It was Saturday, January 19th and the weather report looked ominous.  "Rain and snow with possible accumulation".   This was the day of the "January Jam', a ladies-only racquetball shoot-out to be held at Southern Athletic Club in Lilburn, GA.  It began as an idea for women in the metro Atlanta  area to gather for a fun day of competition and prizes and blossomed into an event attracting women players from Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama.  WIth Atlanta weather being fickle as it is, we decided to go ahead with the day of round-robin play and let the players decide if it was safe enough to travel from their respective locations.  The result was 25 out of the 26 registered players attending amid a day of beautiful snowfall and virtually no problems commuting. These women really wanted to play racquetball!

 

The "Jam" consisted of 5 levels of play from Open to Novice.  As it was all round-robin singles everyone had plenty of playing time.  We had a great catered lunch courtesy of Eagles Landing in Lawrenceville, and jewelry for prizes courtesy of New Jewelers in Norcross.  There were cash and/or jewelry prizes awarded for 1st and 2nd places and lots of doorprizes from Ektelon and SAC.

 

We played women we had never met before and new friendships were formed.  As a side note all matches were self-refereed and went smoothly.  We had a novice player who had only been on the racquetball court 3 or 4 times.  She loved it .Though she didn't win she flashed a huge smile as she saw snow for the first time and displayed her doorprize in the falling snow!  The open division was tough with 7 players finishing within just a few total points of each other. 

 

We would like to thank the following folks for their support as well:  Ric Crosby of SAC, Roger Luque,  Lynn Fonseca, and Ektelon.  If your are not already on our email list, please send your email address to Vicki Luque at vlaq@comcast.net for announcements and entry forms to the next event.