Handball, Not Hardball : Oxnard: La Colonia youths will hold a tournament to pay for vandalized police car windshields. An organizer calls it ‘an act of peace.’

Here in this barrio choked by a rotten reputation, on the edge of a run-down park, handball players gathered Wednesday as they do most days to play a game rooted in Chicano culture.

Near the yellow brick handball courts, crumbling and scarred by graffiti, boys and young men came to Oxnard’s Colonia Park to hone their game.

Come Sunday, the players hope to use the sport to bridge a widening gap between La Colonia youngsters and Oxnard police.

La Colonia Youth Handball Club will hold a tournament to raise money to pay for the police car windshields smashed by vandals last month in two separate incidents.

On Nov. 15, vandals broke the windshields of four police cruisers while officers were breaking up a party near 1st Street and McKinley Avenue in La Colonia.

A few days later, someone smashed the windshields of two Oxnard police cars outside a La Colonia neighborhood meeting after a heated exchange between a group of youngsters in the audience and Assistant Police Chief James Latimer and Senior Officer Rafael Nieves.

The windshields have been replaced at a cost of about $200 each.

“This is to show that not all the kids in the Colonia are bad,” said lifetime resident Richard Castro, 44, who is helping to organize the event. “This is like an act of peace.”

Since police established a neighborhood substation to combat La Colonia crime, relations have been strained between some residents and some officers.

Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt said he is pleased with the handball tournament and other efforts to better relations between police and the community.

“I think it’s a wonderful show of support by residents of La Colonia and it is greatly appreciated,” Hurtt said.

The handball tournament, which will start at 9 a.m. at Colonia Park and has an entry fee of $7 for those over 16, will feature some of the game’s best players.

Among those expected to participate is La Colonia native Jason Castro, the reigning state champion who placed second in the National Handball Championships earlier this year. The 17-year-old plans to compete in the world championships next year in Japan.

“We might as well give him the trophy right now,” said one handball player practicing at the three-sided courts on Wednesday.

A couple of boys spent Wednesday morning swiping at the ball, sending it out of play more often than not. Then the men started slapping the sphere, working the angles and walls with expert precision.

Vicente Lucero, 31, kept lunging for the tiny blue ball, dragging a leg that doesn’t work the way it used to.

“I used to play better before I got shot,” said Lucero, lifting his pant leg to reveal a quarter-sized wound left by a slug that went through one side of his calf and came out the other during a drive-by shooting across town a year ago.

“It stops me from playing sometimes,” he said. “But I’m going to play on Sunday.”

Richard Castro, no relation to Jason, said handball is a barrio game, learned in areas with little recreation and widely played by Chicanos in the prison system.

“For some guys, this is all they have,” Castro said. “Now we want to put it to good use. Maybe this is just a little steppingstone, a gesture that the kids are going to make to start improving things.”