KCAthleticClub.com

Please consider heading to Boulder the week after the Quirk to participate in the Shumate Costigan Memorial handball tournament. KCAC fellas have attended in the past and have said it is certainly one not to miss.

2014 Tourney costigan entry

From Lou…

Boys sorry for the late notice but Betty Storm the mother of Gary, Dave and Eman passed this weekend.   Her services will be at St. Agnes tomorrow, Monday the 7^th of July 2014.  Rosary at 9 AM and mass to follow at 10:30 PM

God Bless the Storms and all of you.

KC 3-WALL RESULTS

Open:  Ryan Willis defeated Hector Facio Jr in 2

Contenders A:  Marcos Espinosa defeated Ron (Helicopter) Martin in 2

Contenders B:  Brett Hawkins defeated Patrick Sutherland in 2

50’s Wahl/Connaly defeated Skelly/Serrone in 2

60’s Marks/Skippy Leigh defeated Coia/Finkle in 3

135’s Tocco/Smrha defeated Cosentino/Lapin in 2

UPCOMING TOURNAMENTS

July 5^th is the Sutera Worst Family Handball Tournament

July 11^th, 12^th and 13^th is the Chicago LaGrange  3-Wall Tournament

August 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th is the Quirk World Invitational

Have a good summer and lets play some handball.

Spaghetti Out

LOUIS A. SERRONE, SIOR

Congratulations to KCAC member Paul on being the 2014 50′s national handball champion. Great accomplishment in a very competitive division.

Please check out the CEM Open golf tournament to honor local handball great Bobby Martin, one of the tournament’s original progenitor. The tournament is raising money to support research into Huntington’s disease, the terrible disease that has afflicted the Martin family. If you cannot make the golf tournament, please consider making a donation anyway.

Bobby Martin CEM Open Flier

Here are the brackets. Good luck this weekend.

WimbleDotte 6 was a soggy success! With an 80% chance of rain, we held off until noon to make a run at some handball. At that time everybody took to work on getting the courts dry. Right as we got court 1 dry, the clouds opened up and dumped a couple more inches of rain on the courts. We took this opportunity to grill some lunch, have a beer, and curse the weather. After that round of rain, we made one more attempt at drying the courts…this time we brought the fire. We got the courts dry again and never looked back.

Because we were 3 hours rain delayed by this time the decision was made to consolidate everyone into a doubles bracket: WimbleDottes, Alums, and even a couple of regular players. It worked out well as everyone got a good share of playing time in and seemed to like the mix of players.

Click here to view brackets

Thanks to the people who dedicate their time to making this tournament a success. Thanks for cooking, picking up, obsessively drying the courts, bringing your own equipment, and everything else you do. This is a labor of love by guys who want the best for our club.

Also HUGE thanks to those who donate to the WimbleDotte. You are the blood of our ideas. And it is never possible without you. Your donations are being rewarded through new guys becoming part of the club, and improvements to the club itself. I will fill you in on both when I see you next. I also have a shirt reserved for you if you haven’t collected already. But all KC handballers, please give a big ‘THANKS’ to these generous donors:

• Bob Bruno
• The Little family
• Ron Scherzer
• Paul Pfannenstiel
• Ron Martin
• Jim Cosentino
• Chris Herbig
• Craig Scherzer
• Tom Marks
• Larry Juarez
• Russ Finkle

Ron Scherzer and family: You donate, you bring new players every year, and you help out. Ron is the reason that I will always do this…and love it. Thanks Bub.

the clouds are parting! God wants bad handball! get your butt to the courts

I’m sorry for not posting nightly updates about WimbleDotte history. The week got away from me. Hopefully when I get caught up I’ll continue to post our rich history. Anyhoo…

Despite God trying to run us off, we are going to soldier on for Saturday. We have an 80%!!! chance of rain, but we will not let that deter us. We will use squeegies, fans, brooms, towels, and fire to keep the courts dry for our tournament participants. And if we can’t do that, then we’ll drink beer and eat hot dogs for crying out loud. But seriously, if we’re going to get the predicted monsoon and play is limited throughout Saturday, we’ll shoot for Sunday to pick up whatever action we couldn’t finish the day before. So cancel your plans with your family and you ain’t going to church, you playin’ you some handball, son!

We are still good to go for Tomorrow night. We’re having pizza, beers, a quick introduction to handball, a quick demo, and then we’ll draw the brackets for our new wimbledottes and for our alumni. See you then.

We are counting down the final days until our big WimbleDotte tournament. Check back here every day for some WimbleDotte history.

The first WimbleDotte

The first WimbleDotte took place 112 years ago in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, what is now the West Bottoms neighborhood. The tournament was conceived by good friends Aloysius Everton Pepperbrock and Samuel Kriegsworth Finsington, pictured here:

The two gentlemen concocted an idea to introduce new players to their favorite sport of handball by only allowing new guys to play in a bracket format. Back then, handball was played in alleys using a small, hard ball, or simply, rocks. While this was fun for Aloysius, Samuel, and their friends, they were compared unfavorably to other local sports of that era like cat wrangling, fist fighting, and surviving diarrhea. Pepperbrock and Finsington enjoyed their unique sport, but realized their game would not survive unless they started inviting new people to play. the first WimbleDotte was held on a Sunny Saturday morning with 49 new players being invited. Two players died that morning from different ailments, but otherwise the tournament was a big success. Lemmy “one eye” Hightower proved to be one of the favorites that day as he fought his way into the finals, but nobody was a match for Seamus O’Shaughnessy. The Irish paint-peeler dominated his competition with an array of tremendous pass shots with his one good arm. By 4am that morning, the competition wound down and O’Shaughnessy was declared the winner as the runner-up finally succumbed to his wounds after taking the lead 76 – 72. Hightower’s remains were subsequently sold to a medical research organization.

The first WimbleDotte was well received and the next 10 kept the momentum going strong for the thriving sport of handball in the Midwest. Pepperbrock and Kinsington were proud of their brilliant concept and helped forge what would eventually become the Kansas City Athletic Club.

Check back tomorrow for more installments of WimbleDotte history