OSU hosts tennis regional
The Oklahoma State tennis programs will host an NCAA Regional Friday through Sunday at the Michael and Anne Greenwood Center in Stillwater. Women’s action begins at 9 a.m., and men’s play will start at 10 a.m. The Oklahoma men’s team will host a regional in Norman, with play beginning at 10 a.m. at the Headington Family Tennis Center.
STILLWATER — Mike Holder had not met Michael or Anne Greenwood prior to the day husband and wife walked into the athletic director’s office with a grand vision.
Oklahoma State was the only Big 12 tennis school without a dedicated indoor facility.
The Greenwoods aimed to change that.
“I’m sure he was like, ‘Who are these people? This is nuts,’” Anne said Wednesday, standing inside the roughly $20 million-dollar complex, completed in 2014 with the Greenwood’s names tacked to its brick as the benefactors, “but if you’re gonna dream it, you might as well dream it big.”
OSU hosts men’s and women’s NCAA regionals this weekend starting 10 a.m. Friday, and in 2020, the NCAA championships come to town. No one is prouder than the Greenwoods. Both OSU graduates, Michael founded Carnegie Capital, a financial advisory services firm in Dallas, after a long career in the energy sector.
The seed to fund the facility — 50,000 square feet, including six indoor courts, 12 outdoor courts, coaches’ offices, locker rooms and a sports medicine center — was planted during an alumni function where Boone Pickens was a guest speaker. One line resonated. “I don’t know why people wait until they die to give their money away,” Pickens said, “when you can’t see what it does.”
Dating back to the 1980s, Anne has been an OSU tennis fan, attending games with her father, Joe Morris, an avid player even into his 70s. The Stillwater courts were in rough shape even then, and when the Greenwoods returned to Stillwater to retire, the surfaces continued to regress. When OSU women’s tennis coach Chris Young was recruiting current Cowgirl senior Katarina Adamovic from Serbia, she passed along a text message from a fellow Big 12 coach who reportedly wrote OSU had, “the worst facility in the country.”
The Greenwoods learned of that disadvantage and the focus of their philanthropy sharpened. Plans were first drawn up in 2011, and today, an outdoor court is named in Joe Morris’ honor.
“He’s the one who started it all,” Anne said.
The Greenwoods rarely miss a home match. When the OSU women fell to Stanford in the NCAA championships in Tulsa last year, Michael was photographed hugging Adamovic in a tearful embrace. While walking through the tennis complex just this week, Anne bumped into teammate Lena Ruppert. Anne asked,
“How are your finals?” The Greenwoods, both age 62, don’t have children of their own.
“We kind of look at them like our sons and daughters,” Michael said.
As OSU aims to keep pace in the national college sports facilities arms race, the Greenwoods are a case study in which other programs can follow. The university announced last month it has broken ground on the construction of an updated soccer complex; another $20 million project to receive major funding by a proud alumnus, Neal Patterson. Plans have also been drawn for a new baseball stadium, too, pending yet another large donation.
“Our hope is that Neal’s gift will motivate someone else to make a difference on our campus,” Holder said in a news release. “His name on the stadium is our way of saying thank you and inspiring that next great donor.”
Michael and Anne Greenwood know the feeling.
“It’s kind of surreal to see your name up there,” Anne said. “In college, neither of us had a lot of money, and other people helped us, people who we really didn’t even know, with scholarships. It’s our duty and it’s also our privilege to give back.”