By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Washburn Rural's Kevin Hedberg is one of the state's best known and most successful high school tennis coaches.
But the 43-year teaching and coaching veteran formally informed Washburn Rural's administrators on Monday that he is retiring at the end of the current school year.
"The classroom was fine, the kids were absolutely fantastic and treated me with a lot of respect and did what I asked -- teaching and tennis -- but it just seemed like time,'' Hedberg said. "For whatever reason, it just felt like time.''
Longtime Washburn Rural tennis coach Kevin Hedberg (left) jokes with a Junior Blues player during Monday's practice at Topeka Country Club while Rural senior Nick Luetje looks on. Hedberg will retire at the end of the current school year. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]
Hedberg turned 70 in February and said that landmark birthday got him thinking more about retirement.
"I started thinking about it a little bit about three months ago, honestly,'' Hedberg said. "When I turned 70, it was kind of a weird thing. You start thinking, 'Wow, when I was kid 70 was ancient, and I'm there.' ''
Hedberg is in his 32nd year at Washburn Rural after spending 11 years at Seaman.
Hedberg has coached five state championship teams at Rural (four boys and one girls), as well as singles and doubles champions in both boys and girls tennis and a long list of city and Centennial League title teams.
Hedberg, a former Division I college tennis player at South Florida, knows it will be hard to step away from teaching and coaching, but said it will be nice to be able to pursue other interests in retirement.
"'I'm driving down 61st Street towards Auburn Road the other day and I got to this one road and I thought, 'I've taught here 32 years and I've never driven down this road,' so I just drove down that road,'' said Hedberg, a member of the Topeka Tennis Association Hall of Fame. "The have-tos of your life just take over and you don't have time do do a lot of that stuff. Now I can do that.
"There's always going to be things at every job you don't like but the hardest thing about it for me will be walking away from the kids because I honestly think the kids have kind of kept me young. Ending that association with them is going to be hard but I've got to fill that void and I will. I'll figure something out to keep my spirits up that way.''
Hedberg's boys team will open the 2022 season on Tuesday in Rural's Too Big Invitational at Kossover Tennis Center and Hedberg said he's looking forward to the season.
"This is a great bunch of boys and they're just fun to be around and they have fun playing tennis,'' he said. "They're great as a group.''
Veteran Topeka West coach Kurt Davids said he has a great deal of respect for Hedberg and said he will definitely be missed.
"When I came here in 1993 it was easy to hold a grudge against Rural because of their success, but as time went on and I got to know not just Kevin but the rest of coaches in town and the league, you realize that everybody cares for each other and everybody wants everybody to be successful against everybody but themselves,'' Davids said. "Kevin was always a good example of that -- good advice, understood what we had to do and how we were trying to do things.
"I consider him a very dear friend now more so than a mortal enemy. He wants us to be successful, we want them to be successfu, up until the time they play us.''
