The New Racquet Racquetball has come a long way since its beginning in the early 19th century. Since then, but more recently Rac-quetball has become sport that has much more developed equipment much like other sports have developed. Rac-quetball has devoloped mate-rial things mainly thought of as being used for running or foot-ball. Yes, that is right.

Racquetball- The Old and the New

Racquetball now has shoes that are made just for Racquetball. However, first we will look at the new Racquet and how it has changed from the old racquet used in the 1980’s and before. The newer racquets are much bigger than its old counterpart. They are much bigger, but in some cases they are much much lighter which makes it much easier to swing faster to hit the shots of highly skilled players better. One disandvantage of this however is that sometimes when swinging fast it gives you

less control over where the ball is going to go. Notice above the racquet. This is main prototo-type of the racquet that is used today. It is spread out more, and not so much in the tear-drop form. The teardrop form is skinnier at the bottom and then wider at the top. Naturally, it looks like a teardrop. This new racquet is much more useful than old racquets because it is wider at the top, and in this case it is also much ligher and more agile to use. The lighter racquet is for more experienced players because starters will most like-ly not even have good enough hand eye coordination to even hit the ball of an more experi-enced player yet.

The OldRacquet

The racquet before the new one in the picture starting be-ing formed, looked like a more circular shape and sometimes even a square shape. The prob-lem with the old ones is that they are smaller and harder to make contact with the ball. Along with them being small-er, they are also most of the time heavier too. Heavier is good becuase it gives one more control over where the ball is likely to go, but takes longer to make contact with the ball. The strings on the old racquets are not as strong as the new ones have. They also do not have the shock absorber on the strings like the majority of the new ones do have. This cool thing reduces the vibrations that the ball makes when it hits the racquet which can some-times make the ball go where you do not want it to go.

Some of the changes that make the player are the glove main-ly, but the style of racquet can also help in some ways. Now, some of the gloves can have a kind of sticky type to them so the player can hold onto their racquet much more securely. This can found at most sport type stores. They do cost a little more than the other kind of gloves. If this player in the picture above had the sticky kind of gloves, his racquet would not have flown off of his hand so easily. Of course, all of these beneficial things only en-hance one’s game, they don’t magically change it. In order to have a good game, one must play smart, rather than just hit-ting the ball as hard as possible and hoping it goes where you want it too. Discipline plays the biggest part in being good at racquetball.

Gloves

SafetyRacquetball is becoming more and more complex as time con-tinues to pass. Some of these innovations are due to safety reasons to make the game more safe. One of these main things is the wrist strap that is con-nected to the Racquet so that while playing the racquet does not fly away from your hand. This is a good idea to pre-vent the racquet from hitting the other player at a high rate of speed. A sport is not a true sport until changes start occur-ring at high rate of speed due to concerns of safety for the players of said sport. Racquet-ball is making those changes. Also, the changes are to make the players play better

Schedule Event

The next scheduled event for racquetball is going to be the 10of November in the state of Ohioin which the format will be bothsingles and doubles. All divisionsshould be present. There will be prizes at the end of the event for the winners. Entry costs onlysixty dollars. All money raised will go the University of Cincinatti’s Racquetball Club sothey can continue.