The game of handball certainly played an important role in Jim Story’s life. While he learned to play handball in Los Angeles as a young man, he has been playing handball at the San Jose Downtown YMCA for over 40 years. Over the years, he competed in over 300 tournaments, most of them local, regional or statewide. He won over 50 of these tournaments. A few of the tournaments that he won multiple times include: the San Jose Labor Day Tournament, the Northern California Regionals in Sacramento and Fresno, the Jack Tone in Stockton, Semper Fi in San Diego, the Chabot Open and Super Bowl in Pleasanton and the Memorial Day in Modesto. He also played in out-of-state tournaments held in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Dog Bowl), Durango, Colorado and Portland, Oregon. 

Unfortunately, Jim was never able to participate in the Nationals because he was a Math teacher and the Nationals were held during the last weeks of school. He did play in local tournaments against National Champions such as Bob Braine, Mike Driscoll, Jim Economides, Joe McDonald and Jim Smith- and typically came out on top. After retiring, Jim did competed in San Diego at the National Master Singles and lost in the Semi-Finals missing advancing to the Finals by one point in the tie-breaker.

A basketball and baseball player in high school and college, Jim was drawn to the competitiveness of singles handball. He had to improve quickly because everyone played singles in San Jose and if you lost you were off the court. That meant playing five days a week to get better and better so he could stay on the court longer. In those early days, Jim admired Marty Golfstein’s control and placement of the ball and Art Decker’s incredible hops on his serves. After playing all these years, Jim can’t think of another activity that combines so much fun, fitness, health benefits and camaraderie.