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  • Rebecca Cole won a national championship in handball last month. John Cross

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March 12, 2010

MSU handball enthusiast leads way in nationals

By Robb Murray The Free Press

MANKATO — Rebecca Cole is a nationally recognized athlete who attends Minnesota State University.

But you won’t find her name on the wall of Myers Field House or written about in the annals of MSU athletic history.

She doesn’t play basketball. Doesn’t lace up a pair of skates to play hockey. She’s not a diver. Volleyball? Nope.

Cole plays handball, an endeavor so unusual on the college athletics spectrum that you’ll only find a handful of players who play, and most of them at MSU, such as Cole, didn’t even try the sport until coming to college.

In the interest of full disclosure, Cole didn’t play in the toughest division. She was about in the middle of difficulty classes, and she’s quick to qualify any exclamation that she’s a national champ.

Still, in the national collegiate tournament in Houston in late February, she beat all comers in her division. She also helped her team win the Division II title. Not bad for a competitor who, for a long time, was the only woman on the team, and who has had to play and practice against men quite a bit.

“They gave us a sweet plaque,” she said this week, recalling her and her team’s triumphant trip to Texas.

Other team members include Joe Nordahl, Matt Nordahl, Dan Schonhardt, Chris Delaney, Kate Quiram, Matt Novak, Glenn Oslin, Steve Totzke, Marshall Clark, and Aaron Grimmer.

“This national title is quite an accomplishment in only our third year of existence,” team coach Mike Wells said. “It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of these young men and women to the difficult sport of handball.”

Cole comes from Fergus Falls. And while she played volleyball and participated in discus and shot-put events in track and field, she says her high school athletic career was forgettable.

Her first taste of some form of handball came in high school, when their phy-ed teacher had them play a kind of team handball. But it wasn’t until her freshman year that she got her first taste of the real thing.

“I needed a gym credit,” Cole says. “It was all guys. And me.”

She tried it, liked it, and learned this was a sport she was actually pretty good at.

The following semester, she took the advanced class and signed up for the handball team. She started practicing more, almost exclusively against men.

“The first tournament I ever played in was in Mankato in the fall of my sophomore year,” she said. “I got my butt kicked, partly because I sucked, partly because I had to play boys and partly because I had recently sprained my ankle. I hurt myself a lot.”

The following spring she competed in the state collegiate tournament at the University of Minnesota. She won the women’s division.

And last month, of course, came the success in Houston, a victory for which she doesn’t necessarily claim all the credit.

“The girls I played against were kind of bad,” she said. “I’m not bad. But they weren’t very good.”

Cole says her friends support her. Sort of.

“They don’t really get it,” she said.

She takes them in stride. And she’s now not the only woman on the team. A recent “bring a girl to handball night” resulted in the team’s addition of Kate Quiram, who made the trip to nationals. And now Cole doesn’t have to play against the men anymore.

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