Record details
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I was raised on a farm near Clyde, Texas and when we had an exceptionally good crop, we announced our success using the expression “High Cotton”.
As I reflect upon my life, I can proudly say that I’ve lived most of it in High Cotton. My dad was a farmer, but he was also the school bus driver. I rode the bus and attended school in Clyde. The school had one tennis court and when you reached the 5th grade you were allowed to play tennis on it during recess. This is where I found my love for the game and my competitive drive. We all ran to the court at recess, and the first two kids to get there got to play one game. The winner stayed and the loser went to the end of the line. Winning is a lot more fun!
My mother ordered me a tennis racket from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. It had silk strings, and when I wore out the strings, my mother would restring the racket by hand.
Sometimes the superintendent would come to the classroom to get me out of class so I could hit with the older kids. Even more incentive to work hard at tennis!
By the time I graduated high school, I had won a state championship. I was offered a partial scholarship to Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. I had other opportunities, but I wanted to be close to my girlfriend in Clyde. I earned the rest of my tuition by cleaning the gym every day. By the second semester, I had earned a full scholarship.
I won a total of six gold medals during my time at HSU. Then, I was offered a tennis coaching job at a new high school in Abilene. It was my dream come true. I was there for five years, then spent the next 10 years as a tennis teaching pro.
In 1973, Tyler Junior College hired me to build a tennis program. The program consisted of two parts: a two-year academic program to train students to teach tennis and men’s and women’s tennis teams.I recruited local players and the program became a big success within our community. Our teams worked hard, and by the end of my second year, our women’s team finished third at the national tournament, and our men’s team tied for sixth.
In 1975, Dennis Van Der Meer heard about our tennis teaching program and mentioned it in one of his articles in World Tennis magazine. That was all it took to make both parts of the program successful. We received messages from all parts of the world. By 1983, Tyler Junior College had won two National Junior College Athletic Association men’s championships and two NJCAA women’s championships.
I retired from coaching in 1997 but I love teaching, so I’ve continued giving lessons and running tennis camps. This year marked 47 years of our tennis camps.
The tennis programs at TJC have now won 32 national championships. They’ve been led by terrific people and outstanding coaches since I left to take a similar position at UT Tyler: Robert Cox, John Peterson, and Dash Connell, who leads them now. The teams are expertly assisted by Kimm Ketelson, who oversees the tennis-teaching program.
While at TJC I had the privilege of coaching two of my favorite women’s tennis players: my daughters, Judy Kniffen Clardy and Janet Kniffen Scholl. Both were outstanding players and great students of the game.
My days at TJC were some of the best ever. We literally built a program from scratch, and – with a little luck and God’s intervention – brought two teams to national prominence.
What makes me even more proud of my time in Tyler is the kind of graduates we produced. At TJC, tennis players have a grade-point average far higher than their peers. Many of my graduates have gone on to great professional and semi-pro tennis careers, but more importantly, they’ve been successful in life.
I’m thankful the tennis programs at TJC and UT Tyler continue to thrive and that I had a role in helping them become what they are today.
- Biography
- TJC Hero and Friend Fred Kniffen was a standout player at Hardin-Simmons before leading tennis programs to national championships at TJC and UT Tyler. He was named the National Junior College Men’s Coach of the Year in 1980 and 1983, National Women’s Coach of the Year in 1983 and 1984, and helped 31 players earn All-America honors. He was inducted into the TJC Sports Circle of Honor in 2001. His daughters, Judy and Janet, joined him in the Circle in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Kniffen also was a member of the inaugural UT Tyler Athletics Hall of Fame class in 2012. He has been married to his girlfriend, Carolyn – the daughter of the Clyde school district superintendent – for 58 years. In 2015, he was inducted into the International Tennis Association’s Collegiate Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at Baylor University.
