Women's History Month Feature: Celebrating NorCal Tennis Professional Lisa Berg 

Lisa Berg herself is surprised by the number. 

34 years ago, she moved to California from Maui, a year and a half later a job opened up at Rafael Racquet Club in San Rafael, and Berg, now the Director of Tennis, has been there ever since. 

“I’m 64 so I’ve been there half my life,” she says with a laugh. 

Berg has been coaching in some capacity since she was a student-athlete at Oklahoma State. She began playing tennis at age seven, moving up through the junior ranks before attending OSU in her hometown of Tulsa, Ok. 

She taught at clubs in the summers and after graduating, got her first coaching job at Oral Roberts University, also in Tulsa. Berg continued to coach at clubs during her two years at Oral Roberts before moving to Hilo, Hawaii, where her mother and stepfather moved when she was in high school. 

“He was my mentor in terms of really learning how to coach,” she said of her stepfather. “He was an amazing person and basically was my mentor in everything.” 

“It’s all kind of a moving target right now in terms of how everything is going to play out but in a nutshell, everyone’s excited to get back to playing,” she said. “We’ve ended up attracting kids into the program who haven’t really played tennis before because they were busy doing other things.”

The variety and all of those changes of scenery are part of what has kept her engaged this long. 

“I’ve worked at parks, I’ve worked at hotels, I’ve worked at clubs, I’ve worked at country clubs; I like having the variety,” she says. “I’ve worked with four and five year olds, I’ve worked with nationally ranked kids, and I’ve worked with country club people; it’s fun to have a mix like that.”

In a sport that has historically been dominated by male coaches though, Berg was never deterred, let alone stopped to consider her gender being a factor at any of her stops. 

Instead, Berg points more towards the life challenges thrown at her that tennis prepared her for.

“I never really thought about that,” she says now. “I just did it.”

Coaching itself was one of those challenges. In fact, it was never part of the plan. Berg recalls substitute teaching in Hilo when she first moved there, before she got back on the court. She had her degree in education, but it was a challenge to confront something that wasn’t part of her plan.  

“When I was going to school, concentrating on my grades and playing on the team, I didn’t know that I was going to be a coach for the rest of my life,” she explains. “I faced challenges because if you think about it, you always are being challenged.”

Her love of coaching has only grown over the years though. She’s even seen two children off to successful collegiate and post-collegiate careers. And with year 32 in Northern California on the horizon, Berg’s love of her job that began all those years ago during the summers in Tulsa hasn’t waned. 

“I love developing relationships with the kids,” Berg says. “It’s fun for me to then 20 years later go ‘oh look what they’re doing now.”