Back in the 1980s, Becky Smith would walk into the bar at the Miami Jai Alai Fronton, a glamorous, high-stakes gambling palace often referred to as the “Yankee Stadium of Jai Alai.” She wasn’t there to meet a player like many other girls; she wanted to talk about the Cesta, the Fronton, and the Pelota.
“I fell in love with the game,” she says. “I was hooked!”
Jai Alai, a sport played for centuries in the Basque country between Spain and France, once ruled the Miami betting scene after being introduced to the U.S. in 1904.
Frank Sinatra loved the sport. So did NFL Hall of Famers Ray Lewis and Lawrence Taylor.
Smith, now 59, was the first woman to become a professional in the Basque game that drew in high rollers to Miami for decades. However, the roads there were bizarre and unexpected. She started the game at 19, played for years, left to study dental hygiene, and then returned to the sport decades later, met only with success.
“Years prior, when I was playing, Becky and her sister were given a tryout,” Dennis Getsee, a friend of Smith’s who met her back in the ‘80s, described. “I was there and was watching. She had many of the tools it took to play with the most glaring exception [being] her stature.”
“She is a very petite woman, and it was very evident that she didn’t have the strength to reach the back wall on a 178-foot professional court. Catching, hand-eye coordination, and most importantly, her ‘postura’ or form when catching and throwing, that is generally the first impression, and you are judged from there. She had nearly all of the items that we’re [looking] for.”
Becky Smith had never been someone expected to become a jai alai professional, though. Born on the old Homestead Air Force Base, she grew up in Southwest Dade. She never played school sports, though she enjoyed softball with friends until she began playing amateur jai alai at the North Miami Amateur Jai Alai School.
Despite the excitement of being able to play at an amateur level, Smith was met with a lot of backlash, but not for her technique. Instead, what was put under a microscope was her gender.
“Back when I was 19 and I first started playing, a lot of the guys were resentful of me and my sisters going out onto the court,” said Smith. She wasn’t the only one who experienced sexism.
“I would say that most of the men at the time were not welcoming, and that was unfortunate,” Getsee explained solemnly. “There was a girl who was the daughter of one of the best male players of all time, Maryallena(sp) Orbea. She was as good as any man playing then or since; however, she never pursued the game because it was not traditional for Basque women to play professionally.”
Unfortunately for Smith, that traditional mindset continued, and she realized she needed to pursue something more dependable.
“By the time I was 23 or 24, I knew I was [not] going to be able to play jai alai professionally. There [were] just a lot of logistics that weren’t going to work,” says Smith. “And by then, I was like, I need to figure out what I am going to do for the rest of my life. I can’t keep doing this.”
But even that soul-crushing realization was not enough for her to leave her dream behind. What gave her that turning point, that final push to pursue another career, was the worst day of her life.
Smith’s sister, Heidi, died in a car crash when Smith was just 23. That’s when she knew it was time for change.
“That was probably the worst day of my life,” said Smith with a voice still thick with hurt from the memory. “After that, I think that was probably the trigger, and I realized I needed to go back to school and get a degree to be able to live my life.”
Soon after, she attended the Miami Dade College Dental Hygienist Program.
“I got more involved with my profession, I graduated, got married, I got a job full time, and I had a baby less than a year after I graduated,” Smith listed. “So jai alai just became a distant memory.”
That was until Getsee informed her that Calder, a casino in Miami Gardens, would be hosting tryouts for people to play jai alai professionally.
“While looking at the plans I noticed there was a Women’s locker room. I asked specifically if that was something that was expected and the casino manager said, ‘We are a publicly traded company, and if there is someone who can play at a high level, they definitely want to have them try out,’” Getsee reminisced. “Ultimately, I didn’t get the job because I wasn’t willing to give up my business for a $30K a year part-time job. But I spoke with Luis, the owner of the amateur jai-alai, and asked if there were any women who were playing that could do the job. He had a list of two or three, but he didn’t know Becky.”
Even as the years went by, jai-alai continued to affect the two after Getsee encouraged Smith to try and give her dream another shot.
“I mean I was 54 years old already and . . . my friend Dennis called and said Calder was closing down the horse track for jai alai . . . and he said I tried 30 years ago, I should try now. So I did,” reminisced Smith.
Despite not playing for 30 years, Smith kept those memories close to her, some of which still fit.
“In 2018, I put on my old cesta that was probably going to break the moment the ball went into it,” Smith remembers happily. “I put on my helmet I still had after all this time and went out there and threw the ball a little bit, and after all this time, it was like riding a bike.”
Just like before, the sport became an outlet of passion for her.
“My mom gives a lot of heart. She plays with her heart,” Arielle Thomas, Smith’s daughter, recalled fondly. “You know, she may not be the best out there, but she loves playing — like that’s been something that’s always been with her.”
Smith also kept parts of jai alai with her throughout her daily life as well, even during her hiatus.
“She always had a little cesta charm hanging off the review mirror of her car, and when I was little, she had her cesta and the helmet on the floor like almost like decor,” Thomas stated softly as she thought back on the memories.
Although jai alai is something that Thomas didn’t get to see her mom play much over the years, she would be around to experience her mother getting invited to play in the Mexican 2019 tournament.
“I was invited by the women in Mexico to go play in a tournament in 2019 . . . but all the women knew about me. The guys over there knew about me,’ said Smith. “They respected me and admired me and they looked up to me as a leader and a mentor, which was pretty cool.”
Her daughter Arielle also remembers the moment.
“She got invited to go play with some women that played professionally in Mexico and stay out at this lady’s house, and they were nice enough to host her,” shared Thomas.
What the mother-daughter pair didn’t expect was that Smith would return with a cast.
“She was playing, I think on that court, and she served the ball and she just heard like a snap and she had to have surgery to re-correct it. I guess…her tendon in her arm had snapped so they had to reattach her tendon and she had to be in, like, this bionic arm cast that had these things [that] could, like, let her bend and stuff and like it could be readjusted,” explains Thomas as she remembers her mother’s injury. “I called her RoboCop for a while while she had that on.”
This injury seemed to be the beginning of the end for Smith. Between the long commute to where she was playing recreationally—which was about an hour’s drive—and the injury, playing jai alai became less of a constant in Smiths’ life.
“It’s just a lot of on top of her work schedule,” explained Thomas when asked about her mother’s current playing habits. “…She has always said that ever since she had the surgery, obviously, her arm hasn’t been the same, so I think that was like the real nail in the coffin for as far as why she stopped playing recreationally.”
Although her love for the sport is evident, her injury seemed to cause that immovable block in the road for Smith. Luckily for her, a heart has many chambers.
Putting jai alai to the side, Dr. Smith continued to further her education, earning a doctorate in higher education administration among her other professional achievements.
However, it is no surprise that when asked about her possible return, Dr. Smith had this to say:
“I do miss the court, and I do miss playing,” she urged. “I am contemplating going back…”
