Sheila Johnson taught algebra for 30 years then spent recent years earning a national ranking in the USTA 60s division so it may sound surprising that the retired school teacher didn’t bother to do the math when faced with a simple numbers problem a grade-schooler could probably figure out: how many times has a 60-year-old woman more than four decades removed from her last college match come back to successfully compete with players 40 years younger?

Sometimes even the most experienced mathematicians don’t let logic stand in the way of their dreams.

The algebra teacher provided a lesson in history when Johnson became the nation’s oldest active collegiate tennis player earlier this month.  

The former high school tennis coach showed a blend of both old-school skills and a willingness to work new shots into her game when she played — and won — her first college tennis match in nearly 43 years. Playing for Division II Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona, Johnson made a revitalizing return to collegiate tennis opening this month with a  6-1, 6-3 victory over Jennifer Baughman, an opponent 42 years her junior, of The Master’s College at the Cal State Los Angeles Tournament.

The veteran player offered an apology along with the customary post-match hand shake.

“I felt kind of bad and told her I was sorry she had to play the old person on the team,” Johnson said. “I was kind of relieved to win the first match and now the pressure is pretty much off. I’ve played USTA tournaments for years now so playing college tennis it’s not too much different though you feel more pressure because you don’t want to let the other  players on your team down.”

GCU’s tennis program is the oldest women’s athletic program at the school, beginning in the late 1950s, so it’s fitting a team comprised primarily of players in their teens and early 20s boasts the oldest active player in the nation.

Born June 5, 1947, Johnson decided to go back to school this year after a 40-year absence. The Des Moines, Iowa native, who won three straight Iowa Prep School singles championships in the early 1960s, played on the women’s tennis team at Arizona State University from 1963-65 and had one year of eligibility remaining though she confesses she never expected to use it.

“I didn’t really start to think about going back to school until late last summer,” Johnson says. “College athletics were different when I first played.  Remember, that was before Title IX  and at ASU we weren’t even in the WAC back then. We came to school and practiced every day and just traveled to tournaments playing as individuals.  I think of us of being being the founding fathers, or founding mothers, of women’s college sports then.”

Boredom, a bond with her coach and a coincidental set of circumstances all came together in prompting Johnson to return to school. 

USPTA coach and former touring pro Greg Prudhomme, who was coaching Johnson privately as the head pro at the public Paseo Racquet Center in Glendale Arizona, accepted the head coaching position at Grand Canyon University shortly before school started. Like Johnson, Prudhomme also played collegiate tennis at ASU and was eager to resurrect a once strong program that had fallen on hard times in recent years.

“In the state of Arizona a lot of our good local players aren’t good enough to play for ASU or Arizona, but they’re still very, very good players so I jumped at the opportunity to coach at Grand Canyon because I felt I could fill a niche,” Prudhomme says.

While the coach was busy trying to recruit a brand-new roster in a short span of time, Johnson continued to call him for private lessons leaving Prudhomme procrastinating and dreading the moment when he’d finally have break off his coaching partnership with one of his favorite pupils.

“I felt badly because Sheila was always one of my most dedicated and passionate players and she worked so hard to get better,” Prudhomme says. “Fall rolls around and I wasn’t able to call her. Finally, I had to break what I thought was bad news to Sheila and tell her I’d taken this coaching job and would have to take a break from coaching her.”

Faced with break point, Johnson proposed a break through.

“I think she read the writing on wall that what I said would be a break might be indefinitely,” Prudhomme says. “Sheila was in the pro shop one day speaking to my parents and she said ‘Your son doesn’t have time to give me private lessons? I’ll show him: I’ll join his college team and then get lessons daily.’  I was visiting my parents up in Flagstaff and my dad told me the story of Sheila coming in to talk and said she was bummed that I wasn’t coaching her and that she would like to play on the team.”

The new coach called his long-time student and made an immediate offer.

“Sheila answered the phone and I said ‘Sheila, this is Greg Prudhomme and I’d like to offer you a scholarship,’ ” Prudhomme says.

Initially excited by the offer, Johnson began to have serious second thoughts.

Two weeks before she went back to school Johnson was busy engaging in a non-stop internal rally raging on in her head: by day she was committed to the idea of trying to play college tennis, but at night she found herself plagued by severe self-doubt.

“When I first decided I would try to do this it was two weeks before school started and I spent those two weeks going back and forth on what I should do,” Johnson recalls. “By day I thought I should try it and at night I thought ‘This is a horrible idea!’  I had nine years of retirement and to tell you the truth I was kind of getting into a rut. I would go home and sit on the couch and watch soap operas and I just needed a little kick start. My husband was very supportive and  said ‘You should do this.’ ”

Her son Jeremy’s initial reaction was slightly different.

 ”My son thought I was crazy,” Johnson remembers with a chuckle.

Jeremy soon realized his mother was both very sane and very serious.

“At first I thought it was a joke. I knew that she still had one year of college eligibility remaining but I did not think that she was actually serious about going back to school,” Jeremy recalls. “When we started talking more about the idea, I soon realized that she had done a lot of research into admissions and possible class schedules. At that time, I knew she was truly serious and I offered her my full support. I am extremely proud of her dedication and everything that she has accomplished in her tennis career.”

It’s a tennis career than began decades ago in Iowa when Johnson, then known by her maiden name of Sheila Pearl, tagged along with her older brother to the local public courts in Iowa, which was the wrestling capital of the country.

“I had a brother who was six years older; he was a wrestler and football player but we only lived about three blocks from the court and that’s when I learned to play when I was about 11,” Johnson says. “I played in college until I was about 20 years old and I really didn’t play again until I was 28. You can’t believe how much you lose in eight years and the reality is you’re never ever gonna get it back. I think maybe I’m 25 percent of where I was as a youngster and that’s so hard mentally to accept but the game is so much fun for me. I tried to come back to tennis at 28 and then I got pregnant at 30.  I only played once a week for about the 30 years I taught high school and that was social tennis with a group of other school teachers. It wasn’t until I hit 50 that I got active in a USA Tennis League and  really started to play competitively again.”

Johnson has long been willing to take on any challenge posed by younger opponents. Jeremy Johnson, who was a baseball player and golfer growing up, recalls seeing his mom take her entire math class out to the Glendale High School tennis court, where clad in her teaching clothes and a pair of sneakers, she would proceed to school any student — boy or girl, it made no difference — bold enough to challenge her.

“My best tennis memory came when she was teaching high school math at Glendale High School. Every few years she would have a student challenge her to a tennis match,” Jeremy remembers. “She always agreed and would bring the entire math class to the tennis courts located at the school. In complete professional work attire along with tennis shoes, she would dismantle her student in front of the entire class. As luck would have it, one of the students who challenged her to a match some 10 plus years ago was the best man in my wedding last May.

“I am not surprised by her success in the slightest. She has a great game and is as physically tough as anyone I know. She has played tennis at least once per day for the past 10 years. She is conditioned, consistent, experienced, and mentally tough. I believe that she has a good chance to beat anyone at any time.”

Eager to resurrect a program that had skidded to a stall with a series of setbacks the year before he became head coach, Prudhomme said when he considered Johnson’s character and commitment to the game the generation gap between her and her teammates, which on the surface may have seemed as large as the Grand Canyon itself, dwindled to the size of a doubles alley.

“Sheila is very passionate about the game, she loves tennis and is constantly working to get better,” Prudhomme says. “Isn’t that exactly the type of player a coach dreams of working with? Maybe some coaches would look at her age or the chemistry on the team as deal breakers, but not in her case. If you know Sheila like I do then I knew once the players took one look at her game and how hard she works on the court, the fact that she is number three in the nation in her age group and is a very accomplished competitive player, I believed they would welcome her.”

Of course, necessity also helped seal the deal from the coach’s perspective.

“I took the job on July 31st so I really had only about a month to recruit a full team and to be quite honest with you some of the players from last year weren’t returning and some of them weren’t at the level I needed to turn the program around,” Prudhomme said. “Sheila is ranked nationally. So more than anything, I knew Sheila could help our team.” 

 That’s because Prudhomme had not only coached Johnson before, he had first-hand experience coaching players who held significant seniority over him.

“I started coaching college tennis when I was 24 and I am 37 now,” said Prudhomme, who took over a winless Glendale Community College team more than a decade ago and transformed it into a nationally-ranked squad. “In my last year coaching junior college in Glendale I had three mothers on my team — two were mothers of three children and one was a mother of two children — two of them were in their 30s and one was 47 and they were three of the toughest players on our team. So I’ve been accustomed to being a younger coach working with older players and I certainly respect my elders. By now, I’ve gotten used to how to talk and coach older players and now that I’ve gotten some gray hairs in my sideburns, and of course Sheila was the first one to point that out, I’m probably looking a little more mature too.”

Just as a 35-year-old Andre Agassi adjusted in his final years on the ATP Tour, Johnson has learned to make adjustments against younger, faster players who are hitting shots with more spin and pace.

“The younger girls are very quick so the speed of the players and how hard they hit the ball now are the biggest differences from the days when I played in college,” Johnson says. “I like to drop shot, but the young girls can get to it and they also hit the ball extremely hard. When I grew up, we didn’t hit with top spin so my ball is fairly flat and now the girls all hit with topspin. I’m not a petite person so staying out there running down the balls can be tough. I think that I try to take the ball early and that’s getting me into trouble because when I try to catch the ball early on the top spin sends it up near the shoulder and that’s probably the weakest part of my body. I like to stay on the baseline, but against the young girls I find myself five feet behind the baseline so that’s the toughest thing for me. But it’s also helped me learn; I am trying to come into net more and I’ve been working on my swing volleys too.”

Johnson believes she retired years ago, but talk to her coach and teammates and they’ll tell you she’s still teaching every day.

“I’ve been around tennis as a player and a coach my entire life and I think Sheila’s story is nothing short of inspirational,” Prudhomme says. “It reminds us all that tennis is really a sport for a lifetime — that’s not just a saying she is living proof it’s the truth. You’re not going to see too many 60-year-olds playing college basketball, football or soccer, but Sheila is doing it in tennis. I think the thing she has taught our players is it’s never too late to go for your dreams and get out of your comfort zone. I know she went round and round in her head thinking one day ‘I want to do this’ and the next day ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this.’ And to be honest she knew some people might be pointing at her saying ‘Has this lady fallen off her rocker?’ So to see someone like Sheila show the guts to take that leap of faith and really get out of her comfort zone is very commendable in tennis and in life and that’s a very good lesson for all of us to live by.”