‘My Chair, My Hands’ Serve Champ Well

Steve Everett’s smile, almost as brilliant as the sun, illuminated the courts at which he had arrived by wheelchair. His days are busy, exciting ones, full of dreams coming true. The world is great, and he glides atop it, a tennis champion with a title to defend; a young man in love, with a woman to marry.

“I’ve got some news for you. I proposed to Diane during Christmas,” Everett, 22, told his friend, William Judd, 56, who was in his own wheelchair. They were about to play a match last Friday at Long Beach City College, where Everett is a student and Judd is a counselor.

Everett’s racket was being taped tightly to his right hand by Nabeel Barakat, an instructor in adaptive physical education at the college and the coach of Everett and Judd.

“Circulation gets to be a problem,” said Everett, who won the Quad Division of the U.S. Open National Wheelchair Tennis Championships at the Irvine Racquet Club in October.

“After two or three sets, that’s when he gets numb and that’s when I try to beat him,” joked Judd, a tournament player himself. “I’ve played this squirt 3 years and haven’t beaten him yet.”

Both played with astonishing ability. Judd, his disability less severe, swung freely, driving a hard shot that Everett chased down by working the controls of his electric chair.

Shot Spun Out of Reach

Once positioned, Everett swung mightily, inviting bruised ribs and a sore back. He kept his left hand, which hung limply, next to his chest. His body wrenched in the chair and would have spilled from it, had it not been for a safety belt.

His shot arched over the net and spun out of reach for a point.

“He has great anticipation, good control and is very smart,” Barakat said as he watched Everett from the sideline. “He doesn’t have killer strokes but knows how to put the ball away. He’s very consistent in returning balls and has a great drop shot.”

And he’s not much of a squirt anymore, although had he risen from the chair he would have stood only 5 feet 5 inches. Last year he concentrated on eating, weightlifting and swimming, a combination that gave him some bulk and pleased him almost as much as the backhand he suddenly acquired.

“Getting a little nervous, are you?” Judd called over to Everett, who was down 30-40. But Everett, who had also read up on mental toughness last year, took the next 3 points to win a shortened match.

“Want to jump the net?” Everett asked. His smile was still in place.

“People are always saying about me: ‘He’s such a trooper,’ ” Everett said, leaving the courts and wheeling toward the corner of Carson Street and Clark Avenue, en route to his family home 10 minutes away in Lakewood. “I guess it’s because I smile so much. But I don’t want to be known as a trooper, the oh-he’s-so-courageous type. I want people to watch me and say, not that I’m an inspiration, but, ‘Look at the skill.’ ”

Because he has limited use of his arms and hands, Everett competes with quadriplegics, although he is not one himself. The misfortune that befell him occurred not in some terrible auto crash or sports accident--such as the one Judd had in high school gymnastics--but while he was in his mother’s womb. “Basically, I became tangled in the umbilical cord,” he said.

Stricken by Bone Disease

Arthrogyrposis was the result, a bone disease that prevented his body from forming properly. When he was 7, surgery on his clubbed feet enabled him to walk with braces. But he walks rarely. “It’s very hard and pretty painful,” he said. “Mostly, I’m in the chair.”

He grew up with a disdain for chess and checkers, the games many people deemed best for him. When he got his leg braces, he played tackle football with his cousins on the front lawn, breaking his arm three times. At Jordan High School in North Long Beach, he organized a wheelchair basketball team. In 1984, at a camp at Saddleback College for wheelchair athletes, he took up wheelchair tennis, which is the same as regular tennis except that the ball is permitted to bounce twice.

“How in the heck am I going to do this?” he wondered at first, before deciding to have the racket taped to his hand in the same manner he once affixed a whiffle-ball bat.

Encouraged by Brad Parks, considered the world’s No. 1 wheelchair tennis player, Everett began playing in tournaments. For the last three years, he has competed against about 30 quads on the Grand Prix Circuit, last season playing in Reno, Palm Desert, Houston and Grand Rapids, Mich. Everest & Jennings, a company that makes wheelchairs, sponsors the circuit. E & J pays for three of Everett’s tournaments each year because he is on its national promotional team, a group of handicapped tennis players in all divisions, chosen for ability and personality.

Then, each October, about 300 players participate in the various divisions at the U.S. Open. Everett has won the U.S. Open doubles title three straight years, but last year was the first time he reached the singles finals, where he defeated Mitch Stephens.

“It was more than I ever dreamed of,” Everett said of the championship match as he sat in his room Monday afternoon with Diane Altmanshofer, whom he plans to marry in two years. “There was a big crowd, maybe 70 people. When we switched sides, I glanced up and couldn’t believe the crowd.”

Beaten by Stephens in Grand Rapids and Houston, Everett got his revenge in Irvine by playing a tough mental game.

“When you’ve got an arm his size,” he said, pointing to a snapshot of Stephens on the wall, “and I’ve got an arm this size, no way can I match him stroke for stroke. I played my game. I used the ‘quad lob’ and when I got his timing off, I started hitting a little bit harder.”

Everett and Altmanshofer met while they were at Jordan.

“When he first told me he played tennis, I was sort of shocked,” Altmanshofer said. “It is so neat to watch him play. He’s so inspirational. He brings joy to so many people.”

‘It Kind of Bugs Me’

As always, Everett winced at those words. “When people say it too much, it kind of bugs me.”

Altmanshofer, who is able-bodied, has turned out to be not only Everett’s fiancee but his main “dropper”--he needs someone to kneel next to him and drop the ball so he can serve it on a bounce.

Everett’s room has a sports motif, featuring trophies and pictures of Everett at tournaments, hitting tennis balls, receiving awards, always smiling. Above his bed are posters of his idols, tennis star Ivan Lendl and basketball players James Worthy, Magic Johnson and Dominique Wilkins, caught at the apexes of their great leaps.

“I wish I could run and jump, without a doubt I do,” Everett said. “I used to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and imagine myself doing those things.”

But because he has always been the way he is, he never had to make the drastic adjustment of a once-fit athletes who became paralyzed. “When they complain and feel sorry for themselves,” Everett said, “I tell them: ‘You experienced those things, hitting a baseball, diving into a pool. . . . I can only dream about those things.’ ”

But any regrets are mostly forgotten now that Everett has excelled in wheelchair sports.

“All my dreams are coming true,” he said. “I don’t really think you need the legs; it’s the heart you need.”

“Steve never gives up,” Altmanshofer said. “People tell him he can’t do things, he proves them wrong.”

Everett is also student manager of the Long Beach City College basketball team and coach of the Bancroft Junior High basketball team. He wants to be a teacher, and next year will probably attend Cal State Long Beach.

From a drawer that contained copies of Sports ‘N Spokes magazines, including one whose cover Everett graced, Altmanshofer pulled out his poem that he had read at the 1985 Jordan High graduation. It is called “Me, My Chair and My Little Old Hands”:

I find myself dreaming, in the dark

about what life would be like, if I could walk.

At times it gets depressing, but I don’t complain,

most people feel sorry for themselves and look for someone to blame,

but not me; I’m not ashamed.

I figure God put me here for a task. He gave me his love, and I’ll give it back.

There is nothing in this world I can’t do. I can play

football, tennis and even shoot hoops too.

I find myself crying late at night. I’m scared, confused

and nothing’s going right; but then I pray to God and

everything’s OK, ‘cause He’d never lead me in the wrong way.

So if you ever see me, just give me a smile, I guarantee

it will be worthwhile. So if you see a crip at the

beach in the sand, you can bet it’ll be Me, My Chair,

and My Little Old Hands.

“It made the whole class cry,” Altmanshofer said.

Everett had been an inspiration that day and now, years later, like it or not, in his room with pictures of high-flying athletes and trophies of his own triumphs, and with his fiancee’s eyes fastened on him, he remained one.