The newly-named Peggy Bohne Tennis Center is a tribute to a local legend
by Matt Poust | Contributing Writer
For nearly half a century, Peggy Bohne’s name has been synonymous with tennis in Charleston. Now, it will be etched permanently into the very courts where generations of local players got their start.
On July 15, Charleston City Council unanimously passed a motion to rename the Charleston Tennis Center on Farmfield Avenue in West Ashley to the City of Charleston Peggy Bohne Tennis Center, honoring the woman who helped shape the city’s tennis culture from the ground up.
Bohne, who retired in February as the Tennis Manager for the City of Charleston Recreation Department, has held the position since the center opened its doors on Jan. 27, 1976.
“It’s a huge honor, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am by all of it,” Bohne said. “But I really want to parlay it into promoting tennis in West Ashley and the rest of Charleston.”
A native of West Ashley, Bohne got into the game of tennis at nine years old during summer lessons at the College of Charleston. After high school, she played collegiate tennis at Converse College before transferring to the College of Charleston, where she joined the school’s first official women’s tennis team in 1974 under Coach Joan Cronan.
During this collegiate career, Bohne was asked by College of Charleston men’s tennis coach Billy Silcox to help manage Creekside Tennis and Swim Club in Mt Pleasant. Soon after, the Charleston Tennis Center opened, and she joined Silcox there—and never left.
Together, the two went on to build one of the city’s most successful grassroots youth programs in the elementary and middle school tennis league. What began as a modest league of 50 kids and seven teams in the late ’70s ballooned into a citywide movement with 2025 seeing more than 1,400 students across 165 teams and 26 divisions, playing on the 87 courts that the Charleston area now offers.
One recognizable name that was impacted by Bohne during these youth programs was College of Charleston’s women’s tennis coach Angelo Anastopoulo. Growing up in West Ashley with his sister Patti playing alongside Bohne on the 1974 women’s team, Anastopoulo and his siblings occupied their time at the tennis center courts with Peggy supervising, going the extra mile to make the experience more than just about the basics of the game.
“She really instilled tennis as a lifetime sport and made it fun first,” said Anastopoulo. “She has been a role model in my career and one of the reasons I got into coaching and teaching people to love the game. When you think of the Charleston Tennis Center, you think of Peggy. She made the tennis center like home.”
Beyond building tennis programs and organizing tournaments, Bohne’s legacy includes her role in expanding access to the sport for underserved communities. In the 1990s, she played a hand in helping Delores Jackson launch Courting Kids, a program aimed at getting inner-city youth involved in tennis.
Bohne recalled Jackson approaching her with concern about the lack of Black children in the sport. With Jackson leading fundraising efforts—including securing a pivotal $12,000 grant from the Paul Newman Foundation—Courting Kids took off.
The program went on to welcome tennis legends like Venus and Serena Williams and Stan Smith for clinics, and inspired several youth participants to win the USTA’s Arthur Ashe Essay Contest, earning trips to the US Open.
Despite the accolades and the new name honoring, Bohne remains humble about her contributions.
“It was the people I met along the way that kept me going,” she said.
To exemplify the statement, Bohne recalled an anecdote about seeing a man and a woman stopping by the center to browse around the courts. Upon asking if the two needed help with anything, the man told Bohne that he was showing his wife the court on which he won his first tennis tournament at 12 years old.
“These little things mean more than we realize to people,” Bohne said. “I’ve always believed that if a child has some happy memories—even if home life isn’t the best, if school is rough—if they have these memories, they grow up to be more well-adjusted adults.”
City Councilmember Kevin Shealy, who represents District Two, praised Bohne’s decades of dedication: “Peggy has touched hundreds, if not thousands, of lives—people who grew up in West Ashley, their children, and even some of their grandchildren. She is a great part of West Ashley and a great part of our history.”
While there is no ceremony date yet, Shealy noted that a dedication event will likely be held once the name change is officially reflected at the facility.
