U.S. national fistball team trains in small Wisconsin town, even if no one knows it
About a mile west of the intersection of U.S. Highway 45 and Wisconsin Highway 60, out of smell's reach of the greasy collection of fast food restaurants that are clustered there, in the tiny town of Jackson, Wis. -- or is it the village of Jackson within the town of Jackson? Or perhaps it's the town of Polk? -- in an exceedingly agricultural part of what could relatively be considered southeastern Wisconsin but could also accurately be called the middle of nowhere, off Mayfield Road just to the north of Highway 60 rather than to the south of it, as your GPS might suggest, down an unnamed and unpaved dirt-and-gravel path beneath a canopy of green, past the still and murky and mosquito-swarmed waters of what looks like an old mill pond ("Swim at your own risk," it warns, "Bathing after dark prohibited"), down a trail flanked by rustic log cabins and outhouses and old farming equipment, over a wood-planked bridge spanning gentle Cedar Creek, which meanders through the area and 30 miles beyond, and besieged by an unrelenting assault of big, buzzing, bothersome black flies, and surrounded by a small forest of oak, basswood and white ash trees, there is a relatively flat (or, at least, flat enough) grass clearing where a few dozen people -- elderly, infants, wives and friends -- are watching a United States national team practice a centuries-old sport, in preparation for their major international competitions this year.
Every Sunday in the summer, starting promptly at 10 a.m., whether rain or shine, chronic pain (for the older guys) or lingering hangover (for the younger players), amid the farmland and the fields and the forest and the flies, in this backcountry no-man's-land, you can find most of the U.S. Fistball team running and jumping and diving -- and fisting? -- here at Friends of Nature Fistball Park in Jackson, Wis. They're playing a volleyball-like game whose origin evidently dates back to the ancient Roman Empire in the third century and has been an organized sport in Europe, particularly Germany, since the late 1800s. But in America, it's still so fledgling and unfamiliar that the eight teams and 50 or so participants competing in the Wisconsin Fistball Association constitute the largest and most thriving league in this country.
Most of the locals don't even know it's there, never mind general sports fans, who have probably never heard of the sport.
On this Sunday, a resplendent mid-June morning, I am attending the fourth week of the 2015 league season -- the WFA's 46th year (yes, 46) at the Friends of Nature location -- which is to be followed by a practice and scrimmage with most of the national team. (A few of the U.S. players are from the east coast and arrive once a month to train with the full squad, but the majority of the team is based in Wisconsin.) When I heard there was a U.S. national team of anything based out of and training in rural Wisconsin, I had to look into it.
It's Father's Day, so I bring along my dad, an enthusiast of both unusual sports and German traditions. I'd only recently learned of the existence of fistball -- and its surprising U.S. headquarters in Jackson, which is about 30 miles northwest of Milwaukee -- through my girlfriend, who knows one of the national team players. Those elements of family connection and word-of-mouth exposure prove to be two of the primary dynamics at play, for better and worse, regarding the game's current state of affairs in America.
After a thorough showering in bug spray that helps a bit to deter the pests, I wander over to Ron Jesswein, the coach of the national team's Wisconsin contingent and my fistball liaison. (A Brazilian, Gastao Englert, is the head coach and chief of fistball operations.) A fit and ebullient man in his 50s, Jesswein enthusiastically shakes my hand and welcomes me to fistball by offering a cold Coors Light, which I decline both because I hope to play the sport later and because it's 10 a.m. Still, this refusal -- and others throughout the day -- is met with surprise, which is itself perhaps not surprising given the participants' hospitality and the game's deep Deutschland roots, especially in this heavily German-influenced part of Wisconsin.
The park's two fields are being set up for the day's matches. An outdoor fistball field is pretty basic: 50 meters long (25 per half) by 20 meters wide, with a net -- more like a band -- in the middle that is two meters off the ground. You can thank the European inventors of the sport for its metric-system dimensions. There is a serving line on each half that is three meters behind the net. As I watch the net being strung across the field, players -- most of them looking to be in their mid-20s and 30s and athletic -- are putting on cleats, stretching and warming up by hitting fistballs around to each other.
The day is pleasant and the atmosphere is utterly convivial -- dogs running around, children climbing on playground equipment, seniors sitting smiling in the sun, people unpacking food and buying snacks at a sort of storefront wooden structure nearby; most people are drinking, some are smoking and everyone seems to be laughing and perfectly happy to be right exactly where they are. Several people tell me this camaraderie and family-friendly environment are what draws them out here every week.
Jesswein asks if I want to play in one of the league games and I tell him I'd love to, as long as the unfortunate team is willing to put up with me. He chuckles and tells me I'm joining Crescendo, which is a relatively new squad that is in last place and -- ay, here's the rub -- is short a player anyway. Since I came unprepared, wearing a short-sleeve shirt and tennis shoes, he lends me a Brazilian fistball jersey that is not only very sharp but is also long-sleeved, which I discover later is crucial. A tall and amiable Crescendo player named Mike, my new teammate, ambles over to say hello and offer me a pair of extra cleats. They're two sizes too big, but they're better than what I've got. Mike tells me not to worry about being new (or, more accurately, "bad"), mentions his litany of enduring injuries, and says I'll fit in just fine.
I'm briefed on the rules and general strategy by Mike and another outgoing Crescendo player named Tim -- everyone in fistball, apparently, is friendly. With those in mind, I watch the first game, between Protege and Renegades, the latter of which is a strong team made up of national-team players.
Historically, there are records of fistball being played by the Romans as early as the year 240 and there's written reference to the game in the 16th and 17th centuries. But it wasn't until 1894 in Germany that the first rules were drafted, outlining a sport with competitive elements. Since then, Germany has been the powerhouse of fistball, winning the men's world championship 10 of 13 times since the first international tournament in 1968.
In countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, fistball is played in schools and there are numerous clubs and thousands of players competing in different leagues. Even in South American countries like Brazil and Argentina, the game is growing rapidly and the infrastructure and participation is much greater than the U.S. It may be one of the most alien sports in the United States, but an estimated 100,000 people play the game worldwide.
Yet, for all the foreignness of fistball, the game is very simple. Like outdoor volleyball on a large grass field, the goal is essentially to hit a ball over a net from one half of the field to the other, with the aim of placing it such that opponents can't hit it back, thus scoring a point. The quintessential element of the sport is that players have to use a closed fist whenever they contact the ball, whether punching it to spike, picking it defensively from off the ground, passing to teammates or guiding it over the net with their forearms. The players -- there are five on the field for each team -- can touch the ball up to three times on their side, but a crucial difference from volleyball is that one bounce is allowed before each contact. This aspect allows for much of the strategy in fistball, and, while the short-grass earth at the Friends of Nature Park is fairly flat, I'm told it's nothing compared to the pristine fields played on by clubs and national teams in Europe and elsewhere.
Mike, Tim and a couple other Crescendo players help introduce me to the game by batting around a fistball, which is similar to but heavier than a volleyball and almost impossible to find in the United States. (The U.S. Fistball Association, the national governing body for the sport, which regards Jackson as its nerve center but identifies new president Bob Feid's Florham Park, N.J., location as its contact office, announced in February an agreement with Ludwig Ball Company to become the first Official Sponsor of USA Fistball. Ludwig, based in Brazil, is the only manufacturer of fistballs in the Americas.) I'd already warmed up and stretched my arms enough swatting at the park's incessantly indefatigable insects, but the technique is something I need to practice. My only useful background, besides gym class in school, is a couple years of playing in a recreational coed volleyball league, and that's enough to know I'm not much of a spiker.
Sure enough, once the action began, I realize my only value (lying somewhere between "zero" and "taking up space") is on defense. Playing against Stag, which mercifully goes easy on me, I manage to not actively screw up a few times, contribute to maybe one or two actual points and impress some people with a mildly athletic diving pick, which is like a volleyball dig except off a short-hop bounce.
Fistball games are played in points (to 11) and sets (best of five). We lost most of the points and all three sets. "We tried not to pick on you," one Stag player, Jack, says afterward with a smile. After the game, our team is scheduled to officiate the next contest -- it's customary for squads to take turns reffing, at least at this level -- though given my knowledge base, I'm permitted to take a seat and watch. That's a pleasure, because the third game of the day is an exhilarating and emotional clash between Jesswein's Rampage team, an older group of former national-team veterans, and Renegades, the hotshot upstarts.
This is how fistball advocates want America to see their game. Fast-paced and thrilling, with first-class skill and elite athletes, the tactics and techniques are fully on display, the back-and-forth volleys more frequent and feverish. There are F-bombs dropped, points disputed and, incredibly, a ball that rebounds off the ground so hard that it bounces up and gets stuck in the branches of a nearby tree -- on set-point, no less -- prompting a heated discussion of whether or not it's still in play (technically, yes, I'm told) and then a protracted effort to get it down once the point is begrudgingly conceded.
Eventually, Renegades defeat Rampage, three sets to two. "I keep saying, 'It's about time; you should be beating us,'" Jesswein tells me later.
Before the game ends, I approach a man in his 80s wearing a German federation t-shirt. The man is Art Jesswein, Ron's father and the founder of Wisconsin fistball.
Art Jesswein tells me that he first came upon fistball while he was an American soldier stationed in Bamberg, Germany, from 1956-57, when he attended the Bavarian Junior Fistball Championships and fell in love with the game. Not long after returning to Milwaukee and rejoining the city's Deutsche Athletic Club, where some of the older members mentioned that the sport had been played there in the 1920s and 30s, he discovered a portable fistball set. Along with friends and club members, Art began playing fistball every chance he could.
In 1963, they started practicing regularly on Sunday mornings, a tradition that's carried on today. In 1964, the Deutsche Athletic Club traveled to Genoa City, Wis., on the border of Illinois, to compete against teams from Chicago and the east coast. By 1965, a Milwaukee league was formed with four local squads. And in 1968, two of Milwaukee's select teams were sent by train to Winnipeg, Canada, where they had made contact with a faraway club, for a fall tournament. The train ride, Art tells me, especially the victorious journey back, was "pretty crazy," as German beer and Canadian whiskey flowed freely.
"Beer's been there for a long time," Ron Jesswein says of the fistball culture being both competitive and social. "There have been competitive arguments, but then everyone goes and has a beer afterward and then we're all friends again. It's always been that way. I've seen it with my parents -- my dad, I've seen him get heated on the field when I was younger -- then they'd be drinking and singing German songs after. It's a huge element."
In 1969, the league moved its permanent venue to Friends of Nature. Over the next 30 years, little would change about fistball's insular and kinfolkish existence in Wisconsin, except for players dropping out and joining, teams folding and forming. Art's select teams would still travel occasionally for tournaments, but there weren't many to go to, and the sport stagnated in Jackson.
That is, until the late 1990s, when the International Fistball Association approached the Wisconsin contingent about launching an American federation. In 1999, the newly formed U.S. national team, with Ron at right striker, competed for the first time in the quadrennial World Championships held in Switzerland. Over the next 15 years, the U.S. began to try and grow the sport and gradually became more involved internationally -- they did not participate at Worlds in 2003 but did again in 2007 and 2011, where, in Austria they finished ninth among 12 teams. The development efforts were largely led by WFA founder Jim Blank, a longtime player and a defenseman on the 1999 U.S. team, who lived in Jackson and served as the sport's delegate and president of the USFA until his unexpected death last December rocked the American fistball community.
Now, with Blank's verve gone, just five men's teams and three women's teams competing in the WFA leagues, and little evidence of the sport across the rest of the country, there are some questions about where fistball is headed in the U.S.
"I wouldn't say that we're shrinking," Jesswein says of the Wisconsin Fistball Association. "We're at five teams, and we've been between five and seven teams for a long time. I can't say. It's maybe at a little lower level -- we're not at 6 teams -- but I guess I've seen it pretty much at this level for a long time.
"I just don't know why my friends and other people don't want to come and check it out; it's such a great game."
Mat Henrichs, a 31-year-old U.S. team striker and the nephew of Jim Blank, says new president Bob Feid is working on that, "picking up right where my uncle left off in terms of promoting the sport and marketing it."
Still, Henrichs, who's from Jackson and -- like almost everyone in fistball -- was raised around the game and watched his parents play, says it's disappointing the sport is still so unknown.
"It's frustrating," he says. "I guess it's frustrating because it's a fun sport. First of all, the name fistball doesn't do it justice; people hear the name and I don't think it rings a bell. . . . But I think being a fistball player is just frustrating in general because you spend an awful lot of time doing it, and people have no idea -- they think it's kind of like a joke. But I've been playing it my entire life. You try and describe it and you kind of see people's eyes glaze over."
Even in its American birthplace, Henrichs' hometown of Jackson, he believes most locals aren't aware of what's going on in their bucolic backyards. Despite the fact that four new fistball fields were recently built outside Jackson Town Hall (well, now it's three, after "some tractor messed one up," according to Jesswein) and officials have occasionally taken up issues related to the sport, Henrichs says there isn't much homegrown support or recognition of the game he and his community adore.
"I wouldn't really say there is much of a relationship between . . . it's pretty much a hidden little gem in Jackson, Wisconsin," he says. "Not too many people know about it; not even the people that have lived in the area for their whole lives know the park's there."
He says the charismatic Blank, who often referred to fistball as "volleyball with a bounce," worked hard to bring together the game and its environs, introducing it to local schools and trying to get youth programs going. "But for the majority of the time, it's a pretty unknown thing that most people have no idea is going on," he says. And previous to his uncle's efforts, "I doubt they even knew about it."
And still they play on, every Sunday morning in the summer -- from the best of the best, like Henrichs and his teammates, to the newest and the worst, like me. We're set to play again, our second game of the day and the fourth of the five scheduled, against Protege, which is a weaker team like us. And we give them all they can handle, taking the first two sets and inciting Dave, an inspirational speaker and an alternate on the 2011 national team, to implore us to "dig deep" and not lose three straight sets, as Crescendo depressingly did the last time it faced Protege.
Unfortunately, we do. Anchored in the middle by Adam, who has a fistball tattoo and impressive agility that belies his size, and in the front by Randy, an athletic attacker who serves and spikes aggressively while keeping a lit cigarette smoking in his mouth, Protege comes back to beat us in five. I make a couple more picks and help a bit setting up the offense, but afterward I feel as dejected as the rest of the team, which remains winless this season. I also feel pain, as my forearm is throbbing and dotted with little bruises from ball hits.
Most of the players I talk to mention that their best memories of fistball are also their first. Ron Jesswein talks about spending summers at Friends of Nature Park, hiking and camping with family and friends, and how watching and later playing the sport strengthened his bond with his father.
"Just the excitement of getting up, I couldn't wait for summer, and really the main reason was fistball," he says. "I remember as a kid just the good times that we had out there, but then as I became more competitive, I think it just made a real close relationship for my dad and me because we would talk fistball during the week."
That's a feeling I understand well, since I play and coach soccer with my dad, who introduced me to the game and, at 65, is still as active and avid about it as me.
Ron's mother and sister played fistball, too. "We were just all very involved in it," he says. But it was at a tournament in Genoa City, when at age 13 he was first asked to play on his dad's competitive team and he more than held his own, that instilled in him the passion for the game and the realization that "here's a sport that I can own and this is my sport."
Jesswein estimates that over his 45 years of playing fistball on summer Sundays, he's missed eight or nine weeks. There's no vacation from the sport when Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and everything in between is happily spent playing it.
"It's that feeling of 'I can't wait to get out there,' and here I am 55 years old and I still can't wait to get out there and play," he says. "I love it that much."
For Henrichs, the recollections began before he was even allowed to hit a ball.
"My first great memory was just watching my dad and my mom play when I was a younger kid and not being able to wait until I was old enough to play this sport," he says. "I can just remember being so eager to play, and then once I did, I can't wait until I get older and can beat those guys."
The final game of this Sunday is between Stag and Rampage, and it's another spirited affair. As the game winds down, there's discussion of whether or not to play a "beer game," which is a fistball tradition, a recreational contest where the loser buys brews for the winner. Ultimately, the consensus is that it's not necessary, and so the U.S. national team players take the field for their high-intensity practice and scrimmage. They know they need the work; the beer and league games make for fun Sundays, but the first Pan American Fistball Games are in New Jersey at the end of August, and the U.S. will get to see where it stands against the likes of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.
"It'll be a good measuring stick for the United States Fistball Association," Henrichs says, "to be able to test out our skills and see how our hard work has paid off against some really good teams."
And then, in November, the team will travel to Cordoba, Argentina, to compete in the 2015 Men's Fistball World Championships. Henrichs says the goal is to finish in the middle of the pack. "I know we would be a pretty happy bunch of guys if we got right around sixth place," he says.
That seems like a reasonable goal for a national team made up mostly of dudes from the Dairy State. Jesswein says the current group of players have "definitely come a long way" from the sometimes cringe-worthy early training days and admits that, talent-wise, they're "a lot better than we were."
He understands it's a bit of a double-edged sword marketing the sport to potential players. It's hard to attract the best athletes to something they've never heard of, but, alternatively, there's not a lot of opportunities for regular guys to play on a U.S. national team of anything.
The first-time fistballer tries hard but realizes he's not national-team material.
"The guys that are involved now are thrilled; it's a great opportunity, they work hard at it," he says. "If you really want to get good, you can't come out once a week and hit the ball around. You've got to work at it, and these guys have worked hard six, seven years, of getting to a place where they're improved and better on the world scene. So I hope all the effort pays off.
Jesswein is confident that the Pan-Am Games taking place in the U.S., along with the World Championships a few months later and, in 2021, the World Games in Birmingham, Ala., will generate "a lot more interest." Maybe not to the level the sport is at in Europe, where huge crowds turn out and national federations pay for almost everything; after all, he's just hoping the USFA stipends for uniforms and travel help soften the financial blow a little bit.
So the Wisconsinites will continue fundraising through fish fries and golf outings that are enjoyable and mildly lucrative. And Henrichs says those are all very nice and plenty fun, but to really grow the sport and improve the talent level, he knows it's not enough.
"Really, currently, the way fistball is structured, the way it's run, it's really just run by family and friends that are all a very close-knit bunch of people," he says. "What we do right now really couldn't be accomplished without our family and friends' support -- basically all of our fundraisers are let's get all of our closest family and friends together for a golf outing or a fish fry. Someday it would be nice to have a big business involved, a corporate sponsor. But the help and support we have currently with just our main core people is just outstanding."
The same could be said for the marketing and popularity of the sport; as long as it stays essentially sequestered in Wisconsin, it will be difficult to grow.
In the meantime, though, Henrichs will keep practicing with teammates at the Friends of Nature Fistball Park in tiny Jackson, whether or not anyone knows it, and preparing to represent his country, even if the country isn't aware his sport exists.
"It's a pretty unique experience," he says of playing in international tournaments for the U.S. national team. "The competition is pretty intense. We'll play in front of more people in those competitions than we do combined throughout the whole summer because the following is so much more in Europe and South America, where they represent fistball better than they do in the United States.
"As a player, to describe the games, it's really just like playing on a Sunday -- that's the mindset, to not get caught up in the moment. But before and after, it's pretty incredible, just to be able to hear the national anthem, be able to enjoy that with your teammates, have family and friends watch you. It's a once in a lifetime experience."
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