At 64, she’s an All-American
ASU racquetball player Hendricks finishes 2nd at national tourney
It was the semifinal match of the National Collegiate Racquetball Championships in Tempe, and 64year-old Arizona State student Susan Hendricks had taken the first game before going down, 13-8, in the second.
Her Oregon State opponent was two points away from tying the April match, and Hendricks feared she didn’t have the energy for a potential tie-breaking third game against a much younger player.
On the precipice of losing, Hendricks looked to the sidelines, where her coaches were calling to her: “Sue, hit a lob to her backhand, that seems to work.”
“Sure enough, I started hitting lobs,” Hendricks said. “I came back and beat her, 15-14.”
With that, Hendricks advanced to the final, where she earned a silver medal that made her possibly the oldest player to ever receive U.S. collegiate All-America honors.
“She really puts a big emphasis on enjoying the moment,” head coach Darrin Schenck said. “It’s nervewracking, playing in a tournament, when you have all your teammates watching … but it’s a game, it’s meant to be fun, and she did a really good job of reminding everybody of that all the time.”
Lifelong athlete
Hendricks has always been an athlete. As a young child, she had a PE teacher who encouraged the girls to participate in calisthenics, a rarity at the time. That helped her become such a strong runner that in seventh grade, a jealous boyfriend broke up with her because she beat him so badly in a race.
Her first date with her current husband was on a racquetball court, and even before she began playing again, she was an assistant for the club team at ASU.
Even for a lifelong athlete like Hendricks, the process of returning to ASU as a full-time student while also taking up competitive racquetball was not an easy one. It all started when, as she was dealing with the recent loss of her mother, Hendricks learned that she had broken her back. The injury would take intensive surgery and several months’ recovery to fix.
“During that time, there was a revelation … What do I really love? And school came back to me every time,” Hendricks said. “I thought, I want to go back to ASU. I want to learn again … and I thought, maybe I’ll try out for the racquetball team too.”
The rehabilitation process was lengthy. For six months after the surgery, Hendricks couldn’t so much as twist her back. Once she was able to step onto a court again, ASU assistant coach Jim Barrett would softly toss balls towards her for her first racquet swings in months. After a year, she was ready to compete again. Schenck, who Hendricks has known since he was 16, said he was not surprised by her return.
“She was always an excellent player, and even in her advanced age I knew she would be a really good competitor at the collegiate level,” Schenck said. “... I actually did have really high expectations for her, it was just a matter of finding the right opportunity.”
Experience and precision key
That opportunity came when Hendricks landed in the No. 3 spot on the team after tryouts, placing her in a tournament competition level that Schenck believed would be well-suited to her talents. The workout routine she used to get in shape for the national competition involved playing at least three times a week, working out with a trainer twice a week, hiking once a week, and then regular training: light weights, lunges, drills on the court. Modern racquets are significantly larger and lighter than the ones she played with 40 years ago, so she’s also had to adjust to returning brutally fast serves.
She’s fast, but playing against 20-year-olds, that’s not going to be her advantage. Instead, Hendricks’ upper hand comes from the experience both playing and coaching that hones her precise play.
“Nobody’s gonna throw anything at her that she hasn’t seen,” Schenck said. “…You put somebody with tons of experience who’s a little physically slower versus a great athlete who is still trying to figure things out, I’m betting on the brains every time.”
Hendricks isn’t done yet. She has two years left of eligibility at ASU, and she’s planning to compete again next year at several tournaments, including a world championship in August. The road to repeating her AllAmerica achievement will be a steep climb: the player that beat out Hendricks for ASU’s No. 2 position in the tournament was a 2019 graduate, meaning that Hendricks will likely be playing against higher-level players in the next national tournament. Even so, Hendricks won’t shy away from the challenge.
“Don’t be afraid to do things,” Hendricks said. “I was terrified. You just have to push through those things, and when you’re feeling those butterflies and you’re going through this, that’s when you’re living. When you don’t have those things, you’re just existing.”