Rick McClure decided to pick up a tennis racket in about the eighth grade.
Some 45 years later, he still hasn't put it down.
McClure, a 1972
, just wrapped up his 34th season as a tennis coach at
.
After decades in the profession, the veteran coach says it's the student-athletes who keep drawing him back.
"What keeps you going is strictly the relationships with the kids," McClure said.
During his time at the Baltimore school, McClure has seen plenty of young tennis players pass through his program. And he's viewed his share of victories as well.
McClure, who has coached the men's program for 34 years and the women's program for 25, has over 640 combined victories. Under his leadership the women have captured eight Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference titles and made four NCAA tournament appearances. The men posted MAAC runner-up performances in 1990 and 1991 and won the 1985 ECAC Metro Conference Tournament.
All the while the P'burg graduate has emphasized effort and attitude along with a primary focus on academics before all else.
"You give me 100 percent and represent your family and the school in a positive way -- I'll shake your hand after the match no matter how it went," said McClure, a member of the Loyola Athletic Hall of Fame. "Those things are very important to me, I stress that a lot."
Those qualities are derived from his high school coach Pete Tomaino, McClure says.
Name
: Rick McClure
Local connection
: Phillipsburg High School (1972)
Notables
: Helped Phillipsburg capture three league titles
50-5 No. 1 singles record for the Stateliners
30-0 No. 1 doubles record his last three years at Phillipsburg
Rated one of the top eight high school players in New Jersey in 1972
Played at University of Maryland
Coach of Loyola (Md.) University men's (34 years) and women's (25 years) tennis programs
Won over 640 matches combined between men's and women's teams
Led Loyola women to eight MAAC titles and four NCAA tournament appearances
Member of the Loyola Athletic Hall of Fame
Resides
: White Marsh, Md.
"It was always hard work, discipline, go out and give it 100 percent and let things fall where they do," McClure said of Tomaino's approach. "He was a very good role model in regard to me starting as a coach at a young age."
His coaching aspirations had already formulated while he was walking the halls at Phillipsburg, McClure says, but first there was the matter of his own playing career.
Upon his arrival as a freshman, the Stateliners boasted a group that flipped the Lehigh Valley on its head, highlighted by McClure, his brother Bob, his neighbor Bob Rush, Paul Ivankevich and Joe Hoffman.
P'burg would capture three league titles during McClure's high school career. One triumph that sticks out in his mind is snapping a long Allen winning streak at Oakmont Tennis Club on red clay, a surface with which McClure had no experience.
The result was magnified by the contrasting situations on display between Allen's "country club kids" and P'burg's players who lacked that pedigree, according to McClure.
"We were nothing like them," he said. "We were self-made players, we didn't have money for lessons. We were basically athletes who worked hard. We would go up there and they would have their immaculate white (outfits) on -- shorts and top -- and it was a pleasure to be able to upset them."
McClure, who honed his craft by playing at a count two blocks away from his house with Rush for about eight hours a day, was 50-5 as a No. 1 singles player and 30-0 in No. 1 doubles during his final three years with the Stateliners.
According to McClure, whose mother Lois still lives in the area, it was an opportune set of circumstances for Phillipsburg to have such a talented cast assembled at the same time in a program that had to play strictly away matches during the beginning of his career because its asphalt courts weren't up to par.
"Right time, right place, we were very fortunate and we had the right coach to lead us, which was very important," said McClure, who went on to play at and graduate from the University of Maryland.
The former Stateliner, whose first coaching job was at what was then called Northampton County Area Community College, said he doesn't plan on calling it quits anytime soon as the Loyola prepares to
, joining
and
.
"There's no end in sight," said McClure, who turns 60 in November. "I have good energy and I love what I do."
And it all started with picking up a racket.
"No matter what age you are, if you carry a racket to a court, someone will start a conversation and ask you to hit," he said. 'It really breaks a lot of barriers age-wise or anything. I've met so many wonderful people just by being involved with tennis throughout the years."
"Catching Up With" is a weekly online feature that runs Sundays on lehighvalleylive.com. The subjects are former local high school or collegiate athletes who no longer live in the region. If you have an idea about an athlete you would like to see profiled, send an email to kgary@express-times.com.