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Women’s league celebrating its 45th anniversary

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette From left, Cathy Specht, Karen Hooker, Ruth Taddeo-Hunter and Mary Engel pose together for a photo at the Central PA Tennis Center. They’re members of the Williamsport Women’s Tennis League, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year.

Sitting near a small table on the second floor of the Central PA Tennis Center in South Williamsport, Cathy Specht and Mary Engel found themselves laughing at memories of the Williamsport Women’s Tennis League as president Karen Hooker sat nearby.

Engel joked about how back when it formed, she could still play singles competition before her knee surgeries.

Specht laughed when thinking about sign-ups for the Williamsport Women’s Tennis League in the early years when there were nearly 300 women who showed up at Curtin Middle School and ended up forming a line that went down the hallway out to the street.

For about 40 minutes at the Central PA Tennis Center, those memories came flooding back for Engel and Specht as quickly as a serve over the net.

The two have been around the Williamsport Women’s Tennis League since its inception in 1974 and this year, the league is celebrating its 45th anniversary.

Like any league, it formed due to a necessity with women tennis players in the area having no one to play against. Specht remembers vividly those early origins of the league with another tennis player named Suni Finkelstein.

“She said ‘do you think there’s interest to start a tennis league?’ I said ‘well you need to gather five gals’ because when I came to Williamsport, the women didn’t play. So I said ‘five gals, we’ll meet on the courts and we’ll discus this,'” Specht said.

That day, Specht and two others met and discussed the idea of the league, forming it as an instructional league for women’s tennis.

It started with 44 members that inaugural year in 1974 and at its peak, had over 300 members. It was a huge increase thanks in large part to word of mouth early on.

“I remember meeting at Curtin Middle School and had a meeting, and the line of interested ladies went down the hall, down the steps, out the door to the street,” Specht said with a laugh. “The lady said ‘there’s like 300 people here’ and I said ‘I don’t know, but the city rec set a limit at 300, but we’re going to surpass that.'”

Specht is in charge of coaching sessions with the league and has quite an impressive tennis resume to go with it.

She played when she was a kid and eventually ended up playing in various tournaments as she got older. She was a ranked player in the midwest in 1970, having a ranking as high as sixth — one Specht joked she still doesn’t know if she actually deserved — and taught at Cornell. After moving to Williamsport with her husband, she went to play tennis one day and realized there was no one to pick up a match with.

“That’s kind of how we got started. I think we had a marketable item: this instructional tennis league for communities,” Specht said.

For Engel, the biggest benefit of joining the league back then was it helped ensure you got out to play a tennis match.

“If you’re given a set of matches, you make sure you get out,” Engel said. “Otherwise you say to friends ‘oh we should play’ and we never do. But I think it gets people playing.

“As you get older, you got to keep moving and tennis is more fun than anything else. It’s more fun than going to the gym.”

The Williamsport Women’s Tennis League uses Penn College’s courts for its home for coaching sessions, but Hooker mentioned the members can play on any courts they wish to once league play begins.

In the early years, the league’s toughest problem was securing courts to play on.

“The early coaching sessions when there was an open court, it’d be like ‘go get it gals, go get it!’ We didn’t really have a court site we could work on,” Specht recalled.

After that first year, a group of five members of the league met with city council to secure courts and ended up being supported through the city rec for many years, including using Brandon Park’s courts and Memorial’s for a handful of years. For the past eight, they have used Penn College’s.

The league currently has about 100 members, an increase from the high 80s in the past few years. Members of the league not only get matches they get to play, but seven weeks of coaching sessions included with Specht.

The coaching sessions begin in mid-May and the league itself runs until the end of August, when the regular matches have to be completed before the playoffs begin.

Hooker is the league president, a role she’s held for three years. Since joining the league and becoming its president, she’s had a vision to continue to grow and keep the league strong. Although Hooker is the first to admit that taking the role on was more than intimidating to begin with.

“It was intimidating at first because so many vibrant people came before me. I want to do a good job. I want to grow this league and keep the enthusiasm like they did,” Hooker said. “So for me it was a little intimidating at first because I just wanted to do a good job, and now it’s not on cruise control, but I’m constantly looking for ways to make it better.”

Hooker’s also an assistant coach for the Williamsport tennis program. To say Hooker loves tennis is an understatement. It’s a sport she enjoys being around, whether she’s playing in the morning or is helping coach kids for the Millionaires.

“At times I’m juggling a lot of balls. I love tennis, so it doesn’t feel like work,” Hooker said.

“She has a heart for tennis, like biggest one locally, and the passions she has for the sport? It’s infectious,” Specht said.

Hooker started playing in 2010 and joined the league that fall and has been playing tennis ever since.

“It’s for everybody. Not everybody’s a champion, or not everybody is terrific at it and a rising star,” Engel said. “It’s for people like me too who just play because it’s fun and I’ll never be the high advanced champion.”

“I think we’re all at that level where we just enjoy it,” Specht quickly added after Engel commented.

Hooker can vividly recall when she first started playing at the Central PA Tennis Center in 2010, playing on the very last court every Thursday morning. It was there that she’d look down the courts to her right and think “I want to play like them.”

“I haven’t stopped (trying to improve),” Hooker said. “I’m still taking lessons.”

And while Specht and Engel have been playing tennis since the 1970s and Hooker has been playing since 2010, there’s plenty of new members who have just picked up the sport, and that’s something Hooker enjoys seeing within the league.

“You see their enthusiasm and they’re here at coaching sessions. You can see the ones who embrace it right away,” Hooker said. “And you can see some are struggling, but they don’t give up. They come and they work hard and work on their strengths and may not be where they want to be, but it’s exciting to see them pick up.”

Specht noted the difference in women’s schedules in the past few decades have changed and why the sport of tennis has somewhat declined in terms of participation.

“I think the family is so busy with this and that, taking the kids to different events, that finding the time (is tough). I think that’s in part a reason as to why the sport’s declined,” Specht said. “The average match takes an hour and a half. Matches have changed over the years. We used to have 12 singles matches (a year). We’ve come down now, we’re six and six: six singles, six doubles.”

“I think that is a reflection of how people’s schedules have changed. It’s hard enough to get six doubles matches in or six singles matches in in a summer because of everybody’s schedule with traveling and working,” Hooker quickly added.

“When I was a kid, my neighbors who played tennis, they had a lot more time because their kids weren’t as involved as kids are now.”

Sitting near that table on the second floor, Hooker repositioned herself in her chair and looked at Specht and once again asked her about how she helped form the league. It was almost as if Hooker was reiterating it all just to once again hear and be impressed by what Specht and Engel helped develop.

“You were looking for a game in the Williamsport area, couldn’t find one, started reaching out to other players and made this happen?” Hooker asked Specht.

Specht simply nodded.

“To see where we’ve come and see how many ladies have picked up that passion of the game, it’s really rewarding to see,” she said.

Having a league for 45 years is definitely rewarding and likely Specht, Engel and Hooker hope the league lasts for years to come.

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