These are all the medals Nashua's Mitch Milewski has won playing in amateur racaquetball tournaments around the country the last 40 years or so. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – The ball takes a lot of lightning-quick bounces, but when he began playing racquetball, Nashua’s Mitch Milewski could have never have imagined it would bounce him into the national spotlight.

Milewski, 80, was inducted into the National Masters Racquetball Hall of Fame this past July in Chicago. By the time he was 70, he won nine consecutive national and/or international championships, and is currently the No. 1-ranked player in the country in the 80-year-old age group by USA Racquetball.

A table at home has all his medals in the sport laid out. Not bad for a guy who didn’t get introduced to the sport until he was in his early 40s.

“I never thought I would do this,” he said.

•••

Nashua's Mitch Milewski was inducted into the National Racquetball Masters Hall of Fame this past July (Courtesy photo)

HOW IT STARTED

Milewski now plays about three days a week, but also plays in the Nashua Senior Softball League, so activity is his middle name.

He was a handball player when he arrived in Nashua some 40 years ago as a member of the military, stationed at Hanscom Air Force base.

“I had never played racquetball, never knew what the game was,” he said.

But his boss was an avid racquetball player, and had established a racquetball challenge ladder. So, Milewski followed the crowd to get on the colonel in charge’s good side, got on the ladder and took up the game.

A younger Mitch Milewski gets ready to hit a shot during his early days in racquetball. (Courtesy photo)

“There it was,” he said with a chuckle, “great incentive to play racquetball.”

In fact, the colonel let those who played the game not have to do the conditioning runs.

In his late 50s, he took things to another level, playing in national tournaments. He had seen a racquetball magazine with national rankings, with a tournament schedule. He played in lot of local and state tournaments, but reading, he saw a lot of large fields for the national events.

“I thought, man, it would be neat to be able to play in them,” he said.

Then he spotted info on the National Masters Racquetball Association that has a couple tournaments a year, a national tourney and international tourney, with age divisions, singles and doubles.

“That was good you get to play people your own age,” Milewski said. “And they’re round-robin.”

So, he began with the U.S. Open tourney in Memphis, Tennessee. But the downside was it was single elimination, so he was risking a one-and-done. His first match on the opening day was 7:30 a.m., and the shuttle that was supposed to take him from the hotel to the courts never showed, but luckily, he was able to get a ride from other competitors.

He made his match on time, won, but that put him up against the No. 1 seed later in the day, and he lost “pretty handily.”

And he was stuck in Memphis the rest of the week, about five days, watching racquetball – the better choice than paying hundreds of dollars to change his flight home to an earlier one.

“Someone then told me when you go to these tournaments, you have to play two events (or age divisions) in case you get eliminated (in one of them) in the first round,” Milewski said.

He went to the U.S. Racquetball Association nationals in May, signed up for the 60 age division and 65-year-old age division. But he lost both in the first round – to the No. 1 seed who was, in fact, the same opponent.

“I got beat by the same guy twice,” he said, chuckling again.

Did that make him more competitive? Yes, plus it made him want to take a different approach.

“It made me want to play more, and made me want to win a few matches so I could get some sort of recognition so I wouldn’t be the last seed,” Milewski said. “When I first started, the guys were all nationally ranked and had a lot more experience than me.

“Once I got more experience playing at that level, and I stuck to the round-robin tournaments, so if I got beat, I continued to play. And you’d play back-to-back-to-back. So if you lost to a high-ranked individual, you got to play everyone else.”

•••

ON HIS WAY TO SUCCESS

So, after some more matches, Milewski started winning, and soon became nationally ranked himself. The game changed for him.

“Each and every time I played, it was gaining experience,” he said.

And in the year he turned 70, Milewski played both singles and doubles in several national events – and never lost.

One day he was reading Racquetball Magazine and saw there was a tournament in Indianapolis, near where his daughter and her family lived.

He slyly got his wife, JoAnn, to go along with a tourney trip.

“I asked her if she wanted to go visit the family in Bloomington,” he said. “And she said, ‘of course.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a racquetball tournament in Indianapolis, would you mind if I played?”‘

He played in the 55-59 category, and in a 14-person round robin. He finished fourth.

“I said, ‘This is the way I want to play,'” Milewski said. “I want to play a lot, and I want to play everyone.”

Milewski saw a good chunk of the country traveling to tournaments. He an JoAnn would get there on a Wednesday and stay until the following Tuesday or longer, “making a vacation out of whatever area the tournament was in. I haven’t played in every state …, but I think I’ve played in half the states.”

Utah was his favorite area to visit; he’d play in the Huntsman Senior Games in St. George, Utah, which was two hours from Las Vegas.

St. George, he said, would go “all out” for the tournament, as the Senior Games would have some 22 different sports, attracting thousands.

“I just love it out there, and that’s our favorite state,” he said.

Another tourney he’d frequent would be the World Seniors in Alberquerque, New Mexico. He likely won’t play in another tournament until the NMRA Tourney in Baltimore, Maryland. He played in May, and his last tourney was at his Hall of Fame induction in July.

To achieve that hall of fame status, he needed a certain number of gold medals in order to qualify for consideration. A ballot is sent out to the voting committee, and voters can only select two. That narrows down the finalists, he said, to seven.

Then a second ballot of the finalists is sent out, and only those who get more than 50 percent of the vote are eligible to be selected.

Milewski was on the ballot three years, and got elected this past summer, notified in June. He played in the tournament there as well.

“It was a great feeling to receive the recognition of all these people that attend these events,” he said. “Plus, all my friends and local competitors.”

The game certainly opened up Milewski’s world to not only travel, but also friendships with players from around the country, some of whom have stopped playing or have passed away.

“Racquetball’s a pretty grueling sport with a lot of injuries,” he said.

But Milewski has played through that gauntlet, still active.

“In the military, they called handball and racquetball ‘lifetime sports,’ ” Milewski said. “But, I’m still quite surprised I’m still playing, that I’m in the condition I’m in and able to compete.

“Most of the players I play locally are 15-20 years younger than me, so that helps me when I go to a national tournament and play people the appropriate age.”

His most memorable championship?

Probably just before he turned 71 and won nine events, but one was a single elimination, the U.S. National Tournament, in Anaheim, California. He won the age 70 division and was second in the age 65 division.

“That was probably the best feeling I had playing in a tournament,” he said, “being able to finish second in a significantly younger category.

“When you get into the upper age groups, there’s a significant difference between just entering an age group and being at the oldest level of the age group.”

Then he chuckled.

“The older you get,” he said, “the more rapidly you slow down.”

Of course, the pandemic has done some of the slowing down for him in terms of the number of tournaments he competes in. Of course, in his now-older age group, there are tournaments where he might be the only competitor in the older age group.

But a couple years ago, Milewski was in a tournament that had a couple players who were 95 years old.

“I want to be like those guys,” he said, recalling one player in his 90s, who played down a few age levels, always wore one of his gold medals around his neck.

“That,” Milewski said, “is what I’d like to be able to do.”

Just the next step and medal, right?

Newsletter