Ashe Carries Message of Education for Athletes

Put former tennis champion Arthur Ashe in a room with Georgetown basketball Coach John Thompson and there’s sure to be an argument about the role of today’s student-athlete.

Speaking to the tennis teams at Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills High School the other day, Ashe’s message was clear about standardized college entrance tests: “There should be no reward for mediocrity. I think anyone should be able to achieve a 700 on their SAT. Don’t you get 400 just for signing your name?”

Ashe, a former Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion, was a participant in a Future-Thon television program to solicit volunteers to help low-achieving students. He spent the rest of the day spreading the message that there need not be low-achieving students if they put their minds to work.

Thompson wants to eliminate controversial Proposition 48--which forces athletes who score less than 700 on the SAT to sit out their freshmen seasons--because he said he believes it discriminates against blacks.

Ashe, however, doesn’t agree.

Ashe, 46, grew up in Richmond, Va., when being a top-notch black athlete didn’t necessarily guarantee a future. His mother died when he was 6, and his father, whom he describes as “barely able to write more than his name,” urged him to further his education beyond high school.

“If one person in a family gets a college degree, it changes that family forever,” Ashe said.

Ashe’s family was changed forever by his achievements on the tennis court. But he was trying to convince the student-athletes that not all of them are going to end up with million-dollar contracts and, in an increasingly competitive world, a college degree becomes more important.

“Take (Notre Dame quarterback) Tony Rice for instance,” Ashe said. “He scored 680 on his SAT. Now, I’m not going to be worrying about Tony anymore. But what about his contemporaries, who also assumed, ‘Hey, I’m a great football player. I don’t have to study.’ There’s 70,000 of them like that every year, and that’s just at Division I schools in football and basketball. No wonder Japan’s laughing at us. They don’t have any athletic scholarships. If you don’t achieve a certain score on the test to get into college, you just don’t go.”