MOULTRIE — Lonnie White began playing tennis at the relatively late age of 12, but has more than made up for the tardy start by still being competitive 34 years later.

The former Moultrie High, Abraham Baldwin College and Grambling State star won his 15th and 16th national championships this year at age 46, long after most of his contemporaries have relegated their playing to weekends or evenings.

And he continues to give private lessons and last year was named the assistant tennis coach at ABAC.

His long and successful career has led White to the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame. He will be inducted as part of the 10-member 2006 class on Thursday, September 28, at the annual induction banquet at the Colquitt County High cafeteria.

Tickets for the induction banquet are available at the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce and at Modern Cleaners.

Also being inducted this year are Nina Brannon Cooper, Jerry Croft, Richie DeMott, Veronica Freeman Reese, Dennard Robison, Jeffrey Moss, Lynda Moseley, James Stancil and Jill Middlebrooks Stuckey.

White first picked up a racket seriously when a tennis court was built in his Northwest Moultrie neighborhood.

A number of the other youngsters in the neighborhood also tried their hands at the game.

“And I wasn’t even the best one,” White said this week. “James Pullins was probably the best.”

Others young black players such as Reginald Scott and Jackie Dixon also played, but never took it to the next level.

Packers coach Mike Jenkins remembers an outstanding player named Craig Harris, who came out for the team as a senior and never lost a match.

“I wish more of us had stuck with it,” White said.

And while Pullins went on to play football, basketball and baseball, White concentrated on the sport he had the gift for.

When he was in ninth grade, his biology teacher — who happened to be Mike Jenkins — asked him to go out for the high school team.

And he has continue to play at a high competitive level ever since.

“I played other sports, but I didn’t set the world on fire with any of them,” he said. “And I didn’t grow as much as I’d like to to play football.”

At Moultrie High he specialized in doubles, winning the south championship with Johnny Windom his senior year in 1978.

“He was a good athlete,” Jenkins said of White. “He was real quiet.

“But he had great speed, which was his calling. He had great hands and great feet.

“And he worked hard.”

White credits Jenkins with getting him off to a strong start in tennis.

“He was a very good coach and he really believed in a good work ethic,” White said of Jenkins, also a Colquitt County Hall of Famer.

“And he really cared about tennis.”

The Moultrie High tennis teams White played with were successful ones, with such teammates as Windom, Ricky Sherling, Eddie Statom and Patrick Gore.

The girls team had future NCAA champion and Colquitt County Hall of Famer Lisa Spain on its roster.

After his senior season, White accepted an offer from ABAC coach Red Hill to play for the Stallions.

He played No. 3 singles at ABAC and lost in the round before All America designation in Waco, Texas.

But he did not always see eye-to-eye with Hill, he says, and when he saw the Grambling State marching band on television, decided to head west.

“I contacted their coach and sent him my player record and right away they offered me a scholarship,” he said.

At Grambling, White played for Dr. Wallace Bly.

“His gift was to make better men out of us,” he said. “He encouraged us to do the right thing, to be responsible.”

White was all-conference all three seasons at Grambling, helping lead the team to conference championships each year.

One of his personal career highlights was a victory over a player from Auburn.

When he left Grambling in 1984, he had an offer to play professionally.

“I thought I was going to set the tennis world on fire,” he said.

He played four years on a professional circuit.

“You have to follow your dreams,” he said. “You need to pursue them.”

But making ends meet was difficult, including traveling by car to events, finding inexpensive places to stay and cutting other corners.

“You don’t need to be worrying about expenses when you’re playing,” he said. “You need to be working on your game.”

White has been able to support himself and his family as a photographer over the years while also being able to give private tennis lessons and travel to compete in tournaments throughout the country.

“I still have that passion for it,” he says. “And I like teaching kids and helping kids.”

White has taken pride in improving the games of numerous young players over the years and notes that two are now in medical school and another has passed the bar.

One of his top students is Monte Tucker of Birmingham, Ala. Tucker, who has worked with White for eight years, has gone on to play at Illinois and at the University of South Alabama.

He also has worked with a number of Colquitt County players over the years and will get to give some instruction to two more in the coming months.

In his role as assistant coach at ABAC, he will have former Lady Packers Lindsay Jacobs and Gracie Qurnell under his wing.

White’s son, Edward Richardson, also is a fine player and was a member of the team at Tuskegee University.

White has won 16 national championships over the years, including men’s 45 singles and mixed doubles championships at the America Tennis Association’s 90th National Championships held in July in San Diego, Calif.

Last year, ranked No. 1 in the men’s 40s in the South, he won the men’s 40 singles and doubles titles at the ATA’s Nationals in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Those titles were repeats on the ones he captured in the ATA National Championships in Houston the year before.

White won his first national championship in 1997, a tournament in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.

He is currently preparing for the U.S. Tennis Association’s 40 Nationals, which will be held Sept. 29-Oct. 5 in Savannah.

White said he has had plenty of encouragement during his long and successful career, starting with Moultrie’s Jerry Denegall, “who encouraged me to be a tennis pro.”

He said his grandmothers Fannie Fulton and Inez White “have always been there, encouraging me to do my best, no matter what.”

White said he also remembers Lynda Moseley, the longtime Moultrie Recreation Department tennis instructor who also will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, taking him to tournaments.

Also instrumental in enabling him to continue his career have been Phyllis Hollingsworth, Mark Mobley, Steve Lazarus and his wife of 16 years, Marietta.

“I didn’t start winning until I got married,” he said.