Shannon Carney, 68, is a tennis lifer who plays at a high level and coaches the men's team and women's team at Principia College in Elsah, Ill. She sat down with Benjamin Hochman of the Post-Dispatch for a look at her life as a player and coach.

Rummaging through a bedroom closet in my childhood home the other day, I found my brother David’s Wilson T-3000 tennis racquet from the 1970’s. Its red cover was like new and I smiled as I noticed that David had written his name in his distinctive childhood scrawl on the cover with a black magic marker. “Hands off,” that meant…