EXHIBIT 99.1

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ESCALADE INC. ACQUIRES MAJORITY INTEREST IN SCHLEICHER & CO. INTERNATIONAL AG

Evansville, Indiana, USA  / Markdorf, Germany (December 30, 2002).

Escalade, Inc. (NASDAQ: ESCA) and Schleicher & Co. International AG ( SLI )
announce that Martin Yale Industries, Inc. (Martin Yale), a wholly owned
subsidiary of Escalade Inc., has acquired an additional 760,500 shares of the
outstanding stock of Schleicher & Co. International AG (Schleicher). With this
acquisition Martin Yale increased its total ownership to 1,467,334 shares at an
average purchase price of 3.45 Euros ($3.60) per share. Martin Yale now owns
51.2% of the outstanding shares of Schleicher and has entered into agreements,
which are subject to further conditions, for the acquisition of additional
340,000 shares. Under German law, Martin Yale is now required to make a tender
offer for the remaining outstanding shares of Schleicher. Martin Yale will
initiate this tender offer immediately and expects to complete it by the end of
its first fiscal quarter in 2003.

Schleicher, headquartered in Markdorf, Germany, is a world leader in the
manufacture and distribution of data shredders with subsidiaries in Austria,
Czech Republic, China, England, France, India and the USA. The company is
registered on the Frankfurt and Stuttgart stock exchanges in Germany trading
under the symbol: SLI. Schleicher products are sold under the popular "intimus",
" Taros", "Papermonster", and "Olympia" trademarks and include small personal
shredders, a complete range of office shredders, high capacity industrial paper
shredders, and high security shredders used by governmental agencies around the
world. Schleicher also offers Automatic Paper Removal Systems for large office
Buildings under the name of VacuShred. For the year ended March 31, 2002,
Schleicher reported sales of 46.8 million Euros ($40.8 million) and a net loss
of 412 thousand Euros ($359 thousand). For more information on Schleicher visit:
www.schleicher.de

Martin Yale is a leading supplier of office products, business machines, and
graphic arts equipment sold under the "Martin Yale", "Premier", "Master", and
"Mead Hatcher" brand names. For more information on Martin Yale visit:
www.martinyale.com.

Escalade is a quality manufacturer and marketer of sporting goods and
office/graphic arts products sold worldwide by better resellers.

For more information on Escalade, Inc., please contact John R. Wilson, Vice
President and CFO at 812/467-1265 or C.W. (Bill) Reed, President and CEO at
260/563-0621.

For more Information on Schleicher please contact the Office of the President &
CEO, Dr. E. Leopold Dieck at +49 (0) 7544-60150

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