Word: cesta
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While jai-alai has been played for centuries in the mountains of Spain-where boys begin strapping on the huge, curved wicker cesta as toddlers-the game is played mainly at the $2 window in the U.S. In Florida, minors are barred from frontons, but as a youngster Cornblit got around the rules by climbing to the roof and staring through a vent at the leaping, whirling players below. After three years of instruction, primarily from a Cuban coach, he won a bronze medal at the 1971 World Championships at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France. He was just...
Groupie Pits. The beauty and ferocious speed of the sport have survived despite the transmutation. With long wicker baskets called cestas strapped to their arms, the players catch and in a single, fluid motion hurl the pelota toward a 40-ft. granite front wall. The pelota-three-fourths the size of a baseball and harder than a golf ball-caroms toward the 176-ft.-long side wall or arcs toward the back wall at speeds of up to 150 m.p.h. To spectators safe behind a wire screen, the ball seems to fly fast but true. A cesta is ribbed, however...
...alai's future would seem to be secure if the enthusiasm of Mirmina's eleven-year-old son Michael is an indication. Using his mother's breadbasket for a cesta, he practices throwing rubber balls at the garage. Says Michael: "I wish they had a midget jai alai league here. It's better than midget football...
...players say that the sickle stick helps them to scoop the puck off the boards and, by cradling it inside the curve, shield it from the goalie's vision. This new-found control, which is roughly similar to that afforded by the lacrosse stick or the jai-alai cesta, has worked wonders for such so-so scorers as Ranger Vic Hadfield, who has already scored more goals this season than he has in seven previous seasons in the N.H.L...
...matches -so that they cannot be approached by gamblers. But there are compensations: top players get $20,000 a season, and late Saturday night, when the week's work is over, the stage-door Jeanies cluster around. "All you have to do is pick up a cesta" grins one player, "and the women will come...