Racquetball team members visited Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., before starting play in the USA Racquetball Intercollegiate National Championships from March 26-28 in Minneapolis.
Racquetball team posts fifth straight top-five finish at USA Racquetball Intercollegiate Nationals
4/3/2026 10:36:00 PM | Racquetball
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The Flames had their highest-ever Division I men’s singles and doubles showings from brothers Matthew and Nathan Cook.
Liberty University's men's and women's racquetball team, coming off three consecutive fourth-place showings at the USA Racquetball Intercollegiate National Championships, repeated its fifth-place finish from 2022 — then a program-best — at last weekend's tournament hosted by the University of Minnesota, which drew 87 players (53 men and 34 women) to Minneapolis.
The Lady Flames (196 points) landed in sixth place in the women's standings, and the Flames (519) came in seventh out of 13 colleges and universities represented. Combined, Liberty totaled 715 points to finish behind only Oregon State University (1,926), Brigham Young University (1,610), the University of Missouri (1,535), and Texas A&M University (1,503).
Liberty's No. 1 Division I men's player, junior Matthew Cook, placed third in singles and fourth in doubles, teaming with his older brother, senior Nathan Cook.
First-year Head Coach Trevor Melton offers some tips to Flames players at nationals.
"We've had players win their brackets before in Division 4, but previously, the highest one of our DI men's players had ever placed at nationals was seventh, and fourth place is also the highest anyone of our DI doubles teams has ever placed," said Flames first-year Head Coach Trevor Melton ('23), a former DI men's player himself who served as a team captain and spiritual leader his last two seasons. "Overall, we had a lot of matches that went to Game 3s that we didn't usually win, but they were well fought by everyone."
Matthew Cook, seeded sixth out of 11 players, defeated No. 11 Danny Gramowski from Rochester Institute of Technology, 15-11, 15-7, and the University of Missouri's No. 6 Vincent Deutschmann, 15-14, 15-10, in his first two matches before suffering a semifinal loss to Oregon State's No. 1-seeded player, Tucker Elkins, 15-3, 15-1. Cook rebounded to upset BYU's No. 5-seeded Thomas Powley in the consolation final, 15-11, 15-11.
"Madisyn Leyendecker and Isabelle Priest, who played DII and DIII singles, respectively, did pretty good in women's DI-III doubles bracket, winning three out of their four matches and coming in second," Melton said.
The Cook brothers defeated Connecticut's Maxwell Banning and Ryan Kosak in their first men's DI doubles match, 15-14, 14-15, 11-2, before being swept by Oregon State's Tucker Elkins and Logan Horvat, 15-3, 15-4 to slip to the consolation final. There, the Flames duo lost to Missouri's Alex Jordan and Deutschmann, 15-12, 5-15, 11-8.
"Being able to see the hard work that Matthew and Nathan put in was a lot of fun," Melton said.
Dean finished fourth in the D5 men's singles bracket while Bennett took second in the D5 women's singles draw, going 2-2 in the round-robin bracket and winning a tiebreaker for second for most games won.
While all six of the Lady Flames on this season's roster are underclassmen, five of the 10 men are seniors or graduate students (Andrew Cook), so Melton will have a bit of rebuilding to do next season.
"I am hoping we are able to recruit a lot of new players to try to continue to grow the sport next year," Melton said, noting he is looking to host a few more tournaments at the LaHaye Recreation & Fitness Center courts and expand the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Racquetball Conference to include teams from Maryland as well as North Carolina.
