Dare To Come In The Cage
Outdoor racquetball on Waikiki unique caged courts is flourishing again, and preparing to host a world championship in December
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William “Commander” Robinson, 91, brought up his eight children near the beach at Waikiki, alongside the outdoor racquetball courts and tied to a tree with rope so they wouldn’t wander off.
“We did that with all our kids,” says a chuckling Robinson, an avid player for more than 50 years at the outdoor courts, which he helped transform from volleyball courts in the 1950s. “By the time we got to (Matt), the rope was worn out.”
Matt, his youngest son, is a national open racquetball champion, who will compete in Hawaii’s first international outdoor racquetball tournament Dec. 6-9. The Black Sand World Racquetball Championship, an international pro-am, expects to draw some 90-plus players from juniors to women and men. Falling on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the tournament has been dubbed “A Weekend That Will Live in Infamy.”
“It’s a world championship, we’ve invited all the top players indoors and outdoors in the world,” says tournament chair Pete Britos, who hopes to secure $25,000 in prizes, making the tourney an official stop on the International Racquetball Tour - a significant benchmark that would require the Top 10 international players to attend.
“Bar none the best players in the world when they’re in town come down here to play like Marty Hogan, who’s the seven-time world champion,” Britos adds. “He vowed that he’ll be here to play in the tournament. He doesn’t need another championship but there’s one on the line, and he wants to play for it.”
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Separated from the Waikiki surf by about 70 feet, the two outdoor courts have had no problem attracting big names. Players like six-time world champion Cliff Swain and four-time national champion Lynn Adams, who captured the Triple Crown by winning all three national national tournaments two years in a row have stopped by - as did an infamous basketball player. “Wilt Chamberlain used to come down all the time,” the Commander recalls.
“He’d come down in a convertible Cadillac with like eight or nine girls - just crazy,” adds Britos.“And then we’d go right next door and play volleyball with him. It was ridiculous.”
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The tournament will be filmed for posterity and for TV and Internet play, says Britos, who loves the fact that the tournament falls on the same weekend as the Honolulu Marathon. “There’s going to be all this (foot) traffic, so it’s an unusual event in that the marketing, promotional, advertising opportunity is unprecedented,” he says.
“On that weekend we’ll have huge air balloons, we’ll have banners all over the place and probably a tent, some bleachers, and there’ll be tens of thousands of people with their families walking the beach, checking it out, having a party as we always do the weekend of Dec. 7.”
In 1996, Britos helped organize the Black Sand State Racquetball Championship. A world championship was originally planned for that year, but a job offer took Britos to CBS television to produce
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