Ferris, Lc Visitor Bounces Around Promoting Handball

Last week Ferris students donned white gloves. This week, Lewis and Clark students are doing the same.

Tea time?

Hardly. The white gloves are protecting their palms against hard rebounds from Michael Nall’s handballs.

Nall, on a one-man crusade backed by the U.S. Handball Association, is out to promote the sport of handball.

Nall’s Inner-City Youth Handball program is based in Seattle. For the past two years Nall has traveled all over the Northwest teaching the game to students.

Physical education departments usually hire him for a week to come to their school and teach kids how to play the game.

“More and more we’re looking for lifetime sports, sports that people can continue to participate in after they leave school,” said Pat Pfeifer, head of the physical education department at Ferris.

Pfeifer heard about Nall’s program through Spokane School District 81 and the accolades he’s received through the Seattle School District. So Pfeifer invited him to teach the sport to the school’s P.E. classes.

Last week Nall spent the week at Ferris teaching kids the relatively simple sport. This week he’s been serving up the bright blue balls against the wall of the gym at LC.

While basketball dominates the playground, Nall says handball doesn’t require a peach basket or a surfeit of athletic skill.

Anyone can play, and Nall claims the sport helps build self-esteem, especially for those without the skills of a Tiger Woods, Pete Sampras or Monica Seles.

Nall’s motto?

“Any ball, any wall - that’s all it takes.”

Equipment is minimal: white leather gloves, which are padded to protect the palms, and safety goggles.

Handball players can go it alone or play in doubles. The lightweight handballs are hit with the palm of the hand, no paddles or racquets required.

Players serve the ball, let it bounce once and then slap it back to the wall. Nall likes to crowd kids into the gym, since the game doesn’t require much space, and have as many as nine sets of doubles going on at once.

“We’ve combined as many as three classes in here,” he said.

Students seem to like the game.

Amanda Johnson, 16, who had been playing for just three days said, “I’ve never played anything like it. I begged my mom to play it with me last night.”

“I like it because you don’t have to have a racquet,” said Tricia Maas, 16. “I was playing tennis once and my racquet hit me in the nose, and I got a bloody nose.”

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