New Tennis Competitors of Dallas President Leads Ove 7,000 Local Tennis Players as New Season Begins

Most TCD Board members have served as flight directors - choosing which flight, or group, a team should compete in - before moving up to bigger board positions, but few have parachuted out of a plane. The 2021 fearless TCD Board President has.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee and raised in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Magan Flynn attended Poudre High in Ft. Collins where she was editor of the school newspaper and ran the local chapter of the March of Dimes. Although she skied, she wasn’t into team sports. In fact, she didn’t even start playing tennis until 1997 where she learned the game from a pro in Farmington Hills, Michigan. 

Magan earned a business degree from University of Colorado, Boulder, where she played intramural volleyball. It’s also where she met her husband Will. “Our roommates introduced us at a college party in Boulder.” They’ve been married 36 years. The couple have three grown children: Andrew (31), Chris (29), Molly (29), and four grand dogs: Ginny, an Irish Doodle; Olive and Jelly, both Bernese Mountain Dogs; and Bananas, a Chow/Husky Mix “which visit us regularly.”

Magan’s first job out of college was as a “master scheduler" for Hewlett Packard – coordinating production between manufacturing and marketing. She ended up in Texas as many transplants do: her husband’s job brought them here in 2013.

“It was our tenth move and our first move without our children.  We were not planning on staying more than two years and I did not want to come at all,” she admits now. “If it were not for tennis--and the friendships we made through tennis--we would have been gone in two years.  Instead, my husband retired, and two out of our three children moved to Texas.”

Her involvement in TCD was a natural progression: “I wanted to give something back to TCD and when the opportunity to be on the Placement Committee presented itself, I jumped at it.  I was on the placement committee for a year and a half, then was the Placement Director last year.”

She also captains two teams: Ladies McKinney Midcourt Crisis (9A) and Mixed Stonebridge Ranch Overserved (4B).  And she’s the co-captain of her Love-50 Team, McKinney Matchmakers (3B).  She also plays Metro and USTA. Her leadership abilities made her an obvious choice for TCD Board President. And, by the way, she has a law degree from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, so she may be overqualified for the disputes that sometimes arise on and off the (tennis) courts.

Like many Texans, she’s met a famous player: John Newcombe, “at his tennis ranch in New Braunfels.”

Magan is happy to be a Texan now, having traveled around the world on a ship for 101 days when she was 19.  And she’s been a bit of a risk-taker for most of her life, including that parachute jump at age 20.

Back then, on a crazy whim, a parachute saved her. But since moving to Texas, it’s been more wins than whims, thanks to Tennis Competitors of Dallas.

Judy Eckenrode Porter, MBA is the TCD 2021 Communications Director. See the TCD Facebook Page for more information or contact her at Communications@TCDtennis.org. To learn more about the Tournament contact Beth Mahler at Tournaments@TCDtennis.org 

TCD will kick off the Spring season with a tennis tournament Thursday, Feb. 18, that will have over 1,000 players. This tournament may break the Guinness Book of World Records for participants in a single tournament. The tournament was full and had a waitlist in the first 24 hours. The stats include:

By the Numbers:

• 1,172 ladies
• 585 Teams – 1,172 members
• 288 Cans of Tennis Balls
• 238 Courts
• 116 Flights
• 57 Volunteer Site Coordinator
• 25 Host Facilities

Host Facilities: 25 sites