Bayside’s handball champ claims another title for Queens

Bayside handballer Josef Gotsch took another title back to the borough in October. Photo courtesy of Gotsch

By David Brand

The handball king is a guy from Queens.

Bayside native Josef Gotsch took another title back to the borough in October, winning the doubles trophy in the Las Vegas 3 Wall Ball tournament. It’s the latest piece of hardware for the world champ, but the first since recovering from a sore shoulder. 

“Battling through this event with a shoulder injury wasn’t easy and I’m glad my partner and I have some good chemistry and understanding of the game,” said Gotsch, who teamed up with California’s Anthony Hernandez for the victory.  “It was our first time playing together, so it was more of a spoken understanding to win at all costs.”

Gotsch comes from an athletic family. His father was a professional skier and rugby player in Austria, and his maternal grandfather was a professional bowler. 

“They really cared about health and fitness and wanted to make sure I was highly active,” he said during an interview on the podcast Six Weeks to Fitness.

He began smacking the ball against walls in Bayside playgrounds in middle school and finished second in CUNY tournaments as a teen, but the sport didn’t come easy.

“Handball was awesome. It was unique. It was different and I fell in love with the challenge,” he said.

Gotsch is the latest star in a long line of champs from Queens, a handball hotbed with some of the most competitive action in the world.

New York City has more public handball courts than any city in the country. The five boroughs’ 5,000 courts are ten times the number of walls in Los Angeles, the second place city.

'The reason New York has the world's best players is because you can grow up playing at these spots - it feeds on itself,'' Ozone Park native Eddie Neville told the New York Times in 2010. Neville was rated as one of the city’s 30 “A-players” — among the best in the world.

“'You can play every day of your life, but if you don't play with A-players, you'll never become one,” he said. “That's why all these guys are here, for this competition on this one court.”