Some Badminton History at the
University of Wisconsin
By Paul Malischke
Based upon an interview with George Bauer at the Badger
State Games, Keva Sports Center, June 23, 2001
Q. When did you come to Madison?
George: It was
1938 when I started in school. There
was a little badminton as an intramural program.
I took a class as a student in the P.E. program.
I had been in gymnastics, football, and baseball before, but did not know
anything about badminton. My class
would have been in 1940, my sophomore year.
From then on I kept playing recreational badminton.
Q. Was the class at the armory?
George: Yes, we played on the second floor of the armory. They also had 3 courts on the third floor, but they were not good because they were behind one another and space between players was minimal.
George Bauer and longtime partner Wolfgang Arlt
Q. Did they have any intramural tournaments?
A. Yes, and for some reason they allowed faculty. There were two fellas in our department, Carl Sanger and Bob Francis. They were the best in Madison at that time. They won the intramural program, and the students were not particularly happy about that because they were not quite as competitive as the two faculty members. For a while, they cut out the faculty from the IM tournaments. Then later the faculty could play again. The best players were Carl and Bob, Reverend Bob Shaw, and Ed Vergoulis. I did pretty well with all these players.
Q. Did you get a degree from UW?
George: I got
a Bachelor’s in 1942, and started teaching right away at the University.
I had an appendectomy in April fool’s day in 1942.
Of course, the service would not take me for a year after that.
The requirement for P.E. at the University was nil prior to that time,
but when the war came on, they made it a requirement for everybody, and so I was
asked if I wanted a job. So I
stayed on teaching on the faculty until I went into the service in ’44.
Q. Then you were teaching badminton from ’42 to ’44?
George: No, I
did not. Carl Sanger was teaching
it at that time. I used to help
him. In the 1950’s, Carl started
teaching all the tennis, then I ended up with the badminton.
We had a combination activity course of tennis, racquetball, and
badminton. We had a 16-week
session: 8 weeks tennis, 4 weeks
badminton, and 4 weeks of racquetball. The
class was split and rotated all around so they all got all the racquet sports.
Q. What kind of racquets did you have? Where they wooden racquets?
George: No, as
a matter of fact, we had some metal ones, with metal strings besides.
They were terrible, the world’s worst.
They had a goofy wooden handle that was not good either.
Q. What kind of shuttles did you have?
George: They
bought the plastic ones and used those for the classes. Later on when competition got better, we started buying
regulation birds. But they were
difficult to come by. There
wasn’t anybody in town selling them.
Q. Did women enroll in these classes?
George: In our
program, where I taught, for most of the time it was just a men’s program.
I was not involved in teaching women, until the two programs combined,
sometime in the 1960’s.
Q. Was there a women’s racquet course?
George: Yes,
they taught a course at Lathrop Hall. When
they combined the two departments, then I did have some of the women P.E. majors
and so forth.
Q. Was it more fun with women in the course?
George: Well, in some ways, but it was tough for the gals sometimes playing against some of the athletes who were in the phy ed program. You take these fellas who were tennis or hockey players – they were real good because they had great footwork and they moved around real quick and very competitive.
They gave the gals a tough time. Eventually Sandy Norton came in and they had the women’s
badminton intercollegiate team.
Q. The team did not exist before Sandy came?
George: No.
I don’t ever remember even an intramural or club team.
There was no organization or challenging other clubs, or tournaments.
Q. When the Nat was built, did you move over to the Nat?
George: Yes, I
moved to the Nat from the Armory, and we had much better facilities at the Nat,
with 2 gyms, each having 6 courts. Fritz
Wegner was involved in some of the planning for the Nat, and he was also a
badminton player to a certain extent. The
gymnastics moved to the Nat as well in a special gym downstairs in the back.
I coached the gymnastics intercollegiate team for about 12 years, about
1952 to 1964. After I left the
service in 46, I earned my masters degree, and then went into the
teacher-training program.
Q. Were there any tournaments around the Midwest that you could enter as an individual?
George: I didn’t pay much attention. We had a few around Madison at the Y, and intramurals. One of the first ones I went to was in Chicago. I also went to Milwaukee and Waukesha. I played in the Badger State Games when it started in 1985, and I played in it for a good number of years, until they ran out of my division. They don’t have many in the over-80’s. The last tournament I played, national and international, they had 4 fellas in my age division, 80’s and over.
George at the Badger State Games. (1985?)
Q. Were there any rules changes during the decades you have been playing?
George: One of
the biggest changes came up just recently when they cut out setting at 13-13, to
just setting at 14. That’s the
major one. I can’t think of any
other change. The rules haven’t
changed much.
Q. When did you retire?
George: 1983.
I had 40 years, including 2 years credit for being in service.
Q. Did you teach badminton right up to retirement?
George: Yes.
I was teaching badminton, gymnastics courses, and involved in volleyball
and first aid.
Q. Didn’t you get emeritus status when you retired? That’s quite an honor.
George: Yes I
did get emeritus status. It’s a
real pleasure, even though they charge us for the facility now.
Originally staff members did not have to pay any fee.
Now it goes up every year, but it’s great to be able to participate.
I get free parking, besides.
Q. Was it after you retired that you started traveling to more tournaments?
George: I did,
yes. I had the time.
I decided to continue to go. I
went to Australia for the world games, and up to Canada for a few tournaments.
The Australia tournament was in Brisbane in 1994.
They fouled that thing up. They
said they were going to have 3 divisions, Elite, Club, and Novice.
I took the club division. Then
when I got there, they changed the date. I
had planned to have a days rest, but I got in at 2:00, and my partner said we
were on at 4:00. I had just been
flying for 26 hours. Instead of
having 3 divisions, they pushed everyone into one division.
We tried to play, but didn’t do well.
I had to play singles right after, and instead of playing in my division
with the 70’s, I had to play a guy from Switzerland in the 50’s.
Q. At some tournaments you have taken home quite a bit of hardware.
George: In 1999, I went to Disney World for the senior Olympics and won singles. I went down to Miami Lakes this past year for senior internationals and played in 80 and over division, and won that one. Then I went to Spokane Washington for Nationals this past March and got second in singles, and my partner and I won the doubles in 80 and over.
I used to go to 4 or 5 different tournaments during the
year. Now I just make 2 or 3.
They don’t have the 80 and over division in very many tournaments.
They call it the Platinum division.
Q. Can you tell us about some of your teaching techniques?
George: One of
the biggest things was to get across that you can’t play the patty-cake
badminton like they play in the backyard. You’ve
got to learn to hit a good high deep clear, because if you don’t have it, you
will be setting yourself up for a smash shot right at you all the time.
So get a good high deep serve for singles, and then work on clear shots.
Then try to clear to a person’s backhand.
Most people did not have much of a backhand.
In those days we did not teach much backhand. We taught mostly a round-the-head shot.
I was never taught a backhand.
Q. Were you a tough grader?
George: I
played the kids a lot. I used to
tell them, “If you get 5 points off me, I’ll buy you a steak dinner.”
If you get one point, that’s good for a D as far as skills are
concerned. If you get 5 or 6
points, you get an A in the skills part. Depending upon attendance, written exam, all this would
combine. I had guys challenging me
all the time and they really worked like the devil. They really wanted to win the points and the steak dinner.
I lost 2 games in all the years I taught.
One was to a Klingenholtz kid who was a tennis player.
The reason I lost was I served deep to him all the time for the first
game. Being a good tennis player,
he had a good smash. In the second
game I served short all the time and he did not do well on that. The other fella was from Shorewood in Milwaukee.
His folks owned a camp and he played a lot there.
Some of the toughest games were against the hockey players.
They really were competitive, quick with their feet and hands and wrist.
Of course the wrist isn’t totally what you use – you have your forearm
rotation. Some of the football
players got more tired playing badminton then they ever did in football. In football it was one sudden rush and that was the end of
it. But it badminton you kept them
running back and forth, up and back. One
of the techniques I tried to teach was “Don’t hit the bird anywhere near
where the guy can get at it.” Make
them go to get at it. If he’s
close, you hit it deep. If he
is deep, you drop it over the net. If
he is one the left hand side, you go to the right hand side.
Q. Did you teach doubles, too?
George: Yes,
but did not have too much time for doubles since it was only a 4 weeks session.
We taught the short serve, and tried to keep it low to the net and tried
to get your opponent to lift it so you can smash it on the way back.
At that time, you usually played side-by-side, not so much up and back. If you served deep, you got side-by-side right away.
If you served short, than you took the short part of the game and let
your partner take deep.
Q. You had gymnastics act, too.
George: It was
classified as Risley Act. It was
named after a fella from England. It
used to be classified as foot posturing in Vaudeville.
It consists of one person laying on their back, and having their legs
elevated and juggling a person around on their feet, doing acrobatic type moves
like somersaults and twisting spins. It
was about 5 minutes long. I did
that with both of my children, Pete and Scott.
We were classified as the best American Risley act in the business.
We did it during the summers. I
traveled with the Harlem Globetrotters as part of their halftime entertainment.
In 1955, I went with Pete and we did 26 countries, 63 cities, and 102
shows in 94 days throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
In 1960, Scott was 12 years old, and we didn’t get quite as many
countries, but we got some of the iron curtain countries like Rumania and
Poland. We also did club dates and
banquets. We drove to Milwaukee and
Chicago to do shows. I did a lot of
county fairs and state fairs in the summertime, including some in Canada.
Q. When is your next badminton tournament?
George: I
might go to the senior internationals in California in January.
The next would be the Senior Nationals in March.
If I have this other cataract removed I will be able to see a little
better.
Q. When were you born?
George: Born in 1919 on a farm in Minnesota. Our farm happened to be on fire at the time because of a real dry summertime. A spark arrester from a train was not working well and a lot of area farms caught on fire. This was peat bog country and it caught on fire. My Dad lost all his cattle during the fire. The funny part of it was, while my Dad was out fighting the fire, my mother is carrying me, and in the excitement, I decided to be born after 8 months instead of nine months. She didn’t have anybody around to help her and she took care of the birth all by herself. I was kind of skinny when I was born, but I plumped out pretty well later.
Shortly after that my Dad moved us to Appleton, then to
Milwaukee, where I went to grade school and high school.
At West Division High School I got interested in gymnastics.
I never heard of badminton until I got to the University.
I graduated from high school in 1937, and then went to the University in
1938.
Q. Thanks a lot for the interview. Good luck in your next tournament.