Fitting the Bill
- Updated: December 4, 2020
City leaders rename Oxford Lake tennis complex in honor of local icon Bill Beck
By East Alabama Sports Today
OXFORD – The tennis courts at Oxford Lake will carry a new name going forward.
Community leaders on Thursday christened the complex the Bill Beck Tennis Center in honor of the city’s late tennis icon.
“I was the tennis coach from 1980 to 2006,” Oxford High School athletics director Larry Davidson said. “Bill, in the mid 80s, came to me and asking about helping out and it turned into a great friendship and he turned into a great mentor not only to me but the kids.”
Beck would regularly hold sessions of what he called “Saturday cartoon tennis” where groups of upwards of 80 juniors would come on the weekend to learn the game. Through a grant from the USTA he also spearheaded a six-week program in which he’d lend his services three days a week to the physical education classes of other schools in the area.
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