Foster overcame poverty and sexism to achieve tennis stardom

Foster overcame financial hardship and sexism to become San Antonio’s greatest homegrown women’s tennis player and a hard-working, trailblazing coach who built the Texas Techs women’s tennis program before guiding the women at her alma mater, Trinity University, to national prominence. In his 12 years coaching the Tigers, he produced a 259-94 record, two berths in the national finals, a national championship in doubles and a dozen All-Americans.

Sports changed my life tremendously,” he said, “and tennis was the catalyst.

Foster, 76, will be inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday as part of the Class of 2023. Many consider the honor long overdue after he was inducted into the Lubbock Christian University Hall of Fame in 1994 by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Womens Hall of Fame in 2000, Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, Trinity Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001, and San Antonio School District Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022.

It went backwards, he said with a laugh. But you don’t do what you do to win awards or accolades.”

Competing as Emilie Burre, Foster first gained attention in Texas when she won the 1965 Class 4A state girls singles championship as a senior at Jefferson. As a result, she was the first girl to be honored as the Texas Tennis Player of the Year and the first top athlete from Jefferson.

But it was also a stressful time for Foster. Just weeks before winning the state crown, his father had been diagnosed with cancer, which claimed his life on December 6, 1965.

Damon Burrer’s work as a carpenter was the family’s main source of income, so his death left the financially challenged family in even more dire straits, living in an 800-square-foot house on West Hermosa Drive with just two bedrooms and one bathroom.

“There were six people in the house,” Foster said. “My grandmother lived with us, and my mother and father were there. My older brother got the couch, my little sister slept in the room with my grandmother, and I slept on the floor until I was 15. When I got a bed, it was two pallets of shingles with plywood across them. But I thought it was lovely , because I wasn’t on the floor.”

Foster first enjoyed athletic success as a teenager, playing fast-pitch softball as the youngest member of a Pepsi-Cola-sponsored team that also included Alva Jo Fischer, who was posthumously inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.

Encouraged to play tennis by dominating a table tennis competition at a party for her softball team, Foster began playing the sport as a sophomore at Jefferson. He borrowed his first racquet from his coach before his mom used S&H Green Stamps to buy him one.

“I didn’t have a lot of discretionary income to spend on tennis lessons or tennis shoes,” he said.

Tired of patching up holes in his shoes with cardboard, Foster began “mowing yards and digging flower beds and painting garages” and shining shoes at a drugstore to get money to buy new shoes. Instead of taking tennis lessons, he spent hours at the San Pedro Tennis Center (now the McFarlin Tennis Center) watching others play.

After matriculating at Lubbock Christian on an athletic scholarship, Foster reached the semifinals of the National College Doubles before transferring to Trinity, where he became a national star by winning the USLTA singles and doubles championships in 1968 and 1969. He. teamed up with Trinity student Becky Vest in doubles.

Foster and Vest competed in the USLTA instead of the NCAA because the NCAA did not host women’s championships until the fall of 1981. When the USLTA added team competition in 1968, Foster and Vest won the first title without a coach or official membership. team.

They also had no courts to practice on because Trinity’s was reserved for the school’s NCAA Division I men’s team.

“We just had to win it,” Foster said. “I became a problem solver.”

To earn money to buy the books, Foster worked as a lifeguard as part of a grueling daily schedule that began when he woke up at 5:30 a.m., ended after midnight and included a round-trip bus ride from Hermosa Drive to Trinity with a downtown transfer. .

“I practiced tennis for 30 minutes at lunch on the racquetball court,” he said. “I would catch up with Becky on the weekends and play, but during the week I didn’t have time. It was a busy schedule.”

And she did it all at a time when women in sports were still queer.

“I remember running through the neighborhood to run for office and there were guys doing cat calls and saying, ‘What do you think you’re doing?'” he said. “I just ignored them.”

As a professional, after graduating from Trinity in 1969, Foster was ranked as high as fourth nationally in doubles and 13th in singles. He advanced to the singles quarterfinals and doubles semifinals of the 1969 US Open, which earned him a salary of just $1,500. He also represented the United States at the 1967 Pan American Games and played for the Houston EZ Riders of World Team Tennis in 1974.

Along the way, she befriended several legends of the game, including Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly Brinker, who became the first woman to win a Grand Slam in 1953.

“Billie Jean would sit and watch the games with me and (teach) from a strategic standpoint,” Foster said. “Arthur was another good friend. He talked to me about self-control and how to manage certain situations.”

While earning her master’s degree at Arizona State, Foster received a call from Texas Tech, who offered her an instructor’s position and the opportunity to develop the women’s tennis program. From 1970 to 1978, he built the Red Raiders Women’s Tennis Club into a varsity team despite starting with a budget of just $640 and several other challenges.

“I put ice and snow off the fields so they could play,” he said.

Foster left Texas Tech after controversy over scholarship awards.

“They didn’t want me to go, but I could see where it was going,” he said. “I told them I see what your priorities are and tennis isn’t one of them, so I’m out.”

Foster was offered the head coaching position at Trinity in 1978. Her husband, Rudy, transferred from his trucking company in Lubbock, and the couple moved to San Antonio.

Foster coached the Tigers to several top-10 finishes from 1979-1990, including a national runner-up finish in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 1981 and the 1983 NCAA Championships.

At Trinity, he pioneered the use of cameras and computers to aid player development. After working as a coach, he enjoyed a second career as a biomechanist, working with several professional sports teams and athletes.

“He was great at teaching the technical aspects of the game,” said former Tigers player Kathy Kuhne Vick, who followed Foster from Texas Tech to Trinity. “Most coaches back then weren’t into biomechanics, but he had a brain about how things worked biomechanically. He was ahead of his time.”

Foster’s All-Americans included Gretchen Rush and Louise Allen, who won the 1983 NCAA doubles championship. That same year, Foster was named NCAA Division I Coach of the Year by the Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches Association.

But those accomplishments didn’t mean as much to Foster as his players’ pound completion rates.

“It was school first and tennis second,” he said. “Tennis was the icing on the cake. And they played tennis as they studied. They were all in.”

Several of Foster’s students went on to enjoy successful careers, including Vick, who was the head women’s tennis coach at Texas Tech from 1989 to 1996, and Dabney Langhorne Friedrich, a 1988 graduate who is now a U.S. District Judge in Washington.

“The discipline we learned on the tennis court carried over to our scholars,” Vick said. “He had a huge impact on my life.”

The power of sport to change lives is a belief Foster holds dear after tennis took him from a difficult childhood to heights he never imagined, including working with PGA golfers Padraig Harrington and Brian Gay, the Spurs, the New York Mets and the Toronto Maple Leafs . , Argentina Davis Cup Team and Irelands World Rugby Team as a biomechanist.

“I never knew that while I was sleeping on the floor I would be invited to have tea with the Prime Minister of Ireland,” he said. “It was the sport that did it.”

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Twitter: Tom_Orsborn