USTA Georgia Past President & Georgia Tennis Hall of Famer (Class of 2018) Julie Wrege was recently featured on USTA.com:
Julie Wrege’s influence in tennis–including founding one of the most important websites in junior tennis, TennisRecruiting.net–goes back to 1961.
The history of the Georgia Institute of Technology can’t be told without mentioning Wrege. As a student, player and coach, Wrege blazed trails for generations of women to follow.
Wrege arrived at Georgia Tech in 1961 as an accomplished junior tennis champion. Like many in the pre-Title IX era, the institute didn’t have a women’s tennis team. But Wrege wanted to be challenged at the highest level academically and Georgia Tech gave her the opportunity.
Famed foootball coach Dodd offers her a room
She was assigned to the men’s dormitory–the first women’s dormitory at GT wasn’t opened until 1969–and discovered no rooms were available elsewhere. As Wrege sat on campus and contemplated her next move, legendary football coach Bobby Dodd approached and offered Wrege a room in his house next to the Tech campus.
Despite being sidelined from competing with other women, Wrege never stopped playing tennis while at Tech. She befriended members of the men’s team and practiced with them. As a senior, Wrege competed in men’s doubles against the University of Tennessee and won the match. She ended the season 3-0, with two doubles teams refusing to play against her because of her gender.
“I was the best fan the GT men’s tennis team had during the time I was an undergraduate at Georgia Tech,” Wrege said. “The three doubles matches where I was listed as playing were a result of multiple injuries to the men on the GT team.”
Off the court, Wrege was making even more history on campus. The former high school valedictorian enrolled at Georgia Tech planning to major in physics, only women were not allowed to study physics at Georgia Tech at the time.
Rocket scientist for NASA
Wrege convinced the school to allow her to major in physics and became the first woman to graduate with a physics degree from Tech. She was employed as a rocket scientist in the mid-1960s at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where she tested components for the Apollo program.
Tennis eventually drew Wrege back to Atlanta. Georgia Tech athletic director Doug Weaver called Wrege in 1978 and asked if she would consider launching the women’s program as Title IX began opening more doors for women in sports nationwide.
“Unsure if I could do this as I had only been teaching tennis professionally, I called my former tennis coach, James Leighton, the coach at Wake Forest at the time, and he assured me that I would love coaching,” Wrege said. “What he said that gave me the impetus to accept the job was that I would have the chance to mold my players both on and off the court for four years and prepare them for the next 40 years of their lives. That statement made my decision to coach, and I enjoyed every minute of this career.”
First GT women’s tennis coach
Wrege became the first women’s tennis coach at Georgia Tech, starting the Yellow Jackets off as an NCAA Division III program and helping them transition to Division I. Wrege’s first scholarship player at Georgia Tech was Kim (Lash) Gillespie, who played for the Yellow Jackets from 1983-87. Wrege recruited Gillespie out of Winston-Salem, N.C.
“She has been a motherly figure in a sense,” Gillespie said. “She didn’t necessarily hold my hand throughout the entire time that she was my coach. But if she knew you were in trouble, that’s really when she would try to come and help you. That’s one of the things I have always admired about her.”
Wrege’s dedication to tennis has been unwavering since the Charleston, W.V., native first picked up a racquet at the age of 11 and “left other activities behind.” She won the prestigious USTA Girls National Championship at age 18 and received a wild card into the US Championships–now known as the US Open–where she played eventual champion Althea Gibson in the first round, losing 6-1, 6-0.
“I knew that I wanted to play tennis forever,” said Wrege, a member of the Georgia Tennis and Georgia Tech halls of fame. “I feel that tennis is a sport like no other. I loved playing tennis as a junior and I knew I wanted to have it a part of my life for as long as possible.”
President of USTA Georgia
Outside of playing and coaching, Wrege has contributed to the sport as an official, administrator, president of USTA Georgia, and founder of Tennis Recruiting Network. She conducted the Georgia Junior Open at Bitsy Grant Tennis Center and brought the first USTA junior national events to Atlanta.
“Julie’s been such a force,” Gillespie said. “The funniest thing to me about her is the woman never yells. I have never, ever heard her yell. But when she means business, she gets it done. If there was something or some person that she really believed in, she put everything she had into championing that.”
Written by Rhiannon Potkey for USTA Southern.
Here is Julie’s 2018 Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame induction video:
