Company type | Subsidiary of Prince Sports |
---|---|
Industry | Sporting goods |
Founded | 1964 |
Headquarters | Bordentown Township, New Jersey, United States |
Key people | Franklin W. "Bud" Held, founder |
Products | Racquetball racquets, Apparel, Accessories, Racquetball Equipment, Eyeguards, Footwear |
Parent | Prince Americas, LLC |
Website |
Ektelon, Inc. was an American manufacturer of equipment for racquetball.
Originally based in Bordentown, New Jersey, Ektelon was founded by Franklin W. "Bud" Held in 1964 as the first company to manufacture racquetball racquets and stringing machines, [1] not long after the development of the sport of racquetball by Joe Sobek. [2] [3] Working from Held’s garage in San Diego, California, the company initially set out to build aluminum tennis racquets and a racquet stringing machine. [4] With the development of metal tennis racquets, the old techniques of stringing wooden racquets no longer worked, and Held saw the need for a new machine. Held is credited for one of the first patented designs for a racquet stringing machine. [5] He named the company Ektelon based on a combination of two Greek words: "ektein", meaning to stretch out, and "telon", representing the concept of perfection. [6]
In 1970, Ektelon produced the first experimental racquetball racquet [1] for Bud Muehleisen, a top racquetball player and early legend of the sport. The company moved into a larger facility in San Diego to begin manufacturing racquetball racquets on a larger scale. Over the years, Ektelon has introduced a number of new racquetball technologies, including the first racquetball racquet made of high-strength aluminum (1971), the first handlaid composite racquet (1978), the first oversized aluminum racquets (1984), and continues to develop new technologies in racquet design such as the elimination of string holes (O3). [1] In 1988, Prince Sports purchased Ektelon [7] and the brand remained prominent among racquetball equipment manufacturers for several decades thereafter.
As a subsidiary of Prince Sports, Ektelon changed ownership and management multiple times before disappearing among the holdings of Authentic Brands Group in 2012. As late as 2015, the Ektelon brand name was referenced as an ABG property, but all manufacturing had ceased, with existing inventory disposed and player programs discontinued by the following year. A Restrung Magazine annual re-cap in 2016 detailed The Quiet Death of Ektelon with added insights, and the company website later went dark.
In 2022, the Ektelon brand came out with a set of Pickleball paddles , although few details are available on the role of the Ektelon in manufacturing and development of these paddles.
Ektelon sponsors numerous tournaments and tours nationally and internationally, including: [8]
Previous World Top 100 IRT Professionals
Team Ektelon Players
Ladies Professional Racquetball Tour (LPRT) Players [10]
Outdoor Pros (WOR) Players
Junior Elite Players
Racquetball is a racquet sport and a team sport played with a hollow rubber ball on an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek invented the modern sport of racquetball in 1950, adding a stringed racquet to paddleball in order to increase velocity and control. Unlike most racquet sports, such as tennis and badminton, there is no net to hit the ball over, and, unlike squash, no tin to hit the ball above. Also, the court's walls, floor, and ceiling are legal playing surfaces, with the exception of court-specific designated hinders being out-of-bounds. Racquetball is played between various players on a team who try to bounce the ball with the racquet onto the ground so it hits the wall, so that an opposing team’s player cannot bounce it back to the wall.
A racket or racquet is a sporting equipment used to strike a ball or shuttlecock back-and-forth in games such as tennis, badminton, squash, racquetball and padel. The typical basic structure of a racket consists of a widened distal end known as the head, an elongated handle known as the grip, and a reinforced connection between the head and handle known as the throat or heart.
Prince Global Sports, LLC is an American sporting goods manufacturing company based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1970, Prince's range of products includes rackets, footwear, apparel, tennis balls, pickleball paddles, stringing machines, hats and bags.
In tennis, the strings are the part of a tennis racquet which make contact with the ball. The strings form a woven network inside the head of the racquet. Strings have been made with a variety of materials and possess varying properties that have been measured, such as dynamic stiffness, tension retention, thickness (gauge), string texture, and rebound efficiency.
Head Sport GmbH is an American-Austrian manufacturing company headquartered in Kennelbach. It owns the American tennis racket brand Head. Head GmbH is a group that includes several previously independent companies, including the original "Head Ski Company" ; Tyrolia, an Austrian ski-equipment manufacturer; and Mares, an Italian manufacturer of diving equipment.
Franklin Wesley "Bud" Held is an American athlete primarily notable for his performance throwing the javelin. He was born in Los Angeles, California.
Cliff Swain is a professional racquetball player and coach from Boston, Massachusetts. Known for his dominant drive serve and on-court intensity, Swain finished as the #1 player on the International Racquetball Tour (IRT) six times -- in 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, and 2002. He won US Open Championships in 1997 and 2001, and was inducted into the USA Racquetball Hall of Fame in 2003. A legendary figure in racquetball for over 3 decades, Swain still plays professionally and is quickly becoming a sought-after professional coach as well.
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Bud Muehleisen is a dentist in San Diego, California, and a racquetball and paddleball player. A left-handed player, "Dr. Bud" Muehleisen was the first person inducted into the Racquetball Hall of Fame, and is considered the best racquetball player and the best paddleball player of the 1960s era, and one of the best finesse players in the history of either game. The description of his career at the Racquetball Hall of Fame reads:
'Dr. Bud' Muehleisen has sometimes been called the most influential man in racquetball. He began playing paddleball in 1962, won four national titles, then took up paddle rackets in 1969, edging out Brumfield to win one of the first national championships in the sport that would become racquetball. Bud served on the IRA board of directors for seven years as the first Rules Committee chairman and was instrumental in the formation of the game's first rules. He won an unprecedented 41 national titles, was a coach and teacher, a regular contributor of instructional material to early magazines and worked with most of the major equipment manufacturers in developing racquets, balls and other products.
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