Member Spotlight: Carol Wood
Kathy Langer
“Visionary and Creator” of Intersectionals
How many women at 88-years-old can claim to have been a junior tennis star, give it up for a while to go to college to become a physical therapist, become a nationally ranked badminton player, a golfer, taking up tennis again, and many years later, still being selected for USTA Cup Teams? Oh, and join the U.S. Air Force for 2 years, get transferred to the United States Health Service and retire as a Commander after working at the National Institutes of Health for 21 years?
Carol Wood has done all that plus more.
She is still tenacious, talented, (have you seen her service motion?), and a dropshot queen. Maybe she’s not moving as fast as she used to, but her smart court sense makes up for that. Ask her opponents as they scramble to reach one of her balls that just sinks over the net. And having her own clay court in her backyard doesn’t hurt either.
When she was 50, she was NSWTA President and took on the job of creating a senior women’s event which would vie women tournament players, 35 and 45 years old, from all Sections in the USTA to compete in the first Intersectionals in the US. She spent many, many hours lining up the first site (Virginia Beach, VA), getting sponsors, calling players, sections and bugging the USTA. 11 Sections and 123 players participated in the inaugural event.
Larry Eichenbaum recalled Carol asking him to host the group the next year at Walden in Texas on hard courts and once he agreed, she said, “Oh, by the way, do you think you could add 3 more age groups?” And the rest is history…
Other age groups were added over the years, and she has played in every Intersectionals (except Phoenix during Covid) or been a non-playing captain since she got on the phone in 1986 and started the ball rolling. Although she is considered the “visionary and creator” of Intersectionals, that is not all she’s known for.
During her working life in the Air Force as a physical therapist, she was transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service who placed her with The National Institutes of Health, where she was a physical therapist for 21 years. She worked on some well-known people in Washington D.C., such as Ethel Kennedy, the Ambassador of Venezuela and several diplomats and their wives. She was invited to President Reagan’s inauguration by the senator of North Dakota, whose wife was a patient. After she retired from the NIH, she spent the next 8 years as a Home Health Care physical therapist. She would sneak off to play tennis tournaments whenever she could while working. “I liked my job, but I like being retired, too,” she said. More time for tennis.
During her badminton years, she met and eventually married Lou Wood, a chemist, who shared her love for badminton and tennis. “It was his idea to build the clay court in our backyard,” Carol reminisced. They were married for 48 years. Lou died in 2012. They had 3 children, and 4 grandchildren.
She spent many years volunteering in tennis and received many awards. Besides being NSWTA president, she was on the Board of Directors of the USTA Mid Atlantic Section for 8 years and held many positions. They honored her in 1991 by inducting her into the Hall of Fame, along with Arthur Ashe, Jr. (posthumously). “I found it ironic that Arthur was inducted into the HOF when, while he was alive, the section wouldn’t allow blacks to play in their tournaments. He had to play in other sections,” she commented.
Other awards included the Pam Shriver “Outstanding Contributions to Tennis in Maryland”, National Capital Area HOF, the prestigious National Senior Service Award from the USTA and too many more to list. She was a busy girl in her Section, and nationally.
Carol served on the USTA Adult/Competition Committee, and the Senior International Committee and did seedings for tournaments for 30 years. She could be a thorn in the side of many of the people who were in charge at USTA. She wasn’t afraid to keep bugging them when they approved funding for Men’s Intersectionals and not the women. She and Margie Cooper challenged them by pointing out “the men got money, the women got balls!” Eventually the women got money, but they also had to go to the USTA BOD to convince them it was only right to count the popular Intersectional tournament toward players’ rankings. Carol was one of the persistent voices that let them see the error of their ways.
Asked about some of her best wins, she cited a win over legendary Dorothy Matthesen, beating her 6-1, 6-2. “I was in the Zone”, she said. And internationally, winning the gold medal in Perth, Australia on grass in a third set tiebreaker.
In the U.S., she’s won 23 USTA gold, 37 silver and 23 bronze balls. She played her first USTA Cup team, The Young Cup, when she was 43. “We did not win,” she lamented. Overall, she played on every Cup team in her age group, playing in Australia, England, Croatia and Turkey. She won 1 singles and 5 doubles ITF World Championships and is still going strong, this year helping her team win the 85 Angela Mortimer Cup in Turkey.
Carol epitomizes the drive women must have to be able to excel in their sport, despite challenges from those who didn’t think women were equal to their male counterparts, and one who was not afraid to persist in bugging those in charge to make things more equitable, all the while honing her own skills to show how strong women can be. (Think Billie Jean King…)
Even though that 88-year-old body tells her it hurts, her “13-year-old Tomboy” tells her to suck it up and keep moving and playing tennis as long as she can.