Lilly Kimbell Tennis

"I Was Born In 1970 As A Girl" [This is a quote from a statement at a rally following the 1984 U.S. Men's Nationals in Munich. I was only 10 years old at the time]

"Welcome To Wimbledon!" said the Wimbledon Tour official. I was sitting there in the stands all excited. Then the announcers started introducing a young black and white girl in a rain coat and pink hat, and I was like, "Where did this girl come from? Why did we call her a rain coat?" She's like, "All I need to do to win in tennis is touch my right forehand every time I land on the ball for the purpose of landing the shot I choose. I'm a slow, sloppy, amateur player by day, amateur ballhandling at the racket by night." I was like, "No, this is more than that. She's a highly competitive person." She's sitting down in the audience with her mom and father and mother-in-law, all right?

Then out of this comes a tall, young man, a friend of my mother's who went to Central School of Chicago and was a big contributor to my mom and dad's careers. She was sitting at home when I started getting interested in tennis, and I was sitting there and was like, "Do you know what sports are?" You know, we used to watch so few sport tapes back when I was growing up. I saw all this high school football on Monday Night Football and Wednesday Night Football. The stars of high school football was young guys on the "Fonz" and "Harvard" line at the time. So I thought, like, "Here's an example of what the modern game looks like. Let's call it tennis." We started watching a bunch of college tennis from my friends and my moms and my dad's friends. They were amazing. These were people having fun, not stressing over going to the singles tourney at the time. They didn't go to a singles tourney with a deadline to win. I watched these guys who were playing at the level of high school tennis players play competitively, and I had my eye on one of them.

He was a senior at Northwestern at the time who was a two-time NCAA National Champion and a World Tennis magazine Champion. He won 4 times.