Barry Grice was tennis before tennis was cool.

Decades before John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert thrilled television audiences, Grice was swatting forehands with a wooden Wilson Jack Kramer on the courts at Wingate School, 50 miles east of Mount Holly, when the university was still two-years.

Guy named Norman Chambers – who won the national junior college doubles title at Wingate and swept the Carolinas Conference singles and doubles titles three consecutive years at Appalachian State – got Grice hooked on the game, back in 1961-62.

Grice hadn’t played much prior to college because, well, there wasn’t any place to do it.

“He kinda helped me, starting out. He was looking for someone to chase balls, I guess,” Grice says, half-joking. “Mount Holly didn’t have any tennis courts when I graduated high school in 1960. It wasn’t very big; nobody really played.”

So, Grice learned from Chambers, then enrolled in Charlotte College – now UNC-Charlotte – to quietly complete his degree in business administration.

Which would have gone smoothly, except for two unrelated life events.

He got married.

And, he got summoned to the Chancellor’s office.

“I was in class one day, and this lady came and pulled me out of class and said Bonnie Cone wants to see you. And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’” he says.  

Mrs. Cone, who died in 2003, was a leader and president of Charlotte College since its birth in 1949 and a popular, persuasive community advocate on numerous fronts. She was a teacher, had a Master’s in math from Duke University and had been a statistical analyst in Washington for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

“She’s going to kick me out of school,” Grice thought.

She didn’t. Instead, she let Grice in on her plans to move Charlotte College into the University of North Carolina system, but all the pieces weren’t in place.

“She said she wanted to start a tennis program, and she heard I played a little bit of tennis,” he says. “And next thing I knew, she gave me a list of teams we were going to play, and the times and where we were going to play. The only thing missing was a team.”

So, in 1964, Grice started the first team.

“We posted some bulletins on the board about setting up a team. And I guess we did OK. We would play at Freedom Park on the clay courts – practiced and played there – and we played Pembroke, St. Andrew’s, Belmont Abbey, Presbyterian, six or seven schools. I was the coach and the captain.”

Charlotte College became UNC-Charlotte in 1965.

Grice, who by then was combining married life with tennis tournaments, finished college in night school and got his degree in 1969.

He played in the Southern branch of the United States Tennis Association’s tournaments, and was ranked in the state and Southern region.

Mount Holly remained his home base. His wife, Gail, daughter of one of the Jones brothers who owned the supermarket that later became the City Café on Main Street in Mount Holly, taught home economics, and the Grices raised a son and a daughter.

So, it was only natural that he help with installation of the tennis complex at East Gaston High School. “They asked me what kind of courts, what kind of surface, the durability of the facility. I just guided with my experience,” he says. “They did a real good job on it, I’ll tell you that.

“They put in a special Har-Tru surface and a lighting system that’s really good, with a timer on it. Usually a team will play six singles and three doubles, but they put in eight courts.”

Grice, 74, doesn’t play much tennis anymore. Traded his racket for a golf club, after an injury to his back. He owns the course at Marlboro Country Club in Bennettsville, S.C., which he bought in 2006.

“I finally said, hey, I got to start doing something (after the injury), so I just started swinging a golf club and got into that. I like to play, but I love tennis. And Mount Holly and my family and friends.

“I was real excited about this Hall of Fame, but I felt there’s a lot more people who are more deserving. 

“But I felt honored to be inducted.”