Mark Rouleau (left) and his tennis partner Geoff McCreary (center left) meet their opponents Hannelore Schilling Zarse (center right) and Steve Rewa at the center of the court to shake hands after their game. The dedicated group has played winter tennis along with other area players for years. Credit: Kristyna Wentz-Graff

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This is what tennis weather in Milwaukee looks like.

Gray skies, light winds, 29 degrees.

Frostbit forehands. Blizzard backhands.

"We're the tennis polar bears," said Hannelore Schilling Zarse of Wauwatosa, a woman who by her own reckoning has braved at least 40 seasons of wintertime tennis in Wisconsin.

On Thursday, Schilling Zarse joined the winter gang down on a court near Riverside Park.

That's right, they were playing outdoors.

It wasn't exactly Wimbledon, but it sure looked pretty wonderful.

On a nearby hill, kids were snowboarding and sledding. A woman was jogging with her dog in tow; the dog was wearing a winter coat.

But close your eyes and you could hear a sound of summer, the thwack of a tennis racket meeting a tennis ball.

The players had scouted the court a day earlier. Came by with shovels and determination and cleared away a few inches of snow and left the court overnight to dry.

When they returned Thursday, it was nearly perfect, other than a little sweeping to clear some puddles and a little salt to melt some leftover ice.

The winter regulars include Steve Rewa, a retired Rockwell worker from New Berlin; Mark Rouleau, a retired cop from Milwaukee; and Geoff McCreary, a retired A.O. Smith precision machinist and inspector from Milwaukee.

Lester Poggenberg, a semiretired sales manager from Milwaukee, got there late and watched. In all, the wintertime gang is composed of a rotating cast of about a dozen players. When the weather isn't too awful, they manage to find a playable court through the winter.

"We're not hot when we play tennis in the summer, and we're not cold when we play tennis in the winter," Poggenberg said.

They live for tennis. It does keep them young.

During the summer, they're among the regulars on the courts at McKinley Park. Other than Rewa, the winter gang doesn't play indoors much.

They like the cold.

"I've got on five layers of clothes," said Schilling Zarse, a retired schoolteacher and librarian.

She wore mittens and earmuffs, too.

And every time she dashed into a small bank of snow to pick up an errant ball, she made sure to brush off the flakes from her tennis shoes.

But for this winter veteran, it was almost warm.

"We played when it was 4 degrees once," she said. "A police car stopped by and they got on the loudspeaker and said, 'You're crazy.' "

They've played on Christmas Day, New Year's Day and plenty of Super Bowl Sundays.

"We play just about any day when the weather permits," said Rewa. "We even play in blowing snow."

Playing in winter takes practice and patience. Over the years, they've discovered that Dunlop balls work best. When it gets closer to zero degrees, they bring out some unpressurized tennis balls.

"The bounce is lousier and the tennis balls are heavier," McCreary said.

Schilling Zarse pushed a backhand that clipped the top of the net and said with a smile, "In the summer that would have gone over."

Rewa enjoys the competition and craves the workout.

"I need exercise," he said. "And I hate to go jogging."

The players quickly worked up a sweat, playing doubles.

"It's not bad at all," said Rouleau, the ex-cop, who stuck out his tongue every time he served, looking like a rambunctious kid. "Just from running around, your hands are warm."

The sides were evenly matched, Rewa and Schilling Zarse, a mixed doubles tandem, winning in a tiebreak. Rewa claimed the last point, skipping a forehand return down the line.

The players shook hands. But the match wasn't over.

It was just a break on a cold winter day.

There was still daylight left.

Why give up the court on such a glorious winter day?