Missouri Valley / Missouri

Tennis Brings Friendships, Fond Memories for Donna Hoffmann

Josh Sellmeyer | March 02, 2023


As part of Women’s History Month taking place in March USTA Missouri is highlighting Donna Hoffmann, a league player who broke gender stereotypes by playing sports and teaching them prior to Title IX’s passage.

 

When Donna Hoffmann moved with her husband from Wisconsin to the small Missouri town of Versailles in 2009, the USTA Wisconsin team she played on for 20 years wanted her to continue competing with them. So Hoffmann drove 10 hours from central Missouri to central Wisconsin on two separate occasions each season to satisfy a two-match requirement for her team to progress to the next stage.

 

“They’d pick a couple matches for me to come up and I would stay with whichever player would take me in at the time — the captain or another good friend there,” Hoffmann said. “I’d stay, play my match, take my bike and go visit. Then I’d come home. A couple weeks later I’d go back up again. I couldn’t leave them high and dry. Those are friendships — tennis friendships.”

Though not quite as extreme an undertaking, Hoffmann, 73, has frequently made the trek from Versailles to Springfield (two hours away), Columbia (an hour and a half away) and Jefferson City (50 minutes away) to practice and play with USTA Missouri squads. She captained a team during the Covid-19 pandemic but never actually saw the players in person, as she stayed home for a 14-month stretch with her husband for health-related reasons.

 

Hoffmann got her start with USTA Missouri leagues when she met Ann Vogel, who invited her to compete on multiple Springfield teams including a 65+ one. Hoffmann stepped up to captain a pair of Columbia teams and launched a team comprised of six ladies from the Lake of the Ozarks area. 

 

With her husband, Del, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease years after surviving a life-threatening episode in 2014 where his aortic valve dissected then erupted, Hoffmann has transitioned to a caregiver role. She knows her time playing tennis may be on the downswing as a result, but she cherishes the days she can drive the many miles to compete.

 

“Del is still here, and I love him to death,” Hoffmann said. “He used to hate it when I’d go play tennis. Now he goes, ‘Go and have fun.’ He knows that’s my only outlet right now. And it’s a great outlet. For me to be able to play tennis is a real commitment. I try to be an ambassador for USTA as much as I can.”

 

Born and raised in San Francisco, Hoffmann developed an affinity for sports thanks to her father. He’d take her outside to toss around the football or baseball, and Hoffmann quickly became better at sports than the neighboring boys. This was all to the disapproval of Hoffmann’s mother, who Hoffmann recalled saying: “This is not what girls are supposed to do. They’re supposed to be ladies. They’re not supposed to be in sports.”

Despite her mother’s viewpoint and though there weren’t many sports offerings for young girls at the time, Hoffmann began competitively swimming at the age of 11. She fell in love with it and set numerous records in northern California. Hoffmann took her first physical education class in seventh grade. She swiftly decided she’d become a PE teacher to provide girls opportunities in sports she lacked growing up.

 

That desire only strengthened in high school when a progressive PE teacher taught Hoffmann how to play badminton and took her to compete in several tournaments. Hoffmann also dabbled in basketball even though there wasn’t an organized team and loved playing that sport, too. As she searched for the right college to attend, she came across the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and its top-ranked PE degree program.

 

At La Crosse, Hoffmann played field hockey, badminton, softball and started plus ended up coaching the swim team. As a junior, she went to nationals in swimming. And then she went to nationals in field hockey her senior season.

 

That year, her field hockey squad participated in a Midwest tournament where Hoffmann was picked to represent the region at a national tourney. Hoffmann stuck with the sport the next 13 years with the Milwaukee Field Hockey Association, earning the national-team nod every single season.

 

“I finally gave it up when I had children,” Hoffmann said with a laugh. “They put a little crimp in my style.”

 

Hoffmann was inducted into the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Wall of Fame in 1988, the first female student-athlete to earn enshrinement. After graduating from the college in 1971, Hoffmann landed a teaching job in Wisconsin’s Cedar Grove-Belgium district. She taught there 18 years and launched the swimming team and basketball program in addition to coaching track & field. Title IX’s passage in 1975 helped, but Hoffmann still had to fight on behalf of her female athletes.

 

“I was hauled into the principal’s office all the time,” she said. “The head football coach had no desire to think girls should have any space or be doing this. Same thing with the basketball coach. We had to practice in the commons. We played excellent defense, but we never got to shoot at a basket. They would never give us any gym time. Title IX was supposed to change that, but it was a tough process to go through that.

 

“Even mothers of girls who wanted to be athletes at that time didn’t want their daughter to be an athlete. And the girls were so craving it. I don’t think girls nowadays understand the challenges of what went on in the ‘60s and ‘70s to allow girls to have what they do now. Women are still fighting for a little of that equality. Fifty years later, we’re still at this.”

 

Hoffmann tried tennis recreationally but didn’t really take to the sport until 1989. Del’s hairdresser needed a player for her USTA team and knew about Hoffmann’s athleticism. Though Hoffmann was initially outclassed at the team’s first practice, she soon got the hang of things and helped the group advance to the state tournament that first year.

 

Hoffmann was hooked. She played on the hairdresser’s team for several years and improved from a 3.5 player to a 4.0. In 1998, the Hoffmanns moved from the Sheboygan area to a hunting property in Wausau, and Hoffmann thought her days as a tennis player might be over.

 

But she discovered a USTA league and proved her mettle with a skeptical team captain and co-captain. Hoffmann joined their team at the age of 50 and played with the group the next 20 years — even after moving to Missouri. The squad qualified for state each of those 20 seasons and advanced to sectionals on several occasions. Much like her time in Missouri, Hoffmann had to travel an hour and a half to practice and play with the team.

 

“Tennis was the glue that kept us together,” Hoffmann said. “It was just such a wonderful experience to be with these ladies. We went through divorces. We went through grandchildren. We went through everything together. Tennis was wonderful, but the lunch afterward was the best. The friendships you make and the people you meet make you such a better person.”

 

While Hoffmann hasn’t traveled to Wisconsin since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, she’s had her share of successes playing tennis within the USTA Missouri district. She and her doubles partner by chance received the golden ticket to compete in USTA Nationals at the 55 & Over division this April. Hoffmann is looking forward to that experience and continuing to play the sport when she can.

 

“I’m still driving, and everybody thinks I’m still nuts,” Hoffmann said. “When my husband’s aortic valve erupted, I knew only tennis people here and had two people’s numbers in my phone. One came to the hospital and sat with me during a nine-hour surgery. Del shouldn’t have survived, but he did.

 

“Two tennis players came to the hospital every day. They checked on me, brought me food. I went to the hospital with nothing. I didn’t even have money. It was the tennis team that was there for anything I needed. Those kind of stories — you never hear that part of what tennis can do for you. There is so much it adds to people’s lives you just don’t know.”

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