Getting an education was important to Arthur Ashe — even after he left the University of California, Los Angeles, where he won the 1965 NCAA tennis singles and doubles crowns and led UCLA to the team title as well.

Ashe’s collegiate accomplishments have been recognized as one of the 25 Defining Moments of the NCAA.

But Ashe was much more than just an athletic champion — he championed the NCAA’s educational values.

Friends who knew Ashe during his college years and after describe him as a cerebral man, always reading, always thinking. He approached life like he approached tennis — aggressively and with hard work and preparation. He was a student-athlete his entire life. Stan Smith, who first befriended Ashe when they were both members of the U.S. Davis Cup team, said Ashe was always an advocate of education, and the titles he earned while at UCLA likely meant a lot to him.

“I think he realized that (attending UCLA on a tennis scholarship) was an opportunity for him that was really special — to get an education through his tennis,” Smith said. “He applied himself pretty seriously and once he graduated from college, he continued to keep it up. He always had his nose in a magazine or a book or something.”

Ashe wasn’t afraid of creating controversy if he could help emphasize the importance of a good education. David Benjamin, executive director of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association and a former coach at Princeton University, recalled a time when public discourse turned toward lowering the standards for entrance to institutions of higher learning because some felt that African-Americans were unable to meet them. Incensed, Ashe argued that standards need to be high and all people need to rise to meet them.

Benjamin said Ashe’s comments created a stir but underscored the tennis star’s belief that education was critical to a person’s success.

“He was a person who loved to learn and thought education was incredibly important,” Benjamin said. “He was always reading and learning and changing and growing. I think the college years were very special for him, because it enabled him to learn more and learn how to focus. He was truly a student-athlete, which is sometimes over-used as an expression. He was always trying to understand things better and was very modest about how well he understood things.”

Breaking down barriers

Winning the NCAA championship became that much more important because of what it symbolized to Ashe — the integration of education and sport. He applied his thoughtfulness to his game as well, Benjamin said.

“Arthur loved tennis; he was always studying tennis, but if he had to choose between reading or studying or learning or thinking and tennis, it was simple what he was going to choose,” he said. “Winning the NCAA championship was just the very beginning of the emergence of Arthur Ashe, who would go on to become one of the great players in the world, and most importantly one of the great people in the world.”

Race was an integral factor in the Arthur Ashe story as well. In the 1960s, tennis was largely an all-white sport. Ashe, a black man from segregated Richmond, Virginia, had struggled with racism his entire life, but in tennis, he found a platform from which he could make a difference because of his natural talent and a work ethic that would not let him fail.

His dominance at the 1965 championships was ground-breaking. As the first — and so far only — African-American man to win the NCAA singles title, Ashe was a trail-blazer (current professional player James Blake was nearly the second when he played in the championship match in 1999 for Harvard, but he was defeated by Florida’s Jeff Morrison).

By the time Ashe won the NCAA championship, he already had represented his country at the Davis Cup. He went on to become a premier amateur player (he played before the tennis tour was professional), winning the U.S. Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon during his career. With other players, he founded the Association of Tennis Professionals in 1969, making it possible for players to share in the financial rewards from the sport’s increasing popularity.

He also became a social advocate, speaking out against apartheid in South Africa — a cause he discovered when he was denied a visa to play in the South Africa Open. Ashe also became well known for raising awareness about AIDS. He had two heart surgeries, and years later discovered that during the second one he had contracted HIV. He revealed his status to the world in 1992, and raised AIDS awareness with his openness. He died of the disease in February 1993.

Ashe’s performance at the NCAA championships in 1965 came long before any of his social involvement, but those victories helped pave the way for Ashe to become an activist.

“Winning the NCAAs was the first major triumph that Arthur had and was the forerunner of much greater accomplishments on and off the tennis court his entire life. It helped propel him through his life,” Benjamin said.

Still making a difference

Ian Crookenden, Ashe’s doubles partner at the 1965 championships, said he was largely unaware of what his teammate’s accomplishments meant for the country socially. A New Zealand native and a member of the amateur tennis circuit for three years before coming to UCLA, Crookenden saw nothing out of the ordinary in Ashe. In his home country, he was never introduced to racism and his involvement in tennis had exposed him to people from all different cultures.

“(Ashe) was just another teammate,” Crookenden said. “He was from the East Coast and he was black, but I’d been playing around the world. I’d played everybody. It didn’t make any import to me.”

Crookenden credited UCLA coach J.D. Morgan with keeping the team from experiencing any of the prejudices common in the U.S. during the 1960s, even when they played matches in areas of the country that remained segregated at that time.

“I never realized some of the problems that existed. I never was aware of it when we traveled. We would room together and we all stayed together as a team, and I never was personally exposed,” Crookenden said. “J.D. Morgan made sure that when we traveled as a team, no matter where we played, there were no problems.”

To Crookenden, Ashe may have been nothing more than another teammate, but his race was an issue at a time when even Ralph Bunche, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and United Nations undersecretary, was denied admission to a tennis club in New York City because of his race. Ashe entered tennis at a time when it was, literally and figuratively, an all-white sport.

“He had to learn how to accept tremendous pressure being essentially the only African-American in situations where people expected a great deal from him or wanted him to fail,” Benjamin said. “He was a pioneer. That helped him on a leadership level, fighting for social causes.”

Ashe has been the inspiration for dozens of awards for leadership, courage and sportsmanship, including ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award, the ITA Arthur Ashe Sports manship and Leadership Award (which Ashe started with the organization in the 1980s) and the Aetna Voice of Conscience Award honoring Arthur Ashe.

Earlier this month, Ashe was chosen as one of the inaugural inductees to the National Youth Sports Corporation Hall of Fame. Ashe is being honored for his passion for youth, which led him to found the National Junior Tennis League in 1969. The program is currently administered by the United States Tennis Association and serves 200,000 youth at 472 sites nationwide.

Though described as a modest man, friends believe Ashe knew he was making an impact on the world, particularly late in his life. Smith said that Ashe’s advocacy for different organizations and his acceptance of the challenges late in his life contributed to his influence.

“The last three years of his life, he made more of an impact than the rest of it,” Smith said.

Benjamin agreed that as Ashe neared his final years, he became more aware of the difference he could make in the world, though he may have still underestimated the reach of his inspiration.

“In the last 10 years of his life, I think he became aware of the degree to which he had an audience that was paying attention. But he was an intrinsically modest person and I suspect he probably underestimated how important he had become. I don’t think he would think of himself as being that important,” Benjamin said.

“He kept growing and transcended sports. He became so much more than that. There haven’t been too many people like Arthur. He was just an extraordinary person.”

Arthur Ashe’s landmark championships

Arthur Ashe won many championships during his legendary career. Among them were: