Greg Resler, left, gets ready to hit the ball as Mike Kavkewitz watches at the Sports Barn downtown.Inside the downtown Sports Barn fitness club, four people stood in a box that’s 20 feet wide, 40 feet long and 20 feet high.
Mike Kavkewitz bounced the ball once on the floor, then whacked it with his palm. The ball hit the front wall and bounced back over the service line.
Donna Coleman dived to return the serve, bumping into the side wall in the process.
“It feels like an actual workout,” Coleman would say later in an interview. “I hate aerobics and anything that has loud music and asks me to step this way and that way.”
Coleman, 48, is part of a small group of women in the country who play the game seriously. She started playing handball at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 30 years ago.