John Jessen still owns two vintage, wooden Jack Kramer tennis rackets. His first racket was a Slazenger that belonged to his dad. “I don’t know where that old wooden racket is now, and they don’t make them like that anymore,” he says. “But it was the first one I played with, and it was old to start with.”

Jessen has been involved with tennis since he was a high school junior in 1961. He learned the game from Frank Love, who started the program at Mount Holly High School, and longtime friend Barry Grice, who developed the first competitive team at Charlotte College when it became UNC-Charlotte. Both Love and Grice are in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame. Now Jessen, who turns 80 in October, is too.

“It’s an honor to be put in there. A lot of the inductees, I don’t know because some were before my time and some after me, but it’s nice to be recognized with them,” he says. “The ones I knew like brothers were Frank Love and Barry Grice, and it’s nice to be in there with them.”

Jessen played for Lees-McRae College, then with an Air Force team and at UNCC. After college, he combined his work schedule with playing on a Mount Holly team that included Love and Grice and competed in the N.C. Piedmont Tennis League. “This is where my tennis game got much better,” he says.

A friend who was the pro at Gaston Country Club approached Jessen about becoming Director of Tennis and head pro in charge of all tennis activities.
“After talking it over with my wife, I took the job,” he says. He was there 15 years in the 1970s and ’80s. And that is where Jessen was able to introduce his love for the game to children of Gaston County.

“My main objective in the tennis business was to get a kid good enough to play [competitively], because then most of them went to Gaston Day School and most would probably go to college,” he says, “so I wanted someone to like the game enough that if they heard ‘Let’s go play some tennis,’ they’d grab their racket and go. Then I would have accomplished what I wanted to do.

“You always look for that diamond in the rough. I just worked with the youth; that’s what I wanted to do. When we started the Junior Tennis League, there were a number of racket clubs in the area and that’s who we played against.”

After forming the junior league, Jessen received a Merit Award from the N.C. Tennis Association.

“During my time at the country club, I had the honor of having a number of young men work for me that I hope I had an influence on, not only with their tennis but their success in life,” Jessen says. “Some of their accomplishments were [becoming] a CPA, college professor, director of athletics, top sales rep and a successful tennis director and pro. I like to think I had something to do with it.”

Tennis has been in Jessen’s life for nearly seven decades, but it isn’t his only sport.

He learned basketball on neighborhood playgrounds with his brother Barry and others and competed with a Jaycees team. He made the varsity team as a Mount Holly High School freshman, the first underclassman to do so. He started every game as a sophomore (second-team All-Conference), junior (All-Conference and All-Tournament) and senior (first team All-Conference and All-Tournament). His junior year, MHHS’ coach was Don Killian. It was Coach Killian’s first year.