FRANKLIN—Russ Sholes has quite the retirement racket planned for himself, but that’s just a cheap attempt at humor for the man who has been teaching tennis at Cypress Cove Country Club for the last nine years.

After all, Sholes, who is retiring in late June from the club, has more than 40 years in the coaching from both college campuses to private clubs.

He’s also been a soccer coach along the way and was part of a Dean Junior College soccer team that won the national championship at that level in 1962.

That Sholes moved to Franklin nine years ago might be considered something of a given: Dean Junior College — now Dean College with nearly 1,000 full-time students — is located in Franklin, Mass., about 30 minutes from Boston.

But his first day in Franklin — just before the flood of 1999 — he remembers the events well.

On one of his first trips in the new town, he went to the Winn-Dixie to do some grocery shopping.

“Let me tell you of my first day,” said Sholes, who has been called “methodical” by a friend. While shopping, a woman approched him and said, “You must be Russ Sholes.” He said he asked her how she knew that.

“Because I heard you were coming and I know everyone in this store but you. So, you must be Russ Sholes.”

Sholes said, “That was the warmest welcome I could ever have received.”

The woman who encountered Sholes and introduced him to the ways of a small town? Anne Parker.

Sholes had another warm welcome moving to another area of Virginia, but that one was hardly a personal greeting.

Having spent a year in Vermont and having experienced a snowfall so soon into the winter, Sholes accepted a job at a Virginia Beach club. It was, in many ways, quite a distance from Vermont.

“When I got out of my car on Nov. 15, 1973,” said the methodical man who was able to wear shorts and a short-sleeve shirt because of the warm weather at the beach that day, “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

Later he said, “God, I hate the cold weather. I shake my head every time I think about” living in Vermont.

He’s going to be enjoying a much longer warm season: He’s moving to The Villages, described as “an active 55-plus adult community” near Orlando, Fla. Sholes calls the community with 22 executive golf courses, eight 27-hole championship courses and a slew of other activites, “an adult candy store.”

And that might just suit the 66-year-old.

Brian Hedgepeth of Franklin, an old friend whose daughter, Katie, played at Southampton High School and took lessons, described Sholes as methodical, and said the tennis teacher “never sits still.”

“He’s an early riser,” Hedgepeth said. “It’s nothing for him to be on the tennis courts at 8 a.m. teaching a lesson, walk nine or 18 holes of golf in the afternoon then teach again until 7 or 8 p.m.”

Sholes said the two players he has taught the longest while in Franklin has been Lindsay Raulston, a sophomore who plays No. 1 singles at Southampton Academy, and Jennifer Sing, who plays No. 1 at Franklin High School.

“I would be proud to have either one of them as my daughter,” he said.

Sholes, who is now single, has two grown daughters living in Virginia Beach, but his two sons have traveled: One works in Vermont, the other son works in Singapore.

But as far as his own plans, Sholes, the busy one, postponed his retirement for a few weeks because of a rafting trip he planned to the Grand Canyon fell in mid-June, and he said he figured it was better to stay through the month at the Franklin club.

He’s already bought a house in Florida, has a part-time job set up and made perhaps the most important purchase facing him in his retirement: A golf cart. With his name painted in the side. “The left side,” said the methodical man. The golf cart “is the major mode of transportation” at The Villages.

Again, talk shifts to future. The Villages, he said, “has its own zip code” and has 62 restaurants.

There are 500 things to do there, he said, “and I might not want to do 450 of those things,” but the 50 remaining should keep him busy.

There is a game called “pickle ball,” a fast-paced event that includes volleying a whiffle ball with a wooden paddle on an outdoor court, about half the size of a tennis court. Teams change quickly, which makes for easily meeting

new people.

“I met 20 to 30 people in the first day” of visiting The Villages before he decided to move there.

But that’s into the future.

The past has some busy times, too. After his soccer success at Dean College, he played on scholarship at the University of Rhode Island. He played a little semi-pro soccer in the Philadelphia area after that, long before professional leagues were launched in this country

He went on to teach Rutgers University’s Camden campus, as well as coach soccer and tennis. When he arrived at Rutgers, he said, the school was mired in a 70-game losing streak. That streak was ended with a 3-1 win over Philadelphia College of Bible, now called Philadelphia Biblical University.

From Rutgers it was to Vermont for that ill-advised year which eventually drew him to Virginia.

One highlight of his tennis playing days was to play against tennis Hall-of-Famer Arhur Ashe in an exhibition.

“The most honest thing I can say” about playing the late former great, “my expectations were to be able to return any of his balls.”

One shot skimmed the tape of the net and fell in for a winner, and another skipped away on the painted line for another but Shole said he doesn’t consider those winning a point.

Sholes said he won only one point outright — one point in a 6-game-to-none loss.

“But he was just the nicest man,” Sholes said.

“There was never any doubt about who was going to win,” he said. “It was a matter of when, but I enjoyed losing to him.”

But men who are called methodical, by definition, means there’s a method to there ways. Which brings us to the present.

There are mechanics of tennis to be taught to the yongest student and to the oldest (and Sholes said he’s taught a 4-year-old and an 88-year-old during his Franklin tenure — “they all present a unique challenge,” he said) but he said he takes pride in teaching to the younger players not just the basics of hitting a tennis ball, but how to behave on the court, or off of it, for that matter.

“I don’t want my kids misbehaving,” he said.

He said he tries to “foster an ethic” of respect in his students. That starts, he said from shaking hands as a greeting.

“My kids know how to do that,” he said. For those who don’t shake hands, there are “certain exercises” they can expect to endure.

“And that’s the type of thing we want to instill in them,” he said.

Brian Hedgepeth, the friend, said players would be required to shake an opponents hand after a match.

“That went without saying,” he said.

If, for some reason, that act wasn’t handled properly, Hedgepeth said, “He steered you back” to the basics.

As for his leaving Franklin, Soles said he has mixed feelings. A few months back, Hedgepeth asked his friend where he planned to lived upon retirement. Soles said he was taken aback. He said he planned to stay in Franklin, where he had so many friends.

But the call to the warmer weather of Florida made a louder plea.

“I’m leaving with a smile,” Soles said, “But a very heavy heart.

Hedgepeth said his friend’s skills went beyond the white lines of a tennis court.

“When it comes to teaching,” he said, “I think he’s one of the best we’ve ever had here.”