14 minute read
Love of the Game: The Pursuit of Sporting Excellence Forges Deep Bonds
By Jake Ten Pas
Photos by Brandon Davis
Whether it’s referred to as “Galentine’s” or “Palentine’s” Day, the concept of celebrating a range of important relationships on Feb. 14 is nothing new. Anyone who grew up in the ‘80s or later likely bought Valentines for everyone in their grade school class, regardless of which student(s) they were crushing on. So, it seems fitting that members express their adoration of those who make them love their club community even more, whether it’s friends, family, or spouses.
For everyone who feels a deep affection for a particular sport, chances are good there’s at least one other person who took it upon themselves to stoke the fires of that athletic romance. This isn’t necessarily a selfless labor of love, though. As the handball, racquetball, and tennis enthusiasts in this article attest, developing potential tournament partners and capable competitors is a gift they give their future selves. Whatever motivates such dedication to shared interests, the payoff is at least twofold. Players get better, and friendships invariably form. The resulting recreation and competition carve their initials into the heart of the club community, and at an institution that’s been beating strong for more than 130 years, that guarantees that the collective legacy created lasts longer than the memory of who won or lost.
Love at First Serve
It’s hard to hold swollen hands. Even if only one of those entwined still bears the signs of recent introduction to the game of handball, such courtship sounds challenging. Jeff and Jean Kastner are proof it can be done, and both swear the sport isn’t nearly as bruising as might be imagined!
Now married 13 years, the Kastners’ individual worlds collided at Pacific University in 2001, when Hawaii native Jean was suffering from climate shock and looking for an indoor sport to replace her beloved soccer. She discovered handball, and just four weeks later, she was competing in collegiate nationals at Texas A&M.
“I came in second in the C division in my first collegiate national tournament, and I kind of got hooked there. Then I met this guy and started following him around,” Jean says with a smile on her face. “I see this cute, top-level athlete? I guess there was some attraction at the time.”
Jeff pleads the fifth when asked to share recollections of his own feelings but is eager to dispel the notion that “the perfect game” is necessarily the nemesis of hand-holding. “That is the first question everybody asks, ‘Does it hurt your hands?’ It definitely can at first, but once you get the technique down,
then it doesn’t. People think you’re going to hit it with a slap, but in reality, if you’re doing it correctly, it’s much more of a throwing motion. You have a very loose wrist.”
“We’re not mutants! Our hands look normal.” Jean chimes in. “You have fat pads on your hand that protect it, and if you hit it in the soft spots here, it doesn’t usually bruise.” She demonstrates, cupping her palm and indicating the fleshy area at the base of her pointer and middle fingers. Then, after a short pause, she adds, “Sometimes it does.”
Just like love, although both appear to have come naturally to the Kastners. After being drawn to Pacific by respected coach and MAC member Michael Steele, Jeff went on to distinguish himself by winning two state championships in the mid-aughts and later a regional doubles title with MAC handball mainstay David Steinberg. He also helped to define the broadcasting of the sport through his work as cameraman for the World Players of Handball (WPH). When not filming for the Timbers, shows such as Oregon Art Beat and Oregon Field Guide on OPB, and Grant’s Getaways on KGW (for which the team won an Emmy in 2023!), he finds fresh approaches to capturing a sport that — through a combination of tight spaces, fast motion, and a small ball — previously confounded camera operators.
“A major network tried to film at the Washington Athletic Club, and it was like motion sickness, like you’re on a boat the whole time,” Jean explains. “Now, with people who know the sport, players, and angles … they’re switching cameras at the appropriate time, so you can actually get into the game. It really makes a difference!”
“Court 10 at MAC is maybe the greatest court in the world for filming handball or racquetball,” Jeff opines. “There are glass back and side walls, plus a camera port in the front.”
In addition to sharing their love of handball with the world, the Kastners are passing it down to their daughter, Joy, and other MAC juniors.
“She’s 7 now, but we’ve been bringing her to the courts basically since she was born,” Jean says. Jeff continues: “She would kind of get in there and throw it around just for fun, and then maybe around a year ago, she started actually trying to hit the ball.”
Joy is part of a new generation of club kids, and their parents, discovering a sport that is simple to learn yet challenging to master. The Kastners have supported the all-ages Intro to Handball clinic that takes place on courts 1-4 every Monday night from 5 to 6 p.m. They say the feedback from parents has been overwhelmingly positive, with some surprised at just how simple and easy to pick up the game can be.
If you have a ball and a wall, you can play anywhere and you don’t really need much gear.
Jean points out that a gym membership is nice for accessing a four-wall court, but that people play outside on one or three walls from Arizona to New York. “In our house, we close all the doors in our hallway and play handball with a racquetball in the house. It’s just up to the tolerance of the parents, right?”
Jean and Jeff also still enjoy competing together, whether casually on MAC courts or in outside doubles tournaments. In talking about one of the important aspects of handball, clear communication, Jean inadvertently says something that might be good advice when it comes to relationships, too.
“The game of doubles is a little bit more complicated, but if your partner is stronger, then you let them take the shot. You have to know how to get out of the way and which shots your partner is better suited to take.”
“When in doubt, let your wife take the ball,” replies Jeff.
Intoxicated by Tennis
It’s possible that tennis has the same tongue-loosening qualities as tequila. The link between exercise and the production of endorphins is well documented, leading to post-match chit-chat that can take unexpected turns into incredibly earnest imparting of challenges off-court. People bond over a great game and get to sharing, say daughter and mother-in-law Tammy and Dorothy Cofield.
tennis game or on the water break, and you find people are very open about problems or things that they’ve gone through in their past,” Dorothy explains.
“You play tennis, and then afterward you’re standing there talking for 10, 15 minutes. It’s the chat portion of the sport,” Tammy adds.
“It’s amazing because it’ll start out, ‘I like your skirt.’ And then it’ll be, ‘My husband’s really sick.’ Then someone else will say, “Oh yeah, my husband died suddenly last year.” In other words, it escalates fast, and that near-instant intimacy is one of the aspects of club culture that quickly creates a sense of community.
Dorothy and her husband, Brooks, joined MAC in 2013, and it wasn’t long before their son, Mike, and his wife, Tammy, followed suit. “They told us about how if you have dinner at the club, you can put your kids in the childcare. We’re like, this is pretty sweet. We got on the waitlist and got in after a couple of years.”
That led to a situation where Dorothy was looking for a fourth for some doubles practice, and her daughter-in-law came to mind. After a lifetime spent recreationally playing tennis, doubles was what finally hooked Dorothy. It had the same addictive effect on Tammy, who played with her twin sister as kids and competitively in high school before scaling back to a more casual relationship with the game before joining MAC.
“I think after that, you got pretty sucked in again,” Dorothy lobs to Tammy.
“It’s hard to escape the black hole that is tennis,” Tammy volleys.
Such is the sport’s gravitational pull that it not only swallowed Tammy whole, but her kids, too. Daphne, 11, and Alex, 13, have been taking lessons since the family came to the club, and also are competing in tournaments. In 2024, the family once again took part in the Parent/Grandparent & Child Tennis Tournament. Every year, Tammy and Dorothy trade off which of the kids they partner with, and all four of their respective personality traits and on-court strengths are better defined in each other’s minds by the pairings.
“Who wants to do the same thing over and over? Every tennis game is different. Every partner you have, every opponent you face, plays differently. That’s why it’s so challenging — you have to be able to adapt yourself to all these different play styles if you want to win,” Tammy says.
Dorothy, who was thrilled to find out her grandkids were taking lessons because it would give her two more potential playmates, has found each of them offers different enhancements to the game. “Daphne flies around the court; it’s just unbelievable. She says, ‘Grandma, you just stay at the net and volley,’ because that’s my thing. Daphne goes, ‘I’ll just get everything in the back.’ I’m like, score!”
“I really enjoy playing with Alex because I think his brain is a lot like my son’s was when he was a kid, so it’s almost a little bit like a do-over,” she adds.
Tammy points out that the game also reflects the siblings’ relationships between each other as they play doubles together and singles on their own. “When they’re winning, they get along really great, and then when they’re struggling, maybe not. But they love winning together, and it’s really fun to watch.”
Both Dorothy and Tammy seem to enjoy the ebb and flow of their own identities within the club tennis community. At first, other members knew Tammy as Dorothy’s daughter-in-law, but as Tammy has progressed in her game and relationship building, Dorothy is now often referred to as her mother-in-law.
“Tammy and I have a lot of things in common. We both sew, cook, and know how to change the tire on a car. They say men marry women like their mothers, and in some ways I think that’s true,” Dorothy explains.
And when an injury rears its ugly head — as it did for Tammy when she broke her kneecap playing in the Club Singles Championships last year, it never hurts to have a trusted family member at the club to drive the kids home when one has to go to the hospital. At the time, Alex and Daphne were also competing in the Junior Club Championships.
“I’m trying to put on my game face, and I say, ‘Oh, your mom just hurt herself a little bit. Do you want to come back to our house and watch TV?’” she recounts. Clearly, there are times when overlapping interpersonal worlds offer advantages, and that’s the lone painful tail the duo offer.
“In general, it’s just such a nice way to connect without always having to say, ‘Sunday dinner, do you want to come over?’”
Playing It Forward
Based on the sounds that can emanate from a racquetball court — or tennis or handball, for that matter — it’s hard to imagine relationships being built therein. Agonized grunting, violent percussions, and possibly bodies slamming into walls or the floor during a dramatic dive invite comparisons to a mosh pit, not a social mixer.
Jennifer Briglia says the game is more like a ballet than a melee, though. “Once you start playing, you figure out where to go in the court to be out of the way. There’s a dance that goes on that, just as you gain more skills, you figure it out.”
Like most dances, partners are required, and Briglia has experience both leading and following. As MAC Racquetball’s current league commissioner, she has a high-altitude vantage point from which to view steady flurries of furious activity, reinforcing for her the many unique bonds formed through competition. At court level — as a player, mentee, and mentor — she’s experienced first-hand the power of passionate play and interpersonal support to spawn friendships as full of longevity as the athletes who comprise them.
Briglia, her husband, Robert, and their daughters, Lindsay and Robin, were introduced enthusiastically to Racquetball by longtime friends Shellie and Sanjay Bedi. The latter was Lindsay’s high school coach at the time, creating a sense of interconnectedness that was impossible to ignore.
“It just instantly sparked something inside of me that it was such a great exercise, but it didn’t feel like work,” Briglia recalls. “It’s just pure fun. You can work up a sweat faster than any other sport I’ve ever done before. It’s mental, so you’re using your brain all the time. It’s not just all about strength. It’s about strategy and body mechanics.”
Under the tutelage of Sanjay Bedi, as well as Racquetball Pro Hank Marcus and other players like Georgette Blomquist, Briglia steadily improved, taking her game and friendships to new levels. “Whenever somebody’s willing to help you, you just tend to become friends. One of my doubles partners, Liz Wainwright, she did that with me. I just feel like we’re just paying it forward all the time.”
In addition to the “All Ballers,” Briglia’s close-knit nucleus of single and married friends who regularly play golf, pickleball, and even the card game Pitch together, she’s more recently been bonding with Dr. Vuong Vu over racquetball. Vu started playing the sport during his undergrad days, earning himself the nickname “Energizer Bunny” for his untrained but unflagging playing style. “I had no skill or strategy whatsoever,” he says.
What first drew me to the sport was the chance to hit a ball hard and get a great cardio workout at the same time.
“He clearly wanted to play better, and the only way you can do that is to play more,” Briglia continues. “He came down pretty often, and I was always getting on the court and playing and practicing with him, giving him tips and so forth. I think it’s only been two years now, but our relationship is shifting. Now, he has way exceeded my skill level. I’m just lucky he still plays with me! He’s still learning, but he’s very good and very fast. He’s young, quick, and athletic.”
Together, they won in the mixed doubles division of the Pelham Memorial Tournament of Champions at MAC last year. “We were so excited because we had to get through a team of MAC members that we would never normally beat. We just dug hard and won!”
Briglia says, adding that she and Vu also took third at the Oregon State Regionals in 2023.
She also points out that their friendship isn’t all about the thrill of victory; it’s often reinforced through the repetition of lessglamorous, but quite necessary, practice. “It’s about a mutual love of the sport and both wanting to get better. We’ll drill together and feed each other balls. Boring, right? But we’re always encouraging one another, building trust, and offering pointers. We have each other’s backs.”
When Vu and his wife, Ilsa, welcomed a baby recently, the Briglias cooked them dinner, and Jennifer says she’s getting to know Ilsa better. “I recently gave her my scoby because she was interested in making kombucha.”
Perhaps most tellingly, it isn’t just Briglia who has made Vu feel welcome. “Everyone has been extremely friendly since I joined the community,” he says, adding that perhaps his proudest accomplishment since coming to MAC has been getting voted “Most Improved” by his fellow players. “As I have slowly climbed the skill levels, I have been fortunate to get to know many others. It doesn’t hurt to be on the Racquetball Committee, and I have a personal desire to go to most events and play as often as possible. I’ve made personal and professional connections through racquetball alone and hope to only build on that the longer I am here.”
