Tired of the demands foisted upon her, budding prodigy Becky Varnum decided enough was enough. The problem, she decided, was how to convey the message to her parents.
So one night, supposedly retired for the evening, the 7-year-old crept out of bed and into her parents’ bedroom, where she left a note that she had worked long and hard on.
“Dear Mommy and Dad,” it read in part, “I love you very much, but there is something I have to tell you — I don’t want to play the peano any more.”
Bright enough to know that pleading alone might not be enough, Varnum offered a carrot as it were, adding that if her folks agreed, she would play tennis “every day.”
Keeping her end of the deal wasn’t much of a problem for Varnum. Through the days when she avidly kept score at her older sisters’ matches, through her own stellar junior career and four years at Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado Springs, where she not only never lost a match (68-0) but failed to drop a single set, through an All-America run at Notre Dame, Varnum breathed the game.
“Even today, when I open a new can of balls, I put my nose into it. I just love the senses of tennis,” she said.
Some of that love will be returned tonight, when Becky Varnum Bucolo, 30, and now married, will be inducted into the Colorado Tennis Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Marriott Denver Tech Center. Joining Rhona Kaczmarczyk, Jack TerBorg and posthumous honorees Chester Harris and Vernon John, Bucolo clearly considers the ceremony one of her greatest career honors.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “I’m speechless.”
It was clear that drive wasn’t going to be a problem for Bucolo. Her parents still have a picture of their daughter at age 4, racket in hand. Although she probably stood a foot shorter than the net, the look on Bucolo’s face indicated she was determined to succeed. When she was 13 and heard that former Wimbledon champion Dennis Ralston would be teaching at the Broadmoor, Bucolo insisted on signing up for lessons.
Not much later, Bucolo embarked on what might be her singular accomplishment, her perfect run at Cheyenne Mountain.
