McInerney has been mentor, mother figure to players through four decades
A smile crosses Sheila McInerney’s face as she tells her visitor, “I probably shouldn’t say this.”
But she says it, anyway.
It was early in McInerney’s tenure as Arizona State University’s women’s tennis coach. She’s not sure of the year. Maybe the late 1980s.
The Sun Devils had traveled to Tucson and beaten the Arizona Wildcats in a dual match. McInerney, driving the team van back up I-10 toward the Valley, thought she should treat her players. She exited the interstate, stopped at a Circle K and bought them beer.
“I didn’t drink at all because I was driving,” McInerney says, her smile widening. “But that’s what people did back then. It was just different.”
McInerney is telling the story from inside a room at the Whiteman Tennis Center. She has spent the better part of 25 minutes laughing, crying, talking about Billie Jean King and cursive handwriting.
Her 66th birthday is on Feb. 22 and, this year, she’s celebrating her 40th coaching season at ASU.
Forty seasons.
At a job she thought would be a pit stop.
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