Editor's note: This is the fourth of a series on this year’s Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame inductees. The stories will run each Sunday leading up the induction banquet Monday, Aug. 10 at the Abilene Convention Center.
Fred L. Scott taught himself how to play tennis, playing on a makeshift court with his friends growing up in Kentucky. He never pushed the sport on his son, Fred W. Scott, letting the boy fall in love with the game on his own.
And that’s exactly how it happened, while the elder Scott was coaching in Clifton, Arizona. His son was in the seventh grade at the time, and the dad, well, he did provide a nudge.
“I didn’t even know he coached tennis,” the younger Scott said. “I thought he was the basketball coach. He told me to pack up one day. He was taking me to the state tennis tournament to watch tennis.”
The Clifton boys won titles in singles and doubles at the state tournament in Phoenix, that spring season. That’s all it took for the younger Scott to get hooked.
“On the way home, I said, ‘I’d kind of like to try this game,’” the younger Scott said. “That’s all it took. We didn’t even go all the way home. We went straight to get me a tennis racket. He bought me a new racket, and I started playing, and I started playing for him.”
The rest is history. The two Scotts etched their names in the history books. The elder Scott even had a hand in creating high school team tennis in Texas, while his son made his mark as both a player and coach. They’ll be inducted into the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame together on Aug. 10 as co-recipients of the hall’s Legacy Award at the Abilene Convention Center, though Scott’s dad won’t be there. He died January 1997, at age 69.
It will still be a special moment for the Scott family.
“It’s just an awesome honor,” the younger Scott said. “I’m just really excited that dad and I will both be inducted, especially the fact that I’m going to be inducted with my father. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I wish he was going to be here, but my mother’s really going to enjoy it.”
Hoops to tennis
The elder Scott grew up in Garrett, Kentucky, which is in the mountainous, southeast corner of the state, near the Virginia and West Virginia border, about 132 miles east of Lexington, Kentucky.
“They played a lot of tennis there in Garrett, just because there wasn’t much to do,” his son said. “They made a tennis court in the church parking lot. They got them a net, and they all learned how to play. It was a group of them.”
Basketball, though, was the elder Scott’s favorite sport. He even made a name for himself while in the military, when he was stationed in Japan during the U.S. occupation of the country toward the end of World War II. His unit put together a basketball team that beat the defending all-South Pacific champions.
After the service, Scott went to college at Kentucky Wesleyan, in Owensboro – about 37 miles southeast of Evansville, Indiana. He met his future wife, Marjorie, at Kentucky Wesleyan, but had less success as a basketball player there.
“He didn’t make the basketball team,” his son said. “He thought he should have.”
It might have worked out for the better. The head basketball coach at Kentucky Wesleyan also was the school’s tennis coach, and he didn’t have time to coach both.
“So, he made my dad a player/coach,” Scott said. “My dad coached the tennis team at Kentucky Wesleyan, and that was the start of his career in tennis.”
After college, the elder Scott coached basketball in Kentucky for two years, then moved to Texas, taking a job in tiny Hart – between Plainview and Dimmitt. He was the head girls basketball coach at Hart, as well as an assistant in football.
“He thought he would come to Texas and teach these Texans how to coach basketball, and they taught him how to coach football,” Scott said.
Why Texas, you ask? His wife’s two sisters both married servicemen from Texas. One of the sisters, who lived in Kress, near Plainview, talked the Scotts into moving to Texas.
After a few years at Hart, the elder Scott moved on to Nazareth, where he coached both boys and girls basketball. The school also began playing six-man football while Scott was there – and he was roped into coaching the team.
“The first six-man football game he ever saw, he coached,” Scott said.
The elder Scott also coached baseball and tennis in the spring. It’s there at Nazareth that Scott produced his first of many state champions in tennis. Scott later coached at Stinnett, before leaving Texas for Arizona.
Scott didn’t stay away from Texas long. He moved the family to Sweetwater in 1968, when his son was a freshman. It was there in Sweetwater that Scott finally put down his roots and stayed – coaching the Mustangs for 25 years.
“He had built a pretty good program by the time I was a junior and senior,” Scott said. “Sweetwater had a good program. It was kind of funny. When they hired him, they hired him just as a tennis coach. He was one of the first in Texas to coach just tennis all day long. He didn’t teach anything else, either. He just coached tennis six periods a day.”
Winning for dad
The younger Scott played a role in his dad’s success – reaching the state final in boys doubles with future Sweetwater mayor Rick Rhodes his junior year, before winning a state title with Mike Boles as a senior in 1972.
Scott loved playing for his dad, too.
“He taught me. He was my coach,” Scott said. “I didn’t have a private instructor or pro. He and I played all the time. He didn’t actually coach me in basketball, but I played high school basketball. The reason he didn’t want to coach me in basketball in high school was, he didn’t think it was a very good idea for him to coach me in a team sport. But in an individual sport, it was a different situation. He thought it would be all right.”
The younger Scott also honed his game in Abilene, playing athletes from Abilene High, Cooper and Wylie whenever he got a chance.
“My father had me over in Abilene playing as many days a week as he could,” Scott said. “There were a lot of good players over there.”
Lasting legacy
The younger Scott profited quite a bit from his dad – as did the game itself in Texas. He would win a state team title as a coach at Abilene High in 1999, beating Austin Westlake 10-8, and it was his dad who helped get team tennis added as a sport in 1982.
“When he first came to Texas, they just had single representation,” Scott said. “You had to win the district to go to regional, and you had to win regional to go to state. So, dad started driving to Austin. He and (Abilene High coach) Steve Buck would drive to Austin all the time and lobby for double representation in the individual events. They managed to get that done.”
As soon as that was over, Scott and some other coaches started working on team tennis
“You only get two kids out of district,” the younger Scott said. “What about the rest of the team? So, they came up with the idea of team tennis. They realized they had to form a coaches association, and they did that.”
That association was the Texas Tennis Coaches Association, which was formed in 1963 – originally named the Texas High School Tennis Coaches Association.
“The UIL said, ‘Why don’t y’all put it together and run it,’” Scott said. “‘If it works, we’ll look at adding it. That’s what they did. For several years, the Texas Tennis Coaches Association actually ran team tennis.”
The organization, officially recognized by the UIL in 1969, started offering a team tennis playoff structure for Class 4A and 5A in the fall of 1976 and Class 3A in the spring of 1977.
The UIL crowned its first team tennis champions in 1982 – Dallas Highland Park in Class 5A and San Antonio Alamo Heights in 4A.
The UIL added a third class in 2014, after it was offered as a club sport by the TTCA before then. Wylie won that first title in what is now Class 4A after the creation of 6A that same year.
“That’s one of the things my dad was most proud of, being a part of getting double representation to start with, some more kids involved, and then team tennis to get even more kids involved,” Scott said.
Young Scott’s legacy
The younger Scott went on to play tennis at Eastern Kentucky for a year, before transferring to Amarillo College – a junior college – for one season. He played his last two seasons at Hardin-Simmons. Scott followed in his father’s footstep after college – getting his first coaching job at Mason High School (1977-79), followed by a stop at New Braunfels (1979-82).
He returned home to work for his dad as an assistant at Sweetwater in 1982 and took over the Mustangs’ program after his father retired in 1984.
Scott said he loved working for his father.
“It was great and a lot of fun,” Scott said. “We had so much in common. I knew exactly what he wanted, because he coached me in junior high and high school. So, when I went back to Sweetwater and worked with him, we got along great.”
Scott left Sweetwater to take over the North Texas tennis program in 1988.
“I really liked it,” Scott said of his first college job. “It didn’t pay much, but it kept me pretty busy, because I had the men and women.”
He led the North Texas women’s tennis team to a Southland Conference title in 1990 and the men to the conference title a year later. It’s the only conference titles for either team, and Scott was the Southland Conference’s Women’s Coach of the Year in 1990 and 1991, while also earning the conference’s Men’s Coach of the Year honors in 1991.
“The thing I’m most proud of with that, the boys were an all-Texas high school team,” Scott said. “I didn’t have an international player at all. They were all Texas boys. I don’t think that’s been done since or very many times before then, either.”
Scott returned to the high school coaching ranks, taking over the Plainview tennis program.
He finally ended up at Abilene High in the fall of 1997, thanks to a little coaching by AHS football coach Steve Warren.
“I kind of had the opportunity to come back when I went to Plainview, but Plainview paid more money,” Scott said. “So, I went to Plainview. But after four years at Plainview, Coach Warren talked me into taking the job at Abilene High, and I’m sure glad he did. He was really good to me, and so was Abilene.”
The AHS program was a great fit for Scott, who compiled a 247-47 record in team tennis with the Eagles – winning 10 district titles and a state title in 1999. AHS also qualified for 14 region tournaments in the fall, while Scott coached more than 40 region qualifiers and 18 state qualifiers in the spring individual season.
“I inherited a good program,” Scott said. “Abilene High, they had a state championship before (in 1991). Cooper had several, and Wylie had several. I knew I was coming into a good program. I can’t take credit for what was already built here. I just tried to hang on and continue with the program.”
Scott enjoyed a lot of great memories coaching the Eagles, before retiring as a coach in 2015.
“We had good teams every year,” Scott said. “I had great kids. I had the cream of the crop playing for me. It was a lot of fun. We won a lot. I sure enjoyed winning.”
Scott, 66, and his wife, Judy, have three children – a son, Freddie, along with two daughters, Kama Erbey, and Kara Bello. The two daughters, who are married and live in Mansfield, both played tennis for Scott at Abilene High, with Kama graduating in 2002 and Kara in 2007. Freddie, who didn’t play tennis, also graduated from AHS in 2002.
Scott is the concession supervisor for Abilene ISD and runs the concessions at Shotwell Stadium. He was inducted into the TTCA Hall of Fame in 2014, joining his dad, who was inducted in 1986.
Now, they’ll join the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame together.
“That is really neat, and we’re both from the Big Country,” Scott said. “Most of my life has been spent here. Both of my daughters played tennis for me at Abilene High. So, there’s several generations of Scott who played at either Sweetwater or Abilene.”
And it all began on that makeshift tennis court in the mountains of Kentucky.
The HOF series
June 8: C.H. Underwood, football/basketball coach
June 14: Ahmad Brooks, football player
June 21: Milton Martin, Legends Award
Today: Fred L. Scott and son Fred Scott, Legacy Award
July 5: Ron Butler, basketball/softball coach
July 12: Boone Magness, Legends Award
July 19: Jerry Don Logan, football player
July 26: David Bourland, football player
Aug. 2: Mike Cochran, Media Award
Aug. 9: Lari Dee Guy, rodeo
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