A Courtship Built on Devotion : Love of Handball Fuels a Friendship of Two Decades : By RALPH NICHOLS, : <i> Times Staff Writer </i>

Five men meet in an empty parking lot at the Redwood Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks. They stroll across the deserted campus and stop in front of five concrete handball courts tucked up against a small, sloping hill.

Two of the men pull off their T-shirts and drop them on the concrete. They slip on tattered, leather gloves, adjust their headbands and limber up their stiff, aging muscles.

Three men in the group have carried on this weekly ritual for 20 years. Every Saturday morning, good weather or bad, they meet for two hours of competitive handball, camaraderie and to take their best stab at slowing the aging process.

“It’s a dying game, handball,” laments Herbert Reis, 61, of Thousand Oaks. “But it gives you a lot more exercise than racquetball.”

Ask any of the men how the group ritual began and the question will be met with a blank stare. Nobody seems to remember.

“It was probably word of mouth, but we don’t really know,” said Joe Smurlo, 47, of Thousand Oaks.

After reaching the courts, the men pair off for doubles or singles play, depending on the number of players. On some mornings, only three or four players show up, making it difficult to keep several games going.

“I remember 15 years ago when we used to have three courts going and we had about 12 players show up,” Frank Gruenthal, 60, said. “It’s been dying out lately.”

Gruenthal’s son, Pete, was a student at Redwood when his father first started playing at the outdoor courts. Today Pete, 30, of Thousand Oaks is a regular at the weekly gathering.

“I’m trying to pass the game on to the next generation,” Frank said. “I try to avoid playing singles with my son. There’s a lot to be said for youth.”

While Frank is 30 years older than his muscular, powerfully built son, he has maintained a svelte, strong frame through his long devotion to handball.

“He has played quite a bit longer and he has more court smarts,” Pete said of his father. “I may be able to get around the court better than him, but he has the experience.”

The elder Gruenthal commutes from Woodland Hills to play. He missed several months once after breaking his ankle, but nothing else has kept him away.

Reis also plays indoor handball about three times a week. While he enjoys both indoor and outdoor handball, he’s more challenged by the three-walled courts at Redwood.

“It’s more of a control game playing outside,” Reis said. “You really have to watch your shot because there’s no back wall.”

Reis and Gruenthal also consider handball more demanding than racquetball.

“The biggest difference with racquetball is that handball is a two-handed game,” Gruenthal said. “From a physical standpoint, you need balance and a sense of what makes a good shot. That’s where experience comes in.”

Handball has remained a staple at fire stations throughout Los Angeles, but its popularity with the general public has declined since the 1960s when there were more than a million players nationwide. In the ‘70s, racquetball lured some handball players away, according to Bob Peters, executive director of the U. S. Handball Assn.

“There was a change in recreational values in the ‘70s,” Peters said. “People started looking for something to do, where they could get a good workout but not take a lot of time.”

Among hard-core handball players, however, the sport never lost its appeal.

“We’re an elite group,” Peters said. “Once a handball player, always a handball player.”

Gruenthal learned to play as a youth at Riverside Park in Manhattan, N. Y. He hit against a single wall with no side walls off which to bank a shot. He still holds contempt for the inventor of the three-wall game.

“Some kind of an idiot California engineer built these,” Gruenthal said of the Redwood courts.

Reis attended the same high school as Gruenthal and shared his interest in handball. They both became engineers and ended up living in the same city and working for the same company.

It was in Thousand Oaks that Gruenthal and Reis renewed their handball rivalry. After finding the outdoor courts, they have made their weekly pilgrimage to the empty school for two rousing hours of handball ever since.

After a severe heart attack in 1972, Reis’ doctors advised him to exercise regularly and stay fit. He first took up walking, then jogging before returning to the sport he had played in his youth.

“Because I had played handball as a kid, I found it was better suited for me,” Reis said. “I’m a small guy and not very strong so I couldn’t compete in a lot of sports. Handball had the right mixture of exercise and competitive sport.”

Off the handball court, however, there is little socializing or contact among the players in this group. They do their partying on a handball court on Saturday mornings.