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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Coaching Updates, Novikov Wins in Toronto, BB&T WC Challenge, #TheSol

As we head into August the coaching carousel should start slowing down with the beginning of the fall semester just around the corner. Two more women's positions were filled in the last few days which leaves the number of openings on the women's side in the single digits.

Bowling Green State Director of Athletics Bob Moosbrugger announced the hiring of Stephanie Damacio as the Falcons new women's head coach. Damacio, a 2011 Wichita State graduate, had been the assistant coach at BGSU for the last two seasons with the squad going 2-36 (.053) in that time frame. Damacio replaced Olga Elkin who departed for Nebraska-Omaha after a rocky two seasons which saw a slew of losses (36) and a lot of outbound transfers (7).


South Dakota State Director of Athletics Justin Sell announced the hiring of Joey Barnes as the Jackrabbits new men's and women's head coach. Barnes spent the last four seasons as the women's head coach at D2's Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa. Barnes compiled a 45-29 record at Upper Iowa which was his first head coaching job after serving as an assistant at several schools over the last 15 years. Barnes replaces Michael Engdahl who stepped down after five seasons to pursue other opportunities.


Here is my current list of head coaching openings at the D1 level.

New Miami men's head coach Aljosa Piric named Petar Danolic as the Canes new assistant coach. Danolic has been working as a private tennis coach in Bradenton, Florida, since 2012 though he does have college coaching experience after serving as an assistant at Texas Tech and Arizona.

Illinois's women's coach Evan Clark, who just had the interim tag removed from his title, officially removed the interim tag from his assistant coach Kelly Cameron. Cameron, who played for Clark at UNC Wilmington, joined the Illini prior to last season after serving as a graduate assistant at North Georgia.

This last coaching update happened earlier this year but I didn't notice it until today when I was looking over the list of college coaches scheduled to attend the USTA Boys National Championships in Kalamazoo. Dimitar Kutrovsky, who was a three-time All American at Texas and who was in the ATP top 300 last year, is now the assistant coach at Texas San Antonio (UTSA). Kutrovsky retired from the tour and joined UTSA back in January but there wasn't any kind of news release by UTSA and he actually still isn't listed anywhere on UTSA's site - come on UTSA let's get on the ball!!

Dennis Novikov, who spent two seasons at UCLA before turning pro in the summer of 2013, picked up his first top 50 win after defeating #43 Federico Delbonis 6-4, 6-3 in the first round of the ATP Masters 1000 in Toronto. It was just Novikov's third win at the tour level and he'll go for #4 on Wednesday when he faces #6 Kei Nishikori.

Georgia Tech rising junior Chris Eubanks and 2013 Samford graduate Zac Dunkle will meet on Wednesday in the finals of the BB&T Wild Card Challenge. Eubanks advanced to the finals with a 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 win over Georgia Tech teammate Cole Fiegel while Dunkle defeated Harvard commit Galen Lee 4-6, 7-6(6), 6-4. The winner of the Wild Card Challenge gets a wild card into qualies at the ATP 250 event which begins on Saturday morning in Atlanta. If you want to follow along with the action you can check out the twitter feeds of the BB&T Atlanta Open and Parenting Aces's Lisa Stone. Lisa provided game-by-game scoring today while BB&T had a periscope feed running for a little while.



I also wanted to make mention of a junior tournament that Lisa is organizing which will be taking place from August 20-21 in Pikesville, Maryland. The Sol Schwartz #SaveCollegeTennis All-In Tournament presented by Holabird Sports is a memento to Schwartz who was a huge college tennis advocate that passed away suddenly this past March. There was a nice article on 10sballs.com that gives some more background on both Schwartz and the creation of this tournament so if you get a chance give it a read.






10 comments:

Lisa Stone said...

Thanks for your support of #TheSol, Bobby! It's going to be a great event!

Anonymous said...

Why would BGU promote an assistant coach who went 2-36 and had 7 players transfer? Not sure of the thought process with that decision.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the Bowling Green promotion - that was just an absolutely lazy hire. You would never see something like this happen in any other sport. If a coach/coaches in another sport went a putrid 2-36 in 2 seasons as well as have 7 players transfer out, they not only would get rid of the head coach (which BG did) but also everyone else on staff. Notice how in the official release they did not mention 1 thing that she had accomplished during her time at BG, mainly because there wasn't anything to talk about. Here we are at a time when we are trying to "legitamize" our sport so that we can market it more to the masses (get more fans to come to matches and more exposure on TV) yet we keep hiring coaches who in many cases are grossly unqualified or just have terrible track records all in the name of gender equity. These hires are a direct slap in the face to the profession.

Anonymous said...

Any news on Old Dominion and Santa Clara head coaches? First fall events the weekend after Labor Day...

Bobby said...

Dominik Mueller just got the ODU job - haven't heard much about SC.

Anonymous said...

What happened to Derek Mills at Santa Clara, he was to young to retire,

The assistant looks capable, although young to step in.

Anonymous said...

SCU is an excellent and highly regarded school in a fantastic location (Silicon Valley) with a very nice facility - there is no reason they could't recruit great players (except for that men's scholarship issue of course) and have a strong team. But they need to bring in a solid name to do that. Hope they don't give up and give the job away.

Anonymous said...

Completely agree. It really can't get much better than SCU. What is the men's scholarship issue?

Anonymous said...

Maybe it is hard to live on a tennis coach's salary in Silicon Valley. Probably need to recruit a young PAC 12 or other Power assistant with good experience without a family-someone who doesnt need a house.

Anonymous said...

Agree, probably needs to be a young, single coach without a lot of debt! But they need to get an experienced one, not a newb. Many coaches make their money outside of coaching - with camps, clinics, lessons - so will need to do that to make it in the Bay Area as a college coach. From what I understand, SCU is not fully funded at 4.5 scholarships on men's side, I don't believe the girls team is fully funded either. Can make recruiting a challenge - but a good coach would attract talent regardless. Besides, guys are use to not getting hardly anything, particularly as a freshman at any school. And they wonder why tennis is on the decline in the U.S., hmmmmm. Foreigners are just happy to get over here and into any school. But that is another topic altogether...

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