Thomas Rall is a racquetball activist and former champion at World Seniors, National Masters, French Open, Irish Open and Dutch Open; earned a #1 national ranking, and is an AmPro instructor, state board member, CRA newsletter editor, Ektelon newsletter editor, and contributing writer for Racquetball magazine.

Racquetball is a uniquely American sport. Football, arguably our country’s biggest sport, is a derivative of European rugby. We just added padding and slowed the game down. Our beloved baseball came to us from England and is a derivative of cricket. Golf has its origins in Scotland over 275 years ago in a place we today call St. Andrews. Squash dates back nearly 300 years, and started in Pakistan. Tennis also began in England over 180 years ago!

If you’ve never played a tennis tournament, it’s similar to a racquetball tournament, except for one thing – longevity. Tennis tournaments have been going on for nearly two centuries, and almost 150 years here in the USA. Case in point: I recently played the Colorado State Tennis Tournament and was both surprised and a bit intimidated to learn that it is the oldest tennis tournament in the country – the 125th annual! Don Budge and Bobby Riggs both won it and then went on to tennis greatness, and they were relatively recent.

Tennis has been around a long time, without question, but so have most sports other than ours. By comparison, racquetball is still in its infancy. On the other hand, as I mentioned, there really aren’t many truly American sports. Basketball definitely stands out as 100% American. And what a great game! But it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it too arrived in the U.S. from somewhere else. Bottom line? Racquetball is our sport. And there’s nothing else quite like it.

So shouldn’t we be going out of our way to nurture it, to improve it, and to introduce it to the world? Instead, sadly, I keep hearing the same old thing. It’s either, “You know, I don’t see any new young people playing,” or “Gee! The courts are empty. Guess no one’s interested in racquetball anymore,” or “Racquetball’s dying. Nobody plays anymore. They should really do something about that.” Who the heck is ‘they’? I’d like to meet ‘them’ some day.

My point? Well, I’d like to suggest that ‘we’ are ‘they’ and — as such – ‘we’ owe it to ourselves to encourage more people to play, by making it more appealing to the masses. If nothing else this would be a start at getting more Americans off their couches and on to the courts. It’s not like we don’t know what the problems are either; i.e. fewer players playing, fewer younger people entering the sport, fewer courts in clubs throughout the country …

So ‘we’ (all of us who already play) are ‘they’ — there is no one else. And we should be able to make a difference. To start, how about we all stop complaining about the current state and condition of the sport and instead start being more proactive and do something about it? It’s your sport. If there’s something you don’t like about it, try doing something to make things better.

I’ve talked with a hundred or so players here in the U.S. and in Europe, and here are some of the things they suggested to raise racquetball to the echelon it deserves ... with efforts by both the players themselves, and their state boards. 

We live in strange and difficult times. Next to larger concerns about terrorism, a faltering economy, politics and religion, figuring out ways to make our sport better pales by comparison. Nonetheless, it’s important to us, in our everyday lives, so we must maintain our focus. We must be positive. Remember, ‘we’ are ‘they.’ Making our sport better is up to us – no one else!