On the Court With Carol Cofer
The nationally ranked, Austin-based, 86-year-old tennis player dishes on her four-decades-long career, the importance of maintaining a competitive spirit and why age is not a deal breaker.
The tennis ball stays low as it whips over the net and skids across the cement court. A whack sounds out as the neon-yellow orb takes flight once again, its intended trajectory interrupted by the racquet of nationally ranked tennis champion Carol Cofer.
The match continues, racquets swinging powerfully, despite the sticky humidity endemic to Texas summers.
This sight is no oddity to members of the Westwood Country Club in Austin, where Cofer is a regular. Three times a week, she can be found on one of the club’s 18 courts playing matches, facing off with a ball machine for practice or with her coach Julie Cass, a world-champion winner in the three age divisions.
Excelling on the court is no elusive mystery for Cofer, who, at 86 years old, has been playing tennis for 45 years and competing for almost four decades. The senior citizen, ranked fourth place in the United States Tennis Association’s 85-plus age division, competes in four national tournaments each year, as well as in an intersectional tournament as part of the five-member Texas 80s team.
“I’ve always wanted to be really good at one sport,” Cofer says. “And all the work I do is moving towards that. It’s my goal to be as good as I can be.”
She may have found her sport now, but backtrack nearly half a century ago and Cofer never would have hedged her bets on tennis.
***
It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon in 1971, and Carol Cofer is reclining peacefully on a courtside chaise in Dallas. She drove into town to visit a friend who had recently taken up tennis. As the players warmed up for their doubles match, Cofer settled in for a short nap.
At the time, she was working in the Capitol building in Austin. It would be six years until her husband would run for and win the position of district judge, after which she would retire and begin her journey to become a nationally ranked tennis player.
But as she lay resting in the shade, tennis was the furthest thing from her mind until, to her dismay, Cofer was summoned by a racquet swat to the feet to join the match in the place of one of the players who dropped out at the last moment.
“I had never played. I went out there doubting I would hit any balls at all,” Cofer says. “They had to tell me which side of the court to stand on after each point. They had to teach me how to keep score. But I went home that day and I told my husband, ‘I found a sport for the two of us to play.’ ”
She and her husband started with lessons first, “the only way start,” according to Cofer. They practiced together after work. When Cofer retired, she devoted more time to tennis and quickly left her husband in the dust. A year or two after retiring, she entered her first national tennis tournament in Houston.
“I had to play my first round against the No. 1 player in the United States, and of course, I lost 0-0, but when you lose 0-0, you don’t know how bad you really are,” Cofer says. “I have always been good at sports. I just played so poorly [that first match], but I knew I could do better. That was the moment I decided to really work on it.”
The progression from recreational tennis to competing in tournaments was a natural one for Cofer. An avid swimmer and softball player in high school, she has been athletic and driven her entire life. Her younger years, however, offered fewer opportunities for competition.
“In those days, we didn’t have sports between girls with other schools,” Cofer says. “So, everything we played was with other teams in other grades.”
The team Cofer competes with now, the Texas 80s team, has won in its age division for the last four years, beating the prestigious Florida section each time. On a personal level, Cofer has yet to be a finalist in a national tournament, but she doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.
Her training regimen includes practicing on the court three times a week, lifting weights, biking and stair climbing—an intense routine made even more impressive given her past surgeries for a knee replacement, a shoulder replacement and a spinal fusion. While the surgeries haven’t slowed her down, Cofer has to deal with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a labor-intensive breathing condition that has led her coach to adjust her game so she plays more aggressively, shortening the rallies during matches.
“As I’ve gotten older and my wind has gotten shorter, [my coach] changed my forehand to an underspin,” Cofer says. “With the underspin backhand and an underspin forehand, the ball hits on the other side and stays very low. It spins and it skids, and the women I play are not as fast as they used to be, and these shots give them less time to get to the ball.”
Cofer is constantly implementing new techniques to help adjust and improve her game. During the national tournament in Houston this March, Cofer moved her national singles ranking up to No. 3 in the U.S.
“At this age, you just hope you get to play the next tournament, but I’m always striving to get better. I’m still looking to win. I have the skills to do it and I am going to get there,” Cofer says of winning a national tournament.
She attributes her competitive spirit as her key to the fountain of youth. But sports are not the only way to stay young, she adds. In her quest to prove age is nothing but a number, Cofer emphasizes the importance of being involved in her community, of keeping people and activities in her life that inspire passion. As a resident at Querencia at Barton Creek, Cofer regularly participates in book club, music-education courses and tap-dancing classes.
“Time just flies by. It seems like Sunday comes around so often, I don’t even know what’s happening,” Cofer says.
Carol Cofer’s Top Three Tips for the Burgeoning Tennis Player
- “Set up standing matches so you are ready to just go out there and play.”
- “Don’t be afraid to mess up your hair and get sweaty. Discomfort is to be expected.”
3. “Don’t worry about losing. The best lessons come from defeat.”
Photos courtesy of Querencia at Barton Creek.
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