Bouncing bad activity

Talk to Richard Gomez about the sport of handball, and the information comes back at you about as fast as he hits the rubber ball off the walls on some of the handball courts at Cost Mesa High School.

If anybody should know, it would be Gomez, about as fit a 50-year-old you’re ever going to find — a guy who played for Santa Ana College in the late 1970s.

In charge of the high school’s campus security, Gomez, who was born and raised in Santa Ana, played the sport passionately for years before he got a job at Costa Mesa High School in the late ’90s and started organizing full-fledged student tournaments.

It’s this sort of student interaction, coupled with continually making sure the high school campus is safe, that earned Gomez an employee of the year award a couple of weeks ago from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

But at the heart of everything is handball — a blue-collar, rough-and-tumble sport that was all the rage long before racquetball showed its racquet.

As Gomez said, “All you need is a ball and buck, and you’re good to go.”

Plus, some gloves, if you’re so inclined. After all, the ball can reach speeds of up to 90 mph.

Gomez started talking up the sport at the high school in 1996, when he quickly took note of a somewhat gang-infested campus that needed some care.

“Handball was a way to keep the kids off the streets at the time,” said Gomez, with shadows and brick walls as a back drop on Wednesday, the midday heat revving up.

“Sometimes,” Gomez added, “students would get jumped by gangs in the handball courts here because they were out of the way and they didn’t seem like they were under supervision.”

Then came Gomez in his new role as campus security.

Cholos, a term sometimes applied to tough-looking Latinos, looked at him with disdain.

They wondered what Gomez was doing on their turf. He said he quickly challenged one of the better players to a game of handball to break the silence.

“Here I was. They looked at me as ‘The Man, The Authority,’” he said. “I ended up whipping him 7 to nothing.”

But then, true to his personality, Gomez softened the blow for the kid, letting him in on how he played handball in college and that that the kid, nonetheless, put up a good fight.

From that day on, handball was never the same at the high school. Students have played in hundreds of tournament games from Santa Ana to Orange to Newport Beach.

And as the number of games increased, the number of fights decreased, Gomez said.

As Costa Mesa Police Officer John Gates, the high school’s resource officer, put it, “If we can contribute to handball, it makes all our jobs easier. It keeps the kids productive.”

Now, the game is a way of life at the high school, and unfortunately, it took a bad turn the other day when one of the junior high school students, Eric Valdez, 14, collapsed while playing handball and later died at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian.

The cause of death has not determined as of yet, but the outpouring of friendship and support associated with Valdez’ passing can be seen on one of the handball courts walls.

Messages from friends and handball players were testimony to the bonds that Valdez was able to forge through the sport.

“We will miss you, Eric. You were the best handball player, ever,” one reads.

Another reads: “Rest in Peace, Eric, my brother.”

Gomez said Valdez was a “really good kid, a shy kid, a humble kid.

“He’s going to be sorely missed.”