When Christian Madsen was growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, the purpose of one of his toys — a ball roughly the size of a golf ball, only rubber — was a mystery to him.
But as a boy, he gave it little thought. He joined the cross-country team and played soccer.
There was no way Madsen could have predicted that after he went to college at Missouri State University, a simple rubber ball like the one he wondered about would become a big part of his life.
Sitting outside the Thomas H. Burnett Handball Courts underneath Plaster Football Stadium at practice on a stormy March evening, Madsen tosses a ball as he talks.
“I had a handball when I was growing up, but I didn’t know it was a handball,” said the 22-year-old Missouri State University and MSU handball team alumnus, who recently earned a master’s degree from the College of Education.
The story of how Madsen ended up on the university’s club team isn’t that unusual.
The team was started by the late Dr. Tommy H. Burnett in 1988. From its early days, players who didn’t even know what a handball was — until Burnett talked them into giving the sport a chance — have been a big part of its success.
Some have achieved U.S. Handball Association All-American status. That means they finished among the top four in singles matches, or made the finals in doubles matches, at college tournaments.
At least 15 players have become professionals, earning spots among the top 16 on the World Players of Handball Foundation Tour.
A few Bears have even met their matches for life on the team.
Every year, the team hosts Bear Bash, a handball tournament (not related to the annual back-to-school party of the same name). It’s open to the public, so youth/junior players, college players from across the country, local players, out-of-towners and alumni may all compete.
Some of the top professional handball players in the country have been hosted at MSU: In past years, the sport’s pro classic has been held in conjunction with Bear Bash.
In early 2022, MSU hosted the USHA National Handball Tournament. It brought teams from across the country and the world to campus.
By any measure, the team — which has 20 to 30 players at a time — is one of the most successful collegiate handball programs in the country.
Coached by Burnett until he passed away in 2021, the team’s advisor is now MSU alumna Jeni Hopkins (who is Burnett’s daughter). The assistant coach is Brian Watson.
Volunteers from the Springfield Handball Association also play a role, including Lyle Burback, Joey Napolitano, Clint Johnson, Garrett Bacon, Connor Bacon, Jack Morris and Max Langmack.
Entire MSU team is part of Missouri’s Sports Hall of Fame
This team is going to need more room for trophies.
In February 2023, at the U.S. Handball Association’s Collegiate National Tournament in Tucson, Arizona, the women’s team won the first-place title in the open division for the sixth year in a row.
The men’s and women’s teams won the second-place combined title for the fifth year.
Those victories are part of dozens of titles won in the past 35 years.
In 2011, the entire program was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. Ten years later, the women’s team was inducted separately.
Sixty-nine USHA All-Americans — 37 men and 33 women — have been on the team’s rosters.
One dedicated faculty member started this culture of success
So, what makes this club team, which has no dues and no mandatory practices, so successful?
Players past and present cite a culture that makes teammates feel like part of one big family.
They give most of the credit to Burnett, who came to then-Southwest Missouri State in 1972.
In his time at MSU, he served as head of what was then called the department of health, physical education and recreation. He also served as director of recreation and leisure studies.
He was a familiar presence on MSU’s campus for almost 50 years, even after he retired.
When MSU’s handball courts were dedicated to Burnett in 2017, Sam Esser was behind the push to name them in the late coach’s honor.
Esser, an All-American player, first earned a bachelor’s degree in entertainment in 2018, then a master’s certificate in sports management.
“He spent three to four days a week teaching kids and helping them through life in and outside those courts,” said Esser, now a pro player and the U.S. Handball Association’s development director. “I thought it was very fitting that they were named after him.”
Taking a break from practice, graduate student Taylor Bell agrees.
“There wouldn’t be a handball team without him,” she said.
Burnett brought passion for handball from the NFL to MSU
Yet even Burnett, who would one day be named to the United States Handball Association Hall of Fame, didn’t know what handball was until he was drafted by the New York Jets.
Burnett was an Arkansas native and star football receiver who was part of the University of Arkansas 1964 national championship team.
He joined the Jets in 1966, a year after the team drafted quarterback Joe Namath.
His daughter Jeni Hopkins — a 1994 electronic media, 1996 education and 2000 master’s in guidance and counseling graduate — wrote a book titled “Raising Razorbacks: A Collection of Burnett Stories.” She describes how getting to know Namath and playing in Super Bowl III were fond memories for her father.
Hopkins is now assistant director at Greenwood Laboratory School.
She tells the story of Burnett’s introduction to handball: On days off, the Jets team members would go to Central Park to cross-train by playing the sport.
Her dad quickly became hooked.
What is handball? Frustrating, challenging — and addictive
American handball dates back to the 19th century. Even President Abraham Lincoln played it, Hopkins said.
It’s played on courts the same size as those used for racquetball, and the four-wall handball played at MSU has similar objectives to that game.
However, individuals and doubles players use their gloved hands — not racquets — to serve and receive.
It isn’t easy.
Players must hurl the ball hard enough for it to hit the wall first on both serves and returns — while staying within playing zones and minding Handball Association rules about things like the number of floor bounces that are permitted.
They must possess stamina and good hand-eye coordination, along with the ability to move quickly from side to side and hit the ball with their nondominant hands.
Despite the gloves, beginners’ hands hurt until they toughen up.
Hopkins, a three-time All-American herself, sums it up: “It’s a very highly mental sport.”
Others agree.
“I’d never felt so frustrated by anything athletic in my life,” Madsen said of his experiences when he started playing as a college freshman. “But it was also fun. I liked the challenge.”
Bell did, too, even though she also calls learning to play frustrating.
“I think I stuck with it because I was so bad at first,” she said. “I wanted to get better.”
For those who do fall in love with it— including Jeni Hopkins’s son, Hayden Hopkins — the game can be “very addicting.”
Hopkins, an MSU junior who is majoring in recreation, sport and park administration, understands why his grandfather liked this sport so much.
“Handball is the perfect sport. This program is about students staying fit and healthy and competing with a team that embraces them. It gives them the chance to belong to something bigger than themselves and travel the country representing their university. Students come, they study, they play, they get a degree, they make a sports family for life,” once said the late Tommy Burnett.
Burnett’s recruitment approach: “Have you ever tried handball?”
Hayden Hopkins said his grandfather was “never a shy person.”
No player persuaded to join the handball team would disagree.
Before the team existed, Burnett and other local handball enthusiasts played regularly for years at Springfield’s downtown YMCA.
In the mid- or late 1980s Burnett’s son, Greg Burnett (a recent Greenwood graduate and all-state football player) told his dad he was looking for a new sport to play.
Tommy Burnett didn’t hesitate: Soon, there was a handball team on campus. And that club needed members.
One of their father’s main recruiting strategies, Jeni Hopkins said, was approaching students who looked like they might be good athletes.
Burnett would also keep an eye out for promising players at the Bear Bash tournament, or in the handball course he taught for years. He seemed to have an “innate ability to recognize athletic ability,” Jeni Hopkins said.
“I don’t know how many times — I can think of three right now — that he just saw someone on the sidewalk and said, ‘You look pretty athletic. Have you ever tried handball?’ ”
His own college-age kids were among his first recruits. Greg played from 1988 to 1991. Jeni was on the team from 1993 to 1995. Their younger brother, Jeff, played from 1995 to 1998 — and, like his sister, he became a three-time All-American handball player.
Some players came to MSU for handball; some found it by chance
The team began to prove itself by winning titles. Some teens set their sights on attending MSU just because of the program.
Youth club players Esser and Max Langmack, along with their childhood friends Alex Birge and Matt Vollink, all enrolled as freshmen in 2014.
They were from Kansas, and had gotten to know Burnett at Bear Bash tournaments during their teens.
“It was a blast,” said Langmack, 26.
He’s an accountant who earned a master’s degree in business administration in finance in 2019.
He also competes on the handball pro circuit.
Burnett encouraged his players to help in recruiting.
In 2006, Katherine “Katie” Mackoul Hillgren was a psychology major and religious studies minor. She was taking a racquetball class as an elective when handball players approached her at Plaster Stadium.
“I was invited to stay and play, and it was really fun,” said Hillgren, who earned her bachelor’s degree at MSU in 2008.
A three-sport athlete in high school, the St. Louis native had never played handball. Yet she went on to help lead the women’s and combined team to two national titles.
By the time Langmack joined the team a few years later, the open-arms recruiting strategies hadn’t changed.
“We were always looking to grow our circle,” Langmack said. “It didn’t matter if you had any experience in athletics or were a good athlete, you were welcome to be a part of a team.”
Like Hillgren before her, Bell had stayed busy playing three sports in high school. She wasn’t sure about committing to a college sport when she came to Missouri State five years ago.
She didn’t know how to play handball, either — even though her parents, Mike Bell and Amy Bunton Bell, had played on the team in the early 1990s.
But a friend convinced her to give handball a try.
“I came to a couple of practices, and I really liked the people on the team,” Bell said.
In 2022, Bell was named an All-American player.
“I can’t tell you how many people showed up because Tommy talked them into it,” Langmack said. “They became some of our best players.”
Team takes on a lot of travel; members become like family
Take 20 to 30 college handball players and put them together to travel to tournaments at least a dozen times a year, and it’s no surprise they become close friends.
Team assistant coach Brian Watson, who first played handball at West Point Military Academy, started helping manage the team after he moved to Springfield in 1994.
Watson said team members travel more often than many collegiate competitors.
“Most colleges go to only one or two tournaments a year,” Watson said. “MSU goes to 10 to 14 a year.”
By the time the team traveled to Arizona for the Collegiate National Tournament this year, for example, they had already competed in eight or nine tournaments. These were held around Missouri and in Iowa, Wisconsin and Texas.
Even though they travel together, and meet for practices several times a week, Esser said: “On weekends in Springfield, we were hanging out.”
There were also weekly team meals.
“We had dinners together every Thursday, a home-cooked meal,” he said.
Hopkins said her father often invited the team to his house, and a Fourth of July cookout turned into a tradition.
Handball is a club team. What does that mean?
College club teams may compete locally, regionally and nationally, but are not regulated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, known as NCAA, or the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA.
Club teams offer students the ability to play without the time commitment and level of competition required for a sport governed by the NCAA or NAIA.
Club sports are not monitored by MSU Athletics, and are considered student organizations.
These clubs are usually open to anyone, but most require tryouts. They differ from intramurals, which allow students to put together their own teams and tend to be more casual.
Club teams are often founded by students. Most club teams at MSU operate on funds provided by some combination of the Student Organization Funding Allocation Council; private or alumni donation funds and gifts; corporate sponsorships; membership fees or dues; and fundraising.
Other club sports at MSU include:
- Archery
- Field hockey
- Fishing
- Golf
- Ice hockey
- Men’s and women’s lacrosse
- Men’s and women’s soccer
- Men’s and women’s ultimate frisbee
- Men’s and women’s volleyball
- Tennis
- Water skiing
- Women’s basketball
Handball has led to love matches, intergenerational players
It’s little wonder the alumni roster includes names of players who met and fell and love. Burnett even officiated at the weddings of several players, Hopkins said.
Hillgren and her husband, Eric, were one of the couples who met on the team.
Esser and his wife, Mikaila Mitchell Esser, are another. She was an All-American player in 2016 who earned her bachelor’s degree in public health in 2016 and her master’s in dietetics in 2018.
More recently, Madsen got to know his wife, alumna Alexis Radden Madsen, at the courts. Madsen’s aunt, Mary Dean Coleman Kelly, played for the team as well.
And with teammates like Bell, the child of former players, Christian said, “We’ve always joked about coach’s handball breeding program.”
Burnett would like that joke. Players attest to his sense of humor.
Katie Hillgren, now a health coach supervisor for the U.S. Veterans Administration in St. Louis, said he had a joyful, playful spirit.
“He loved to laugh and tell these very silly, ridiculous stories and jokes.”
Yet their coach was serious about supporting his players. His dedication showed when he got on the courts with them to play, Hopkins said. It showed when he attended every practice and opened the door for them as they arrived, Watson said.
He treated the team like part of his family, players say, and his many mottoes reflected his belief in teamwork.
Langmack recited a few:
- Everybody works together; nobody plays alone.
- The strength of the wolf is in the pack.
“You knew if you joined the handball team there, Tommy would probably do anything for you,” Esser said, remembering when Burnett vetted him for a graduate assistantship at Hammons Student Center.
“He did stuff like that for everybody.”
Late coach “meant the world” to many of his former players
In 2006, Eric Hillgren was 20 years old. He walked onto the team after arriving in Springfield on a Greyhound bus from Lincoln, Nebraska.
That was about 10 years after Burnett had met him. Burnett had begun to follow Hillgren’s junior handball career at tournaments, and they stayed in touch through the years.
“Through that relationship, I always had Missouri State and Tommy Burnett in mind,” Hillgren said.
As much as he wanted to attend MSU and play collegiate handball, Hillgren lacked the grades and the ACT score — not to mention the family and financial support — to go to college right away. Yet even as he stayed in Nebraska and worked restaurant jobs after high school, Hillgren never gave up on his dream.
He’ll never forget Burnett’s response when he called to say he had made it to the bus station. “He said, ‘Eric, let me finish my lunch and I’ll come get you.’”
Burnett helped Hillgren get admitted to MSU on academic probation. The following spring, Hillgren was named Outstanding Freshman at MSU’s Student Talent and Recognition Award, or STAR, ceremony.
A three-time All-American, Hillgren went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in social work.
Today, he works with physical education and health students through a St. Louis nonprofit organization and serves as the Missouri State Handball Association’s commissioner.
Hillgren calls Burnett “the kindest person I’ve ever met, someone that truly believed in me and believed in his players. He meant the world to me.”
He isn’t the only one to get choked up when speaking of the late coach.
“He had a heart this big,” Watson said, tearing up as he spreads his gloved hands wide at the courts. His sons, Larry and George, a two-time All-American, played on the team between 2001 and 2007.
“He always looked at the positive in players.”
When Burnett passed away from Parkinson’s disease in July 2021, at least 500 people attended his memorial service.
The week before he died, Jeni Hopkins said, her father was playing handball.
Today, Hopkins teaches Burnett’s handball course. His legacy also endures in other ways:
- MSU’s annual Bear Bash handball tournament.
- The courts named in his honor.
- The Dr. Thomas H. Burnett Scholarship, which is awarded to a team leader.
- Most of all, the team. It’s supported by the Missouri State University Foundation, the Springfield Handball Club and a host of alumni who still try to make it to Bear Bash every November.
Hopkins said her father wanted his players to stay in school and enjoy a lifetime sport that would keep them healthy and fit.
“He was just addicted to the kids and seeing what they can accomplish through this sport.”
Want to stay connected with handball?
You can follow the club team on Facebook or Instagram. Those accounts give updates about upcoming tournaments. You’re also welcome to view at practices at the Dr. Thomas H. Burnett Handball Courts at Plaster Stadium.
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