The history-maker becomes a history graduate: Billie Jean King finishes her degree at 82

Billie Jean King has spent her entire adult life making history. This semester, she had to write a paper about it.

When the 82-year-old icon walked across the stage at California State University, Los Angeles on Monday to receive her bachelor’s degree in history, she did so with a vantage point few undergraduates ever manage: She was actually on the syllabus.

Sixty-two years after pausing her studies to pursue professional tennis full-time, the International Tennis Hall of Famer finally finished her remaining year of coursework, even analyzing the very LGBTQ+ and Title IX movements she helped architect.

While completing her degree was something she always wanted to do, her passion was reignited when she learned a little over a year ago that she was just one year short of finishing the degree she started in 1961.

"I went, 'Three years [done]? Oh, I'm going back for sure,'" King said ahead of the ceremony in an exclusive interview with USA Today's Cydney Henderson.

Leaving campus for the court

King won her first Wimbledon doubles title while first enrolled in what was then called Los Angeles State College, but left campus in 1964 to focus on tennis full-time.

In the decades that followed, she became one of the greatest players of all time, founded the WTA Tour and forced systemic changes for women across sports and industry. Her work eventually earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Congressional Gold Medal, and even a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Yet on Monday in Los Angeles, she added the achievement she considers one of her most important of all. Wearing a golden stole with the words "student athlete" and "G.O.A.T." -- the acronym for "Greatest of All Time" -- King hit tennis balls from the stage to her fellow graduates before receiving her long-awaited diploma from university president Berenecea Johnson Eanes.

Six decades after walking away from academia, the school's name wasn't the only difference she found. Taking remote classes, her coursework ranged from historical research and writing to historiography -- the study of how history is written. Along the way, she even had to write an essay on Title IX, the landmark 1972 law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education and other U.S. government-funded organizations that she played a pivotal role in getting passed.

Dominance across three decades

The career that kept her away from the classroom ultimately produced 39 Grand Slam titles. Her haul included 12 singles championships, 16 in women’s doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles.

She established a particularly dominant footprint at Wimbledon, where she won a record 20 titles across all disciplines. In 1973, she swept the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at the All England Club in a single tournament, a feat she accomplished while playing at the peak of her game. Later that same year, she defeated Bobby Riggs in the highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes" match in Houston, pulling a massive prime-time television audience into the conversation surrounding equity in sports.

That watershed moment followed her legendary 1970 stand alongside the "Original 9” -- the group of courageous players who signed $1 contracts to launch a breakaway circuit and fight for equal prize money. That rebellion laid the groundwork for the creation of the WTA in 1973.

It also earned her a unique distinction in tennis history: Having already entered the International Tennis Hall of Fame as an individual in 1987, she became a two-time inductee when the Original 9 were enshrined together as a group in 2021.

By the time King retired from professional play, her 129 career singles titles and relentless drive for systemic change had cemented her status as an international icon.

A deeply personal milestone

As the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college, King says her "one regret" about doing it now is that her parents, Bill and Betty Moffitt -- who always stressed the importance of education -- and her brother Randy are no longer alive to celebrate with her.

But, humble as ever, she adds this accomplishment isn't just about her. When she announced on social media last spring that she intended to complete her degree, she received messages from folks worldwide saying how inspiring her effort was. One Instagram user even said that she returned to college at age 75 because she was motivated by the tennis legend, who wants her parting message to be that it's "never too late" to pursue education.

"Graduating, it's just thrilling. Really. I'm thrilled because of the way the other people have responded to this," King said, having also delivered the commencement address at the university's ceremony. "I thought, OK, I'm going to get my degree, but I had no idea people would be so connected and feeling this ... in every age group. It's like, 'Oh my God, now I'm excited. Because they are.”

Decades after setting the gold standard on the court, the ultimate student of the game finally collected her diploma.

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