Longtime tennis coach honored
By Chad Winthrop
Palisades High School tennis coach Bud Kling has been selected as the 2018-2019 California Boys Tennis Coach of the Year, the latest honor for the state’s winningest high school tennis coach ever.
The honor, bestowed to Kling by the National Federal of State High School Coaches Association, was based upon coaching performance in the 2018-2019 school year, lifetime community involvement, school involvement and philosophy of coaching. In a letter sent to Kling, it was mentioned that the longtime coach was specifically nominated by the California Interscholastic Federation as the “most deserving recipient of the honor”.
Kling, who is the winningest high school tennis coach in California history, led both the boys and girls teams to league titles this past season.
A UCLA graduate, Kling began his Pali tennis journey as the assistant coach to Bud Ware in 1977 before taking over the head coach role in 1979. Since then Kling, who is Pali’s longest-tenured coach, has gone on to do one thing: lead teams to victory, possessing a .903 winning percentage over the decades.
Over the years, Kling. who was inducted into the CIF-LA Hall of Fame in 2017, has coached both the boys and girls tennis teams at Pali High. He led the girls for all but one season between 1984-2007 before stepping down only to return in 2015 to coach the girls to five straight section titles. Over 40 seasons, Kling has coached the boys to 37 league titles and 27 City titles.
