Fern Lee “Peachy” Kellmeyer was the best player on the University of Miami women’s tennis team. In 1964, after four years of practicing regularly with the men’s team, head coach Dale Lewis did the unthinkable: Near the end of her senior season, he put Kellmeyer on the men’s roster.
This didn’t go over well with the No.1 player, Rodney Mandelstam from South Africa.
“The No.1 player opposed me, as a woman playing on a men’s team,” Kellmeyer said earlier this month “He thought it would be derogatory for a male player to lose to a woman. So it became a controversial thing.”
Nevertheless, Kellmeyer was in the lineup on April 28 against Florida State. She pushed Don Monk to three sets, losing 6-1, 1-6, 6-1 but won her doubles match with John Santrock, a childhood friend from Wheeling, West Virginia, in three sets. She became the first woman to play for a Division I men’s college tennis team – but that was only the first of many firsts.
Today, Kellmeyer finds herself enjoying some rare free time in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, not far from the Hologic WTA Tour headquarters in St. Petersburg. She was the WTA’s first full-time employee back in 1973 – after refereeing the first Virginia Slims Championship she was appointed tour director – and just recently completed a groundbreaking 48-year run.
With Title IX, the landmark legislation that mandated equal participation for American female and male athletes, turning 50 this month it’s worth revisiting Kellmeyer’s contributions to women’s athletics across the board. The 1973 lawsuit she inspired was one of the most important factors in making the intent of Title IX a reality.
Following a successful career at Miami – with no professional tennis options for women – she took a job as the Director of Physical Education at Marymount College, a Catholic junior college in Boca Raton, Florida. With no program in place, Kellmeyer leveraged her considerable connections to create a credible department. A big part of that involved raising money for modest scholarships and recruiting tennis players. One of the first prominent players to accept was Jane “Peaches” Bartkowicz (no relation), who went on to become one of the…