Racquetball Tournament Provides Chance for Deaf Player

Funny thing about the Coors Light/Marty Hogan racquetball series: It’s not open to Marty Hogan, a five-time U.S. champion whose name is synonymous with the sport.

Hogan will be at the Mid Valley Athletic Club in Reseda on Saturday for an exhibition, but racquetball’s elite aren’t welcome in the charity series that bears his name.

It’s closed to the nation’s top 40 players.

“We wanted to open it up as much as possible and get the interest of the general public,” said Stacy Ozonowsky, a spokeswoman for the event. “A lot of times with open tournaments, there is a hesitation by the regular club player because they don’t feel they’ll be able to compete. . . . This is a tournament for everyone.”

That makes it ideal for people such as Linda Murashige of Tarzana, whose interest in sports as a child was hastened because it was one of the few areas in which she wasn’t excluded because of her deafness.

“When you go to a deaf school,” said Murashige through an interpreter, “you live on campus. After you finish your classes, it’s boring. There’s nothing to do. So, I started playing sports.”

She’s been playing with a vengeance ever since.

Murashige, 31, was a setter for silver medal-winning U.S. women’s volleyball teams in the World Games for the Deaf in 1973, 1977 and 1981. Next February, she will ski for the United States in the Winter World Games for the Deaf in Oslo, Norway.

Last April, at the National Racquetball Assn. for the Deaf championships in Baltimore, Md., she won the women’s B Division.

About a month later, she won the women’s C Division at the Mid Valley Athletic Club, the opening event of the Hogan series.

The victory qualified her for this weekend’s series-ending event, which begins tonight at 6:30 and continues all day Saturday.

The tournament will bring together champions in 12 divisions from 12 clubs throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Organizers, who say the series has raised more than $15,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, say the event serves as kind of an unofficial Southern California amateur championship.

For Murashige, it’s a chance to express her considerable drive.

She remembers taking a serious interest in sports, especially volleyball, after realizing she had the skill and “wanted to be better and to beat the other people.”

At Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., the former Linda Tucker was a four-year starter.

Her coach at Gallaudet, Peg Worthington, described her as a “natural leader on the floor” and “very competitive.”

“In college, she was kind of wild,” Worthington said. “I don’t know too many of the wild stories, though. She kind of kept that off the record. But she can be a real fun person to be with. A good party person.

“But on the floor and in practice--the hours that I had her--she was all business. . . .

“The more difficult something is, the better she likes it. If you say ‘Jump,’ she says, ‘How high?’ And if you say, ‘Hit the floor,’ she’ll say, ‘How many times?’

“You should see her dive on the floor. Unbelievable. She was the kind of person you didn’t want out of the game. . . .

“I believe that helped her get right through life--her competitive spirit and always wanting to do her best and be No. 1. And she hit No. 1 a lot of times, believe me.”

Not surprisingly, Murashige married a competitive man. Her husband of five years, Ken Murashige, is a three-time national deaf champion in racquetball.

He also coaches his wife, who spends most of her free time skiing or playing racquetball, having set volleyball aside for now.

Murashige said she plays volleyball now “only to stay in shape for skiing.” She said of skiing and racquetball: “My husband is involved, so I want to do like him. I practice a lot.”

When she’s not competing or practicing, Murashige is a teaching assistant at Tripod, a Montessori school in West Hollywood.

Her specialty, a school spokeswoman said, is developing coordination and motor skills in the preschool-aged children. When they get a little older, she probably also could give them a lesson in “beating the other people.”