Welcome to the United States Handball Association

The USHA Ball

Our
Handball
Guarantee

by Vern Roberts

There is no question about it. The most important thing about the game is "the ball." And, the best thing the association has done in the past 20 years is take over the manufacture, sales and development of "the ball(s)."

The USHA is now the distributor of the Red Label, White Label, and Big Blue Handballs. And, the association is using the profits from the ball to promote the sport. It's one of the true win-win situations I've encountered. When it became our responsibility to have a ball to play with we had a few immediate goals

• Have an adequate supply of balls, Produce a lively ball, Narrow the specs,

• Eventually develop a more user friendly ball.

There were a few things we learned, of course. When you're dealing with a natural ingredient such as rubber, each and every batch of balls will be a little different. And that's been the basic difference in each and every batch made so far. Other than moving the bounce spec an inch higher and narrowing the acceptable range by an inch, there has been no other change in the materials and/or specifications for the USHA Red Label Handball since it was produced by Spalding as the Red Ace. When the USHA took over the manufacture and distribution of handballs, the inventory at Spalding was more than a year old and it was close to another year before the Spalding inventory purchased by the USHA was depleted. Knowing that natural rubber turns hard over time and wanting to keep the manufacturing process more regular, we ordered handballs on the basis of making four runs per year. Even with that quarterly production schedule, there will be some difference in each batch. Again, those differences are due in large part to the natural rubber as well as the nature of the production. To see how the ball is made, see pages 24-26 in Oct. 2000 issue of Handball Magazine. During these past two years of working with the plant in Taiwan, the USHA has been sampling handballs made with a thinner wall. Handballs were made with a 6 m.m. wall thickness up until 1989 when the production shifted from Spalding's plant in Massachusetts to a former Voit plant in Mexico. That's when the balls became harder and heavier due to an 8 m.m. wall thickness due to the tooling available at the Voit plant. Many handball players still fondly remember those U.S. made balls and that's why we're looking at bringing back the 6.m.m wall thickness. However, the USHA board of directors will need to approve the switch based on favorable sampling from the board and players. Until that time, the ball will continue to be made with basically the same specs as Spalding used at the Taiwan plant. The White Label ball is also being made to the same specs as Spalding used and it will be made at whatever wall thickness the Red Label tooling requires. Again, the differences between batches will be slight and due to the differences in natural rubber. The Big Blue ball was developed for two reasons: it's a popular outdoor game on both coasts and is a wonderful introductory ball for one-wall in school gymnasiums. The goal is to develop a larger, lighter, softer ball (akin to a racquetball), that bounces and plays like a handball.

Keep rolling 'em out,

Vern Roberts Aug. 17, '01

Read the USHA Mission Statement