball was a big sport … Brandon’s junior program was huge with close to 100 kids involved.”

He’s also working for Racquetball Canada as the community programming co-ordinator where his goal is to develop and strengthen community level racquetball across Canada.

Projects he has developed include Racquetball Canada’s badge program, inflatable court program, NCCP community coach program and multi-bounce workshops.

The latter had Cullen at all three Brandon high schools this week, where he introduced physical education students to racquetball using inflatable courts he developed.

“The phys-ed students love it,” he said of his stops for gym classes at Neelin, Crocus and Vincent Massey. “I’m at the schools from 8 to 4 with my inflatable racquetball courts and we’re going to start off with intramurals for students who want to play.”

With the advent of April, Cullen plans to expand his inaugural program to a six-week inter-school competition, where the Spartans, Plainsmen and Vikings at all playing levels can compete for bragging rights and a school title.

Among the players who will be competing and helping out at Massey are two of his proteges, Grade 12 student Leyton Gouldie and Grade 10 Kaitlyn Couckuyt. Both teenagers are top ranked in their respective U18 and U14 age groups in Manitoba, with Gouldie also top-ranked in Canada.

Cullen has also been officiating professionally since 2014 for the International Racquetball Federation (IRF) which has put his passport to good use with trips to the U.S.A., Mexico, Columbia, Dominica Republic, Peru, Bolivia and Chile.

To earn his plane ticket from Toronto to Guatemala to represent Team Canada, Cullen’s three qualifying events took him to Ontario, Winnipeg and finally, Edmonton. His play left him ranked third overall, good enough to make the final-three and earn a trip to Central America.

When he first tried to make Team Canada in 2014, he finished seventh, with the top-four players advancing. He’s been persistent ever since, and works hard to improve his game and has had success since.

Ranked No. 1 in Manitoba since he was 15, Cullen is currently ranked fourth in Canada.

Cullen calls the highlight of his career — it happened in 2023 at nationals in Lethbridge, Alta. — winning doubles gold with his partner Coby Iwaasa. A year earlier, he represented Canada at the World Championships, where he finished top-16 in the men’s singles division.

More recently, he just returned from Minnesota where he was paired up with the No.1 U.S. doubles player after his partner was unable to play. He took the phone call, and agreed to play.

“We made the finals, but my partner rolled his ankle so we had to forfeit,” he said of the experience. “We played well to make the finals, but then the injury. Who knows how we’d have finished?”

How did Cullen choose racquetball as his sport of choice?

While it started when he was age four, the specifics are foggy because he was just a kid at the time. He does know he visited the Sportsplex with his family because his 10-year-old sister was taking lessons.

He had a racquet and ball and would escape to an area near the four courts, and pound the ball of the wall continually. An instructor noticed his great hand-eye co-ordination, and next thing Cullen knew he was taking lessons, too.

And then as he grew up, his love of racquetball only grew as he started playing, and spending most of his youth at the Sportsplex.

“I’ve never played hockey or really skated. And I did not curl. I guess I’m not really Canadian,” he said with a chuckle.

Cullen’s success on the court came early, and in 2011 he was dominating. By his U10 year, he was twice provincial champion. It was not as easy in the middle years to dominate as there were plenty of excellent teenagers playing the sport.

By his U18 years, Cullen was winning singles and doubles, and has not looked back since on the Canadian stage when it comes to being the best, if not, top-five.

“This is my passion,” he said. “My parents never put pressure on me to play. When I was at Massey I played middle on the volleyball team, but by my Grade 12 year I stopped playing because I was busy with racquetball.

“I could not put the time in with the high school team because they were away on weekends playing at tournaments, so I made a decision to focus only on my racquetball.”

While he’s tried pickleball, Cullen does not see himself making the switch to this now popular racquet sport. Instead, for the foreseeable future he will continue playing a game he was introduced to at age four.

But for now, his focus is on packing his Team Canada gear and joining his teammates in Toronto for the flight to Guatemala where they will battle for medals against some of the best professional players.

“It’s going to be tough to medal against players I know by name and have played against in the past,” he said. “But I’ll play my best.”

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