Judy Dixon has spent most of her life playing and championing the game of tennis. The 74-year-old is constantly on the move, and her decades of hard work fighting for equity in tennis culminated in a recent unexpected honor from the United States Tennis Association. 

The USTA honored 16 “trailblazers of tennis from across the country who have worked to make the sport more equal and inclusive” with the inaugural Champions of Equality award. Dixon was the award recipient for the USTA’s New England chapter at this year’s U.S. Open in Flushing, N.Y. 

The former UMass women’s tennis coach has earned countless honors and awards throughout her illustrious tennis career as player, coach and advocate, but said that the Champions of Equality award might be the most meaningful prize she’s received. 

“This award, to me, probably meant more to me than any of the awards I've ever won because it hits for my values, it is my value center and that's how I've tried to live my life,” Dixon said. “So with all of the accolades or things I've won, this is the one that was the most important.”

Dixon traveled to the U.S. Open to receive her award back in September. She did a photo shoot with the 15 other award winners and Billie Jean King, got to attend the women’s semifinal match between Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova, and also attended a roundtable discussion moderated by Christiane Amanpour that featured King, Venus Williams and Telva McGruder, the Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at General Motors. 

It was a meaningful moment for Dixon, who hopes that this award might be a catalyst for other honors in the future that showcase individuals doing grassroots work to build up the game of women’s tennis. 

“This is an important award. And I think that the USTA, in the future, should begin to highlight more people that do work in the trenches, that aren't seen. I think that the local sections should do this,” Dixon said. “I think that really the light needs to be shown on these people who do the day-in, day-out grunt work, and I am hoping that this award moves in that direction.” 

Dixon had less than a month to bask in the afterglow of the award ceremony before she moved on to her next big event – the ITF 65-, 70-, 75-, 80-, 85- and over World Team Championships in Mallorca, Spain. 

The World Team Championships is the super-senior equivalent of the Billie Jean King Cup competitions; the best American players in each age division represent their country on the world stage. Dixon earned a spot on the doubles team, and was also named the team captain  of the Althea Gibson Cup Women’s 70 and Over team for her second consecutive season. She’s won four gold medals at the World Team Championships with Team USA (she was named to the team five times, but COVID-19 canceled one of those tournaments), something that adds a little more pressure.

“The expectation that we would win sort of puts extra pressure on us. And this particular team has done nothing but win a gold medal, which makes it harder,” Dixon said. 

Being a captain wasn’t easy, either – Dixon has plenty of experience coaching at the collegiate level, but the players at the ITF World Team Championships have been playing tennis their entire lives and don’t need coaching the same way a collegiate athlete does. It’s more of a logistical role, Dixon said, arranging practices and putting in lineups, but she also has to make the difficult decisions of who’s playing in what match. 

“It's tougher to sit someone who's 72 years old than it is to tell an 18-year-old or 19-year-old that they're going to not be playing, especially when someone is flown all the way to Mallorca,” Dixon said. “So being captain, it's not a bed of roses.”  

USA bested South Africa 3-0 and Brazil 2-1 to advance to the playoff rounds, where they beat Argentina and France 3-0 to earn a spot in the championship match against Great Britain. It was a bit of an anticlimactic finish – one of Great Britain’s players ended up going to the hospital shortly before the match was slated to start, and Great Britain’s No. 1 player went with her to make sure she was OK. After delaying the start of the match in hopes that they would return, it soon became clear that Great Britain would have to play without them. 

USA’s Wendy McColskey and Tina Karwasky won the No. 2 and No. 1 singles matches, respectively, against Great Britian, which gave Team USA the victory regardless of the outcome of the doubles match. With half their team missing and the silver medal already clinched, Great Britain forfeited the doubles match, so Dixon and her doubles partner Jan Kirkland-Cochran weren’t able to formally play in the gold medal contest. 

But a win was a win, despite the disappointment of not being able to play in the championship match. It was one of the more chaotic endings to a World Team Championship for Dixon, but she did have a nice moment during the medal ceremony afterward. 

“You stand on a podium and they play the national anthem, and you have a gold medal around your neck and when they start to play the national anthem... I'm not sort of a mushy USA person, but they start to play the national anthem, and you're like, ‘Oh, wow, OK.’ That becomes a moment,” Dixon said.

Most people might take a break after receiving an trailblazer award from USTA and winning a gold medal in less than two months, but Dixon isn’t most people. She’ll get a short break before she tries to bring home a fifth gold medal at the 2024 ITF World Team Championships in March 2024, which is slated to take place in Manavgat, Turkey.

Hannah Bevis can be reached at hbevis@gazettenet.com. Follow her on Twitter @Hannah_Bevis1.