Matt is celebrating his 12th anniversary of opening America’s best amateur jai-alai court. There may be even a big surprise for Matt himself. More details and results early next week. The Pelota Press will be there covering the event.
Here are the details on Matt’s big tournament set for the weekend of April 29-May 1:
Must be signed up and paid for by April 22, 2022.
Please wear white pants for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. However, you may wear sweatpants or shorts – just as long as they are white.
Friday April 29th is The Spectacular 9 Performance and is totally separate from the tournament on Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday, April 30th – Frist Round of the Tournament (each group will be an hour TBD).
Fees:
$50 per player all 3 nights
$50 per player for Saturday & Sunday Tournament
$10 per player if playing Friday Night only
$10 per Spectator for Friday Night (kids free)
Free Spectator admission for Saturday & Sunday
Group and times will be determined by number of entries
Your group for playoffs and finals will be determined by Saturday Scores
Loren Harris Tributes:
Each night/day we will remember Loren Harris in different ways and have a collection in his name to benefit the school he helped support in Mexico
Sunday will be the 12th Anniversary of the Amateur Courts Grand Opening! Cake anyone?
Scoring Format:
9 Point Games – Single Point Scoring
3 Fronts – 3 Backs
Game 1
1 Front 1 Back 1
2 Front 2 Back 2
3 Front 3 Back 3
Game 2
Front 2 Back 3
2 Front 3 Back 1
3 Front 3 Back 2
Game 3
1 Front 3 Back 2
2 Front 1 Back 3
3 Front 2 Back 1
You get total point for the game
Win 5
Place 3
Show 1
Playoff for place and show if tied
After 3 Games there will be:
One 1st Place FC/BC
One 2nd Place FC/BC
One 3rd Place FC/BC
This will determine Sunday’s groups.
Be sure to watch on the web – go to Matt’s site for details.
Wow, it was great to see live “goatskin” jai-alai again. Rising from the ashes of what appeared to be their final performance last November, Dania jai-alai was open again.
Yes, it was only an exhibition featuring 8 teams and 16 players and held over 7 days between April 1st thru the 10th. And yes, there was no gambling allowed. And yes, an admission fee of $5 was charged to enter the fronton. And yes, travel expenses hindered many from attending (hotels were mostly in the $400 range except for the Motel 6 down the road at a “modest” $268.19 as noted on Kayak). But overall, the event was a big success.
Ownership Pleased
Dania ownership and management was quite pleased with the outcome of the tournament. The largest crowd was on the opening night, and the second largest crowd was last Saturday night. Most of the games were well balanced with down to the final point thrillers, with partido’s going to 21 or 15 points a match in a double elimination format.
The event was put to together to gauge if jai-alai at Dania could make a comeback and eventually see its 70th anniversary. Well, the good news is that it will happen. As we reported here months ago, a two-month season will be held in December and January with a limited roster of 22-24 players and a restructured pay for the players. Its no secret Dania Jai-alai was on life support, losing an estimated $1-$2 million a year. As we have reported in the past, the ownership likes jai-alai and they want to keep it going, but not at a loss running well into 9 figures.
Analyzing the Event
The owners and management will be analyzing everything from start to finish during the second half of April to see if there is anything they could have done differently and if there is value and doing this more often. Benny Bueno, the players manager, was personally content with the turnout for the live audience and the viewership through their live stream. He has noted that while sitting in the audience and watching the crowd reaction, everyone was entertained and that was the purpose of the tournament.
The Pelota Press, who was one of the sponsors of the event, couldn’t agree more with Bueno’s assessment. Everybody in the audience of about 250 or so per performance thoroughly enjoyed it. There were dozens of former players there in attendance from Becky to Mendi. Regulars from Jesus to Al Q. There was even an employee who worked there for several years starting in 1961. She had some great stories to tell including having jai-alai greats like Chimela over to her house for dinner.
The final match was on Sunday afternoon and going great – the French team of Olharan and Etcheto were in an 11-11 tie in the 21-point “win it or lose it” match against Dania stars Barandika and Leke, when Olharan got nailed in the lower leg area on a throw in the front and hobbled off the court after going down. In obviously pain, he reemerged about 15-20 minutes later with a heroes-like welcome from the crowd. For a while it seemed like the tournament was going to come to an end, but the courage and determination of the 22-year-old had no intention of making a flight all the way from France to have it end like this. Unfortunately, the outcome did not end like a Rocky movie. The French team only scored one more point after the injury and losing the tournament to the favorites Barandika and Leke.
Loren Harris Tribute
The event was called the “Battle at the Palace” – Spring Tournament. On Saturday night, there as a nice tribute before the second of three matches that evening to the late Loren Harris, who passed away a couple months ago while teaching kids how to play jai-alai in Cancun Mexico. Dave LaMont did a great job announcing the tribute which included several photos of Loren on the large screen video scoreboard. It is still quite shocking we lost a great guy in Loren Harris who did so much for our sport in keeping it alive for the younger generation. He will never be forgotten.
What Went Good and What Went Wrong
Without a doubt, the event was a success. The true jai-alai fans were attending in steady numbers even though there was no betting allowed. This was the first time I could recall watching jai-alai without having the ability to bet on the outcome since the great Tournament of Champion events in the early 80s before the state allowed Partido betting in a “Win” bet only format. It was also the first time someone had to pay an admission since Orlando started charging for the Citrus events over a decade ago. One blemish was when the power went out on the court and scoreboard on game point last week. After about 45 minutes of darkness, the game called and resumed the next day. It’s obvious the tote system and lighting in there is antiquated – perhaps dating back to 1953! The format was great as well as the pairing of the games.
Dania has been Investing in the Sport
In a sign that Dania intends on keeping jai-alai alive, there were a couple of notable additions. A concession stand was constructed inside the fronton near the far back end that included popcorn, hot dogs and beer. It was a nice addition and put an end of having to look for a server or go all the way out of the fronton and into the casino to get something to eat or drink. We also noted a new trophy stand that took Benny and the refs to drag in and set up for the presentation of the checks to the top three teams in the tournament.
In bigger news, they are looking at upgrading their “1980s” broadcasting equipment. The system they are researching includes HD cameras and a broadcast software that will give them many more capabilities than they have now. Things such as slow motion, instant reply, upgraded graphics and the ability to show highlights and/or commercials during the programming. The implementation of that broadcast equipment will be discussed in the following months. This is an important step Dania MUST do to move forward.
What’s Next
Beginning in the month of May, Dania jai-alai will start to put a list of players together of who they would like to recruit for the December-January season. They will start talking to players during the summer and hopefully have a roster finalized by October. They also want to incorporate some more Partido playing during the months of December and January and probably have a competition similar to the “Fall Challenge” they had last year.
Holding a two-month season will create a demand to show up at some point; there will be no direct competition as Magic City is closed at that time of the year and it will be held during the two busiest tourist months of the year -including traditionally the two busiest weeks of the year – Christmas and New Years’.
Of course, the Pelota Press will keep you informed.
The National Jai-alai Association has resumed its first league action in four years with a Tuesday Night Spring League beginning March 22nd. The event will run 9 consecutive weeks and end on May 17th.
A total of 16 players had signed up, but two players had to scratch on the eve of the event – Restina and Gino. Julio Restina, a homegrown Puryear Park player, has played pro at Miami, Calder and Ft. Piece jai-alai for the past several seasons.
Now, a total of 14 players will be participating – 7 in the front and 7 in the backcourt. Other former pro players include Leonard Linardos, Ricky Hernadez, Cachin 47 and Garby. There are several other players who have participated in the Magic City tournament that are playing and they include Alex, Bill O’Conner, Anthony Sutton, and Bernard II who will now play under the name of Zoltar II.
Here is the latest lineup. The action starts at 6pm. There will be 7 games to 10 points each – all doubles games. Points will be accumulated based on amount scored in each game, with an extra 3 points going to 1st place, 2 points to 2nd place, and 1 point for coming in 3rd. Trophies and prize money will be awarded to First, Second and Third Place finishers in the front and back.
Fans are welcome to bring chairs and watch the great action.
Here’s an interesting event that occurred almost 5 years ago (November 21, 2017) at the St. Pete Puryear Park that we had never publicized before. It’s a little slow right now in the jai-alai world, so we felt this is a good time to share it.
The entire event was filmed after a few kids were kicking a soccer ball in an adjacent court that landed on the overhead netting above the jai-alai cancha.
Incredibly, some kid thought he was Spiderman and climbed up the fence to retrieve the ball. After several minutes of trying to get the ball down, our own Magic Mike (The Computer Man) came over and attempted to help get the ball down by throwing one of the jai-alai game balls (a Matt Generation 4 ball).
Bear in mind, there is a very large and loose protective netting where the soccer ball was “resting” in.
A soccer ball is about 28 inches in circumference and almost 9 inches in diameter and weighs about one pound.
The Matt Jai-alai ball is about 2 1/2 inches in diameter and weighs a fraction of the soccer ball.
The odds of picking up a cesta and throwing the Matt ball underneath it with enough pressure and precision to knock it off the overhead net would seem like a million to one.
But not for Magic Mike, who’s been known to knock down Matt balls that get stuck up there once in a while better than anybody. (Current over/under odds is 3 shots)
Spiderman tried frantically to shake the net and get the ball off… to no avail, but then on ONE throw, Magic Mike wacked the soccer ball, causing the lost soccer ball to come flying off the court. All caught on tape.
The film was sent to America’s Funniest Home Videos, the popular ABC hit TV show – now in its 32nd season. Incredibly, the video clip was approved to air on the show, but producers wanted sign offs from the parents of Spiderman and the girl seen in the video who yelled out “He thinks he’s Spiderman!” before they could air it. Unfortunately, the kids were long gone a few minutes after getting their soccer ball back and never seen again.
Disclaimer: These are Exhibition matches. No Wagering.
Round One: Friday, April 1 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Round Two: Sunday, April 3 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
SEMI-FINALS
Round Three: Friday, April 8 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 9 at 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Final: Sunday, April 10 at 12:30 p.m. Disclaimer: Management reserves the right to change or cancel the schedule at any given time.
During round one, on Friday April 1st, it’s expected to run from 7pm-10pm. Games 1 and 2 will feature:
4 Teams
2 Matches
Match 1 @ 7 pm
Barandika/Leke vs Johan/Gorka
Match 2 @ 8:30 pm
Hormaetxwea/Basque vs Arrieta/Urbieta
21-point Partido
Winning team loves on in Winners Bracket
Losing teams play in loser bracket (Sunday April 3 – double elimination round)
Saturday, April 2nd
Games 3 and 4
Zulaika/Ubilla vs Aimar/Ibon
Olharan/Etcheto vs Iturbide/Arta
Sunday, April 3 at 12:30pm
Loser Bracket Games 5 and 6
Match 5 (12:30 pm) Losers of Match 1 & 2 (loser eliminated, winner moves on)
Match 6 (2pm) Losers of Match 3 & 4 (loser eliminated. Winner moves on)
21-point Partido’s. Two teams will be eliminated from the tournament.
There will be a total of 14 matches throughout the 7-day event.
Players will arrive starting the 25th of March to practice. More information can be seen on the Dania Casino website.
Tickets to the Event are on sale now and are $5 per day. Or you can purchase the entire event pass and save a few bucks.
Please help support Dania jai alai. A nice turnout will lead to more events like this and perhaps a longer than 2-month season coming up in December and January in the future.
South Florida’s Sun Sentinel contacted us again after the Benny posting on Tigers site and a story on Dania’s reopening in the Pelota Press. It’s a good story about the great news that indeed, Dania is reopening.
There will be a tournament over the first two weekends in April that will feature up and coming stars. There is a $5 admission fee per day with $25 tickets to see the entire event. There is no pari-mutual or sports wagering offered on this event.
Then in December and January, live jai-alai will resume with a 22–24-man roster and betting pari-mutual style will take place. As we have said before, the owners love jai-alai and want it to continue but not at the loses of what is likely well over a million dollars a year. By holding the season in those two months they can profit from a lot of tourists in town and avoiding any overlap with the Magic City Jai-alai season. As noted in the article below, the best two weeks of the year, handle wise, are generally the last two weeks of the year and Dania had been shut down at that time.
Also, regarding the story below, there is one correction I want to make. I did not have anything to do with the bus loads of players coming from Tampa. I wasn’t even aware – if there ever was one. I did say there were abut 40-50 people from the Tampa area on the Saturday night at Dania when asked and I said they were mostly ex-pros from Tampa.
It’s not dead: Jai alai returning to longtime Dania Beach home
By Ron Hurtibise South Florida Sun Sentinel Feb 19, 2022 at 6:00 AM
Reports of the death of jai alai in Dania Beach, it turns out, were premature.
Owners of The Casino at Dania Beach, which pulled the plug on the longtime parimutuel sport a year shy of its 70th birthday at the site, have decided to bring it back after all.
First, the venue will stage a seven-day round robin exhibition tournament, with no betting, over the first two weekends of April.
Then in December, the parimutuel version will return for an eight-week season running through the end of January.
The announcements this week were eagerly greeted by longtime jai alai fans, said Jeff Conway, who runs a jai alai blog called pelotapress.com.
”They are happy,” Conway said of fans on Thursday. “They’re surprised but they’re happy. They thought it was pretty much over.”
Jai alai players compete in one of the last matches last November before owners of The Casino @ Dania Beach pulled the plug on the longtime parimutuel after its fall season. Based in part on an uptick in attendance in the sport’s final two weeks, the casino announced that jai alai will return as an exhibition tournament in April and a two-month parimutuel schedule in December and January. (Michael Laughlin/Sun Sentinel)
That’s how things sounded in September, when the casino’s owners announced that the sport wouldn’t be returning in spring 2022 after the fall season closed on Nov. 28. They negotiated buyouts of 26 players’ contracts that ran for the four months ending in May.
The decision left only Magic City Casino in Miami with regular jai alai operations. It also evoked feelings of sadness and nostalgia among current players, former players and fans who have watched longtime venues close up one by one across the state in recent decades.
Players and support staff at the Dania casino “went through a very emotional period at the end of 2021,” said Benny Bueno, a former player who served as the casino’s jail alai operations manager for more than a decade. ”Everyone took the decision as though it was going to be permanent.”
The backstory
They understood the reasoning, Bueno said. The popularity of jai alai, a centuries-old sport founded in the Basque regions of Spain and France and introduced to the United States in 1904, had steadily fallen since peaking between the 1950s and 1980s. In its heyday, thousands of fans regularly packed fronton grandstands, largely because jai alai frontons were among the few places that allowed legalized gambling.
Then came the Florida Lottery, casinos on cruise ships and Seminole Indian reservations, Major League Baseball, professional basketball, and finally, new laws allowing declining parimutuels to offer casino games.
But there was a catch: Those laws required parimutuels to keep their sports going — even as crowds and betting totals dwindled — as a condition of offering the more lucrative casino games.
Betting via closed-circuit television blossomed, followed by betting via online streaming video. Gamblers no longer needed to leave their homes. Dania Jai Alai Fronton became The Casino @ Dania Beach, with multiple events and attractions. As jai alai’s prominence diminished, attendance at the fronton dwindled to a few dozen each night.
Finally last spring, the Seminole tribe and the Florida Legislature negotiated an agreement allowing parimutuels in the state to “decouple” their unprofitable horse racing and jai alai attractions.
Although the Dania Beach casino’s Argentinian owners supported jai alai, the decision was a no-brainer, Conway said. “If I had to guess, I’d say they were losing $1 million a year on jai alai,” he said. Players, too, saw their incomes drop as nightly betting totals declined.
A glimmer of life
And then, amid the sadness of the season’s final weeks, as the final weekend drew closer, something inspiring happened, Bueno said.
Fans returned to say goodbye. They came by car from Florida cities that once hosted jai alai, and they came by plane from other states where the sport was once popular. Conway helped to gather former players and diehard fans from the Tampa area who arrived aboard two charter buses.
There were more people and money bet over the last two weeks than the venue had seen in years, Bueno said.
On the season’s last Saturday night on Nov. 27, the Dania Beach venue was packed — both the 500-seat grandstands and the standing areas, Conway said. “You couldn’t even walk through,” he said.
Those last crowds “demonstrated that this sport is still alive,” Bueno said. And it got him and the casino’s owners brainstorming ways to continue jai alai’s tradition in Dania Beach.
For the April exhibition tournament, a mix of the venue’s veterans and some of the sport’s rising stars from Spain and France who have never played in Dania Beach will compete to split $21,000 in prize money, he said.
The parimutuel season in December and January will be a test run to see if a scaled-down version can make financial sense, he said. If successful, the season could be extended.
Conway thinks the owners might keep it going even if they can break even. “It gives them another attraction for the casino — something most other casinos don’t have,” he said.
In recent years, the sport has taken a break for two weeks at the end of December. But historically, those two weeks have been among the biggest in terms of attendance and betting handles, Conway said. Playing during those weeks, when Floridians are on holiday break and tourists swarm to the state, could help the experiment succeed, he said.
It would also allow something that didn’t seem possible in November — a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the opening of Dania Jai Alai Fronton on December 28, 1953.
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
In the pic Henry, Jesus Rubio, Julio R, Jesus, Tirillo and Super Jules.
2nd place winners Jesus and Jesus.
North Miami Amateur Jai-alai held a big tournament this past weekend and here are the results:
Special thanks to Jesus O. for all the details and photos.
The two-day tournament had two groups of 5 players in each group both front and back.
Group A Fronts
Pichy
Caby
Jesus (Rubio)
Jules (Super Jules at Calder)
San Juan
Group A Backs
Belota
Mitch
Monte
Tirillo
Jesus O.
Group B Fronts
Jose
Julio Rosales
Ivan
Joe G
Scott
Group B Backs
Henry
Jerry
James
Peter
Bob
Tournament format
5 games to 10 points with rotating partners. The top 5 scores of fronts and top 5 of the backs played Sunday (the second day) with groups mixed.
Results
In the back
Tirillo won with 81 points
Jesus O. came in second with 74
Henry came in third with 63
In the front
Julio R won with 74 points
Jesus (from Calder aka Rubio) came in second with 71 points
Three players tied for 3rd with 67 points (what are the odds of that?). Then they had to play a singles match with Jules winning and ending up finishing in third over Caby and Pichy who lost in the playoff game.
As we reported over a month ago, Dania Jai-alai will be staging a two-month season coming up this December and January in addition to the exhibition they will be holding in April. The news was confirmed by Benny in a posting on Tigers site this morning.
The fronton has applied to the State to conduct live games during the timeframe of December 2022 and January 2023. There will be pari-mutual wagering during those two months with state approval while no wagering will be allowed on the 10 day tournament in April.
Benny said that by early summer he will be looking at putting together an all-star roster for that two-month season.
It is expected to have 22-24 players on the roster.
More details will emerge as time goes on. This is great news – so full court jai-alai lives on!
Everyone out there needs to support them and Magic City so jai-alai will continue.
Here is the Press Release from Dania Casino on the big jai-alai news that Dania has a big tournament scheduled.
We will get more details soon.
Dania Beach Jai-Alai Presents Battle at the PalaceApril 1-10 at The Casino @ Dania Beach
World’s Top-Ranked Players Compete inExhibition Tournament for $21,000 in Cash and Prizes
DANIA BEACH, Fla. (February 14, 2022) – Some of the world’s best Jai-Alai players from the Basque region of Spain and France will return to the fronton at The Casino @ Dania Beach to compete in the Battle at the Palace team invitational April 1-10, 2022.
Paying homage to the original Dania Jai-Alai Palace, which in its heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s drew thousands of fans to the stands, this first-ever exhibition tournament will pair 16 of the sports’ top-ranked players as they compete in elimination rounds for more than $21,000 in cash and prizes.
“Generations of fans have enjoyed this exciting sport in our fronton,” said Arnaldo Suarez, CEO of The Casino @ Dania Beach. “We’re excited to help carry on the nearly four-hundred-year tradition of Jai-Alai and host this special exhibition tournament which brings together some of the world’s most talented players.”
Jai-Alai has been dubbed the fastest moving ball sport in the world by Guinness World Records. After hosting Jai-Alai games for almost 70 years as home to the last remaining full court frontons in America, the final regulation Jai-Alai game was played at The Casino @ Dania Beach on November 28, 2021.
“Jai-Alai is a tight community with a global brotherhood of players and devoted fans,” said Benny Bueno, Jai-Alai Player Manager at The Casino @ Dania Beach. “This tournament is our way of celebrating these exceptional players, entertaining our devoted fanbase and doing our part to ensure the sport’s legacy lives on.”
The Battle at the Palace invitational will feature doubles competitions in elimination rounds with two games each night.
Dania Beach Jai-Alai Presents Battle at the Palace Schedule
Round One:
Friday, April 1 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 2 at 7p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Round Two:
Sunday, April 3 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Semi-Finals
Round Three:
Friday, April 8 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 9 at 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Final
Sunday, April 10 at 12:30 p.m.
Format
The event will feature 21 point Partido’s with no gambling.
