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TWO QUESTIONS for Pickleball Champion Teri Clemens

Teri Clemens won seven national championships in a legendary 14-year span as a Washington University volleyball coach. Then she had to retire as her health deteriorated. But that wasn’t the end of her sports career. Instead, at 67, she returned to become a national champion in pickleball. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What happened when you were sick?

When I was young, I drank turpentine by accident, and it scarred my lungs, and it came back to haunt me with repeated pneumonia –– and not just light pneumonia but very serious. I was on a respirator 13 times and [had] 24 blood clots. You name it, I had it. I had pulmonary embolisms. I had massive blood infections, MRSA infections –– too many for me even to remember. I’m gonna guess I spent 135 days a year in the hospital for about eight years. I finally had to retire from coaching because of my health. Otherwise, I’d probably still be coaching and not playing pickleball.

Pickleball was a blessing for me because I always missed coaching. Something in my blood, you know, I’m a coach. “I’m born to coach” is kind of how I feel. I love competing. I love coaching. When I lost coaching, a part of my heart went with it. I was fortunate –– I had six kids and now I have a lot of grandkids, and that was all really important to me. But I also lost a part of my heart when I lost that. Then to find pickleball, many years later, is just an everyday joy for me.

How did you become able to play competitive pickleball?

When I got at my very worst, my doctor found a medicine in [Canada], like an [IV administered] chemotherapy-type drug, that was having a good effect. I had to go to Canada because it wasn’t FDAapproved here. I was on it for a year. During that year it really wrecked my body so much that I had to still be on really high steroids. The combination of it all made me not be able to walk for almost a year. I was in a wheelchair. At one time, they did a muscle biopsy of my leg and told me I would never walk again.

Well, long story short, obviously they were wrong. I was learning to walk and they were like, “Don’t stop once you learn to walk.” I was afraid to stop. So then I started running. Since I love to compete, I ran 5ks, then 10ks, then I ran four half marathons. I was like, “I’m gonna run a marathon.” I’m not a runner by any means. But I wanted to achieve it. When I ran the [Cincinnati marathon nine years ago], that was when I said, “OK, I can compete again.” That’s when I knew I was OK, and I was an athlete. —Benjamin Simon