Richard often drove the Williams sisters to the Compton tennis courts in a beat-up old Volkswagen van. He pulled out the middle seat in the van so he could fit the shopping cart filled with tennis balls.
Sometimes the van was so crowded with gear that Serena had to share a seat belt with Venus! Once on the court, the girls hit and hit. Serena remembered that it was always a special thrill when their dad was able to get a can of brand-new tennis balls. New balls bounced better and moved faster than the forgotten ones Richard collected around the edges of the courts.
At home, the two youngest sisters loved their large family, where five sisters shared four beds. Every night, Serena, the youngest, climbed in with one of her sisters. In the evenings, they played a lot of board games. The card game
Uno was a big favorite. Serena was sometimes difficult to play with, though—she hated to lose!
Both parents made sure their daughters worked as hard in school as they did on the tennis court. They attended the local elementary school. Venus was one year ahead of Serena.
Serena followed her big sister Venus in just about everything, even in restaurants. She sometimes just copied whatever Venus ordered.
Lessons with their father continued, and the girls kept getting better and better. By the time Venus was about nine, she started playing against other kids her age in tennis tournaments.
These tournaments were played all around Southern California. Young players were matched by age in events usually played on weekends. Parents and coaches arranged the events, much like youth league baseball or basketball.
From the start, Venus dominated the tournaments. Tall and skinny, she had more power than most kids. Her serve rocketed past her opponents. By the time she finished with junior tennis at the age of eleven, she had won sixty-three matches and lost none.
Serena started a bit later than Venus, but she didn’t want to wait to get into tournaments. At an event in 1989, she filled out forms to enter without telling her dad. He found out as he watched her win her first match! Then, Richard sat on the sidelines and watched as the girls played against each other for the first time—in the tournament final! Venus was nine and
Serena was eight. Big sister Venus won, but she gave the trophy to Serena!
Eventually, Serena was allowed to play in more tournaments, one age level below Venus. She performed nearly as well at the junior level, with a record of forty-six wins and three losses.
As the sisters won match after match, the Southern California tennis community took notice. They couldn’t help it. Venus and Serena were just about the only black girls playing. They did not come from a fancy tennis club. Their clothes did not have designer labels. And even the way they played was different. Most young players try to simply hit the ball to a spot where their opponent can’t hit it. Venus and Serena used power instead. They slammed the ball hard. They didn’t want their opponents to even see
the ball!
The Williams sisters’ success began to get attention outside of California. In 1990, the New York Times
wrote an article about Venus’s success. In 1991, when Venus was still just ten, Sports Illustrated
did an interview with both sisters. Venus told Sports Illustrated
that if she did not end up being a tennis player, she wanted to be an astronaut or an archaeologist. Serena said her second career choice would be to become a gymnast or a veterinarian.
Because of their growing fame, Venus and Serena were invited to many tennis events where they were able to meet tennis superstars like Chris Evert and Zina Garrison. They were especially happy to meet Garrison, one of the very few African Americans in the sport. They attended a clinic run by tennis legend Billie Jean King. The girls even met former president Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, at a tournament in Palm Springs. Though they were not yet out of elementary school, the Williams sisters were very big news!
As the sisters rose in the ranks, Richard and Oracene worked hard to make sure the girls did not forget the other parts of their lives. If Venus’s or Serena’s grades slipped, they had to stop playing until their grades improved.
“Too many black athletes think sports is the only way out,” Richard said. “But sports is a vehicle to get an education. I’m looking for my kids to be well balanced.”
And tennis was not the sisters’ only sport. Venus ran in track events for her elementary school. At one point, she won nineteen races in a row! Her time in the mile when she was only eight years old was 5 minutes, 29 seconds, a time many high school students would be happy with. Serena was good at gymnastics and loved turning cartwheels.
On the court, Venus was tall and strong and had a powerful serve. Serena, too, served the ball very hard. Richard actually thought that someday Serena might become even better than Venus. Whichever sister came out on top, Richard knew that the road to the top would be hard. But he believed fiercely that he was watching young women who would become the best in the world.
The girls didn’t worry about all that. They just wanted to play. At the time, they were each in different levels of youth tennis. They did not play each other in matches, only in practice. That would soon change.
