THE DIVING FORCE : Racquetball Pioneer Hilecher Took an All-Out Approach

The athlete in the poster hangs suspended in midair, at the apex of a headlong dive.

Look away for a moment. Couldn’t that just as easily be the acrobatic Lynn Swann making another touchdown catch? Brooks Robinson, perhaps, flagging a sure extra-base hit? Although identifiable to only the most knowledgeable racquetball fan, the sprawling figure is Jerry Hilecher, once the top professional player in the world and now captured for posterity by Sports Illustrated photographer Art Shay.

Art in this instance didn’t imitate life, it became larger than life. The extraordinary photograph, while not appreciably heightening Hilecher’s profile, has itself transcended the sport of racquetball.

Even today, 13 years later, posters of that lunging, seemingly levitating figure are more in demand than those of current racquetball greats Marty Hogan and Lynn Adams.

Hilecher’s reckless dive occurred during the 1977 national singles championships at Atlas Health Club in San Diego, in a quarterfinal match against fellow St. Louis native Ben Koltun. The score was deadlocked, 8-8, in a tiebreaker game. “The shot was a winner and gave me the momentum,” recalled Hilecher (pronounced hill-LAY-sher). “I won the match, 11-8, and played Hogan the next day.”

The extra effort earned Hilecher, who recently was asked to implement a youth program at Sequoia Club/Racquetball World in Canoga Park, nothing more than an aching sternum and a 24-hour reprieve; Hogan, four years younger and with a big game that demanded attention, eliminated Hilecher in another close tiebreaker match.

That loss seemed almost inevitable. History could have been kinder to Hilecher, the only player to have been there at the very first national tournament, staged in his hometown in 1969, and who experienced the roller-coaster days as a professional when racquetball surged as the fastest-growing sport in the country before falling on lean times.

In the beginning there were the immortals from San Diego, Bud Meuhleisen and Charley Brumfield, whose era segued into that of Hogan and Dave Peck. Hilecher, who was ranked in the top 10 each year from 1975 to 1987 and who participated in more than 200 professional tournaments, never achieved superstar status in a developing sport, although his play probably deserved it.

It began for young Jerry Hilecher where it began for racquetball: the Jewish Community Centers of America building in St. Louis. Hilecher grew up playing handball with youngsters named Marty Hogan and Steve Serot and Ben Koltun, all of whom later left their mark on the racquetball court.

Phil Smith, who has been at the JCCA for 30 years and who organized that landmark national tournament in 1969, remembers: “It was a handball world then, and we had youth programs going all the time.

“We called a photographer out to take a picture of our youth team for the weekly newsletter. That team included Marty, who was about 9, and Jerry. But Marty didn’t show up for the picture and we couldn’t locate him. He was so shy he hid in another room until the photographer left. Funny. Marty turned out to be an extrovert.”

Hilecher achieved some success in handball, his first sport. He recalls reaching the semifinals in the junior nationals in 1968, and that background influenced his impetuous style of play.

Said Meuhleisen, who practices dentistry in the San Diego area and during the 1980s organized summer racquetball instructional camps: “Diving became part of his game, and not only because he was athletic and had great legs. Early on, he’d run around his backhand because his forehand was so strong and his backhand was weak. His game reflected that handball background, where you didn’t need a backhand.

“He’d always be positioned off to the left side and he had a lot of court to cover. He’d almost have to dive sometimes just to get to the ball.”

Meuhleisen, 58, also coaches softball at Grossmont High in San Diego and only occasionally plays racquetball, usually doubles. His partner is his old friend and adversary, Charley Brumfield.

By the time Hilecher became a professional, he had developed his backhand, and the dive was just another weapon in his arsenal.

“It became a mental thing with my opponents,” Hilecher said. “They just knew I’d get everything, and it had to be demoralizing to them because I wouldn’t give up. They had to hit a perfect shot to get a point.”

Hilecher, 36, who lives in Granada Hills with his wife of 2 1/2 years, claims to have been one of the players who introduced the power concept to a game that previously had emphasized strategy--placement, not skipping the ball, taking ceiling shots, waiting for a mistake.

“Steve Serot and myself started it. We’d try for the winner any time, unless the ball was above our shoulders. It put a lot of pressure on the other guy. Even playing with the slow ball in those days, we were always going for the kill shot.

“The offensive power game became the St. Louis game, and Hogan just picked it up and ran with it.”

The now-outgoing, now-burly Hogan, easily the most-recognized figure in racquetball, past or present, advanced the power concept to another level as the dominant player of the 1980s.

Of course, he also had at his disposal--as do players today--specialized equipment. Available to him were lightweight, oversized racquets with enormous sweet spots, racquets with frames made of graphite reinforced with Kevlar--the material used in bulletproof vests--and a ball so energized that it frequently has been timed at speeds approaching 150 m.p.h. Even women pros routinely hit the ball in excess of 100 m.p.h.

It’s a serve-and-shoot game now, weak hitters need not apply. Hilecher will accept the blame for that, although there are some, like Meuhleisen, who believe that the shorter rallies (duration among pros: 2.1 shots) as a result of the refined equipment ultimately will diminish racquetball as a spectator sport.

Incidentally, the St. Louis legacy continues, even though Hogan, 32, is now in his racquetball dotage. Andy Gross, 22, who moved through the JCCA pipeline and now lives in Sherman Oaks, would seem to be a worthy successor. When last seen, Gross was ranked No. 6 on the pro tour.

Joe Sobek is credited with inventing racquetball in 1950 when he sawed the handle off a wooden tennis racket and began hitting a ball around a handball court at the YMCA in Greenwich, Conn. The game caught on, but players largely rejected Sobek’s inappropriate sobriquet of “paddle rackets.”

In the 19 years that followed, a basically nameless sport grew, and historians now fix racquetball’s origins at that JCCA in St. Louis. It was there that the two--the game and the name--coupled.

Smith, the JCCA director of court sports, remembers the initial national event as being eclectic from its inception. Billed incorrectly as a paddleball tournament, it was sponsored by the International Paddle Rackets Assn., probably in deference to Sobek.

Said Smith: “The tournament drew about 150 entries from around the country, and we sent entry forms basically from a list of handball players that was available. We had no idea how many would show up.”

A players’ meeting before the tournament addressed the name of the game. Suggestions were offered--none with real applicability and most having been used before (paddleball, paddle tennis, paddle rackets, etc.)--and scrawled on a chalkboard to be put to a vote. Bob McInerney, a player with the San Diego contingent, leaned over to Meuhleisen:

“ ‘Dr. Bud, it’s played with a racket and a ball, why not call it racketball?’ ” Meuhleisen remembers McInerney whispering with simple logic. “I told him to put it into motion, and it was accepted by acclamation.”

As for the “q,” there are two versions. Smith says the players wanted the name to be distinct from the tennis spelling; the Meuhleisen offering, probably apocryphal, is that the “q” was substituted for the “k” to disassociate the sport from any possible “racket-eering” ties.

“We had some guys from Cleveland who looked awful tough,” he said with a straight face. “I mean, Mafia personified. You were almost afraid to beat them.”

Meuhleisen did beat them, though, and everybody else--even surprising Brumfield, the other San Diego legend, in a 21-20 tiebreaker final. That either contestant survived so deep into the tournament was a surprise in itself. They were primarily paddleball players and, according to Meuhleisen, had taken up racquetball only a month before.

Meuhleisen played with a lighter steel racquet, double-strung with wire strings that cut through the rubber balls like a cheese slicer. “It wasn’t me, it was the racquet,” Meuhleisen said. “If I was using one of those wood clunkers like everyone else, Charley would have killed me.”

Notable also was Meuhleisen’s comeback from a 20-13 deficit to defeat Hilecher’s favorite player, a master of court psychology. “Charley played a lot of mind games, that’s true,” Hilecher said, “but you accepted it. He was also a great player and he did what he had to do to win. At match point he was incredible. It was as if he had the power to will the ball to go wherever he wanted it to.”

That ability was evidenced in Brumfield’s semifinal match against local favorite Steve Schneider, who played his first few matches, Hilecher recalls, with a paddleball racket.

“Charley had lost the first game, and was losing the second game, 20-5,” Hilecher said. “Schneider was getting ready to serve for the match when Charley complained of shoulder pains and the referee gave him an injury timeout.”

Hilecher remembers opening the door to the locker room and being hit by the overpowering smell of liniment, which was being applied to Brumfield. He also remembers Brumfield joking with his entourage, as if he were winning the match. Meantime, Schneider was out on the court, cooling off.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Hilecher said. “Schneider was the best player I’d ever seen and here was this guy from California who I never heard of, about to lose and just making a big joke of it.”

Brumfield didn’t lose, of course, remarkably coming back to win that second game, 21-20, then breezing to a tiebreaker victory. Of such stuff legends are born, and Brumfield layered it heavily in the years that followed.

“My dad and I drove Charley back to his hotel that night, and I was awed,” Hilecher said. “I carried his bag. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

To which Brumfield, 42, who practices law in San Diego and will discuss racquetball at the drop of a gavel, responded dryly by phone: “He’s right.”

Although that tournament established racquetball prominence for Brumfield and Meuhleisen, it didn’t portend much for one starry-eyed youngster. “I was too awed to be cocky,” Hilecher said.

Hilecher, 15, lost in the first round to a fellow from Louisville named Ken Porco.

Hilecher joined the professional tour at its inception, in 1973, along with such players as Davey Bledsoe, Steve Strandemo and the redoubtable Brumfield, about whom his buddy Meuhleisen once said: “Charley could beat you playing with a Pyrex bottle.”

Hilecher lasted through 1987, longer than any of the charter members. That tour was plagued throughout by bickering and factionalism.

Between 1979 and 1982, during the explosive years when racquetball was said to be the fastest-growing sport in the country, Hilecher was president of the professional players’ association and nearly orchestrated a venture that might have arrested the sport’s nose dive in popularity.

“We were dealing with Playboy magazine as a major sponsor. They wanted to take (racquetball) to a whole new level,” Hilecher said. “The prize money was going to be much greater, and media coverage would follow because they were planning pro-celeb exhibitions. They also promised exposure in their magazine. That’s a multimillion subscription market.”

But Hilecher could not deliver the players. Playboy wanted to sign them all, and a few of the top ones had lucrative contracts with racquetball-equipment manufacturers and were either unable to or reluctant to break those pacts. Playboy backed out.

Hilecher stayed on, then late in 1987 abruptly walked away from the tour after a first-round loss.

“It was like I was beyond caring. I’d stopped training, and for the last year I’d been playing just not to lose, rather than to win. I hated being out there.”

Perhaps it was just time to go. Hilecher was then 33, old by his sport’s standards. His ranking had dropped, and he had fallen out of the top 10.

It wasn’t a bad run for the kid from St. Louis, whose career spanned a 19-year period from the leather-helmet days to the current version of “rocketball,” as Meuhleisen has dubbed it, and who lasted 15 seasons as a professional.

Although he is currently employed by a company selling telephone systems, Hilecher didn’t make a complete break from racquetball, and there are forces afoot that promise to occupy more of his time with the sport.

For the past four years he has returned to the JCCA during summers to run a youth instructional camp, and he also has his commitment to Sequoia Club/Racquetball World.

As for someday getting involved with racquetball on a full-time basis: “Who knows? I’m at the point in life where I don’t put restraints on myself anymore.”

Jerry Hilecher, the almost-legend who played aggressively and without fear, leans against the wall outside a court and gazes at that famous poster. Would he dive now if it meant the game, the match?

“No,” Hilecher says, unconvincingly. “That stuff is for young guys with heart.”