Hall of Fame
Taylor served as UT Martin’s head tennis coach for 33 years, 27 of which came while members of the OVC.
Coaching both the men’s and women’s programs, he reached the 500-win milestone in 2016 and retired after the 2019 fall semester with 535 career victories – then the fifth-most wins amongst active NCAA Division I head women’s tennis coaches.
His seven OVC Coach of the Year awards are still a league record (two more than anybody else dating back to the inception of the award in 1977) as his teams combined to nab six OVC championships. A truly consistent winner, Taylor’s women’s squad appeared in the OVC Championship tournament a whopping 26 times in his 27 seasons at the helm.
Fresh off the heels of producing a pair of NCAA Division II men’s national champions in 1991, it didn’t take Taylor long to get acclimated to the NCAA Division I ranks. He guided the women’s team to back-to-back OVC titles in 1994 and 1995 – UT Martin’s second and third years as members of Division I. He also led the Skyhawk women to an OVC championship and first-ever berth in the NCAA Division I Tennis Regional in 2005 before adding regular season crowns in 2006, 2011 and 2016.
Overall, Taylor coached 13 All-Americans, five OVC Players of the Year, three OVC Freshmen of the Year and 74 all-conference honorees. Taylor was inducted into the UT Martin Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021 – joining nine of his former student-athletes.
As successful as Taylor's on-court accomplishments were, his team's academic achievements were equally impressive. His teams routinely produced a 3.75 team GPA or higher while five of his student-athletes were named OVC Scholar-Athletes. Four of his squads (two men's, two women's) generated OVC Team Academic Awards while his Skyhawk women's team received national recognition by the NCAA in 2014 as all eight players sported a 3.5 GPA or higher.