USU handball team starts first semester as a registered club sport

Utah State University’s Campus Recreation has lots of club sports for students to get involved in. Club sports range anywhere from baseball, men’s hockey, and men’s and women’s soccer to rodeo, shooting, disc golf and water polo. This semester, a new club sport joined the list: the Utah State Handball Club.  

“You do not have to be a super athlete to play handball. Anybody can come play,” said Herm Olsen, one of the coaches for the team.  

 Olsen graduated from USU in 1973, and he said that back when he started college, handball was a popular sport.  

“That’s all anyone played,” Olsen said. “Handball was the best sport.” 

After graduation, he moved away from Logan. When he moved back in 1990, handball wasn’t as popular.   

“When I came back, the only guys who were playing handball were old guys — older than me,” Olsen said. “I thought, ‘This is too good of a sport to just let it die.’”  

That’s when he asked the university if he could teach a handball class to get students back involved. 

“I’ve been teaching the class and then coaching the team for almost 30 years,” Olsen said.  

Handball is played in a four-wall court. Players score points by hitting a rubber ball with the palm of their hand to hit the front wall. Opponents will hit the ball at the wall and go back and forth until one of them fails to return it. 

“Once the ball hits the front wall, it’s the other opponent’s turn to then return your hit,” said Seth Gentry, president of the Handball Club. “It can only bounce once before you have to hit it and return the ball. If you mess up, it’s either the other person’s point or you get to serve.”  

Players are only able to get points if they are the ones serving the ball.  

“If your opponent doesn’t return the ball and it doesn’t hit the front wall, you get a point if you’re serving,” Gentry said. “If you weren’t serving, you swap servers, then when your opponent messes up you get the point.”  

The first player to score 21 points wins the game.  

Gentry said he found the sport through his older brother who signed him up for the handball class. 

“I ended up taking it, and I really like it. I decided to join the club and then we became a club sport and we needed a president. I was the oldest member at that point,” Gentry said. “I would say it’s probably my favorite sport out of all the ones I’ve played.” 

The handball team has gone to national competitions where they compete against other schools across the United States and even against teams from Ireland.  

“We compete with the great schools like New York, Michigan, Texas, California and Missouri — some of the best handball teams in the country,” Olsen said. “Over the years, we’ve done very well. We’ve even won two national championships.”  

There are two different kinds of competition: individual play and team competitions.  

“If it’s an individual play, it’s not a team effort, so you play and if you win, you go to the next spot like a bracket,” Gentry said. “If it’s a team, it’s different. You only play one versus one or two versus two. If you win, you get a certain number of points and then collectively as a school you combine points, and whoever has the most points at the end wins.” 

In order for everyone to compete, the competitions are set up into five divisions that correlate with players’ skill levels.  

“There’s ‘novice’ for people who have just put gloves on and don’t hardly know how to play, but that’s okay because they’re playing other novice players who are in the same situation,” Olsen said. “And then there’s a C level, a B division and an A division. Then there’s an ancient division and that’s the one I play.”  

Since becoming a registered club sport, the handball club has received a $2 million endowment. This endowment was made in support of the growing handball team and will help with tournament travel and support students.  

“To take a team to tournaments, we’ve got to reimburse kids for their gas or their airplane flight or their hotel. It gets kind of pricey,” Olsen said.  

When the endowment was announced, Olsen said he felt “over the top.” 

“This endowment will go a long way into making sure we can take as many kids that want to go play,” Olsen said. “It’s great.”  

When students come to play handball for the first time, Olsen said by the end of the semester they’re already competing and strategizing with people who have played the sport for longer. 

“You never want to go where the ball is — you want to go where it’s going to be. You’ve got to do some instantaneous thought processes about how to get there and how to move and swing,” Olsen said. “Any student can develop that. They don’t have to be super good to begin with.”  

When students first begin learning how to play, Olsen said they have to remember what he calls “The 10,000 Rule.”  

“You’ve got to swing and hit that ball 10,000 times before it starts to feel comfortable,” Olsen said.  

The handball team practices in the HPER on Mondays and Wednesdays, and their doors are open to anyone.  

“We’ve had people who have never played sports before come and try it,” Gentry said. “It’s for everyone.”