Intercollegiate Tennis Association

Dr. Jim Loehr is a world-renowned performance psychologist, authoring 17 books on a range of topics related to peak performance. This is Dr. Loehr’s second time on the ITA College Tennis Coaches Podcast. This time around we discuss what coaches need to do to move beyond any plateaus they face in their career; how to define and reinforce their culture; managing and coaching Gen Z student-athletes;...

Trey Morris was thrown into the deep end of his head coaching career when he signed on to be the assistant coach at Montana State and found out just weeks later that he was being promoted to interim head coach. Not only did Trey survive those first few months, he thrived, and the interim tag was removed. Trey’s team currently holds a 7-1 record on the spring season. He has made his program a darli...

Billy Pate and Damian Hume, the head men's coach and the assistant men's coach respectively at Princeton, join host Dave Mullins to discuss the in's and outs of the role of the assistant coach. Billy is entering his 27th year in college coaching and spent two of those years working under the legendary Bobby Bayliss at Notre Dame. Damian has served as an assistant coach at Boise State, Michigan Sta...

Many of you will have seen Arthur Bryant’s name mentioned in stories about reinstated college programs throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Law Journal has twice named him one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America. Recently, he has led ground-breaking settlements at eight universities that announced they were eliminating women’s varsity intercollegiate athletic teams. He also...

Somadi Druker has been the head men’s tennis coach at Queens College in New York since 2015. She has already claimed three East Coast Conference coach of the year honors by winning conference titles and taking her team to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division II Championships on several occasions. In this podcast we discuss why Somadi is an outlier in the world of college tennis, and college sports in...

Josh Goffi has been the head men's coach at the University of South Carolina since 2010. He also served as an assistant coach for the men's team at Duke from 2008-2010 and for the women's team at Arizona State from 2006-2008.   He was a successful player at Clemson and reached a career high ATP doubles ranking of 121 and a singles ranking of 488. In this podcast we discuss his father's influence o...

Sujay Lama, the head women's coach at North Texas, has a fascinating background having lived in three continents and is fluent in four languages. He grew up in Nepal and earned a tennis scholarship to Luther College in 1988. Since then, he has coached some of the top WTA tour players at Grand Slam events, won National Championships as an assistant coach at Florida, and now has 23 years head coachi...

Today I am joined by Dr. Tiff Jones, a certified mental performance consultant and founder of X-Factor Performance Consulting. As you will hear she is a former varsity soccer player and college coach, and specializes in mental skills training for athletes, teams, coaches and corporations. She works with a number of college tennis teams so is very familiar with our space. I think coaches will walk...

Dave Fish and Steve Smith have worked tirelessly for many decades to make tennis more accessible to the masses. Dave Fish is the former head men's coach at Harvard winning 21 Ivy League titles during his 42 year tenure. After his retirement from college coaching he served as Director of Development for UTR. He was also inducted into the ITA Hall of Fame in 2019.   Steve Smith is the founder and co...

Today, we’re talking with Erica Perkins Jasper, a leader in intercollegiate tennis, a successful Division I head coach, and distinguished student-athlete, who is now entering her third year as the Director of Athletics at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. In this episode, Dave and Erica chat about the pathway from student-athlete to head coach and head coach to director of athletics. In this interview, you’...

Boomer Saia (pronounced CY-uh) has orchestrated one of the best turnarounds in college tennis since arriving at Iowa State. In his three seasons leading the program, Saia has led the Cyclones to a 17-match home winning streak, a school-record four conference wins in 2021, the first Big 12 Conference Tournament win in school history, and the first NCAA Tournament berth in school history. One of the...

Grant Chen has followed Emerson's advice of "do not go where the path may lead but go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Grant started his college career on the UCLA club team before joining the UCLA tennis team staff as a student-manager. He then advanced to Director of Operations, Assistant Coach, Associate Head Coach, and was named the head men's coach at SMU in 2018. Grant is t...

In 2019,  Lloyd Bruce Burgess  gave up his comfortable well paying job as the Director of Tennis for Genesis Health Clubs in order to pursue his dream of becoming a head college tennis coach. He joined the University of South Florida staff as a volunteer assistant where he served for 5 months before being named the men's assistant coach at the University of Iowa in January 2020. He helped the Hawk...

Danielle McNamara is in her second stint as the head women's tennis coach at Yale. From 2006 to 2014 she led the team to four Ivy League titles and a 124-49 record. She returned to Yale in 2016 and her team was experiencing one the best seasons during Danielle's tenure before the season shut down due to Covid-19. In this podcast, we discuss Danielle's move into the head coaching role at Yale at ju...

This podcast with Dr. Tommy Valentini builds on some of the topics discussed in Chapter 16 of the ITA Coach Masterclass on Ethical Decision Making & Sportsmanship . Tommy is not only the head men's tennis coach at Gustavus Adolphus but is also a Professor of Sports Ethics. Tommy is currently undefeated in Conference Play (95-0) in his 11 years as a head coach!   In this podcast, Dave & Tommy discu...

Anthony Nguyen Pham has covered a lot of ground during his time in college tennis. He played at NAIA, Baker University; got his start in coaching as a graduate assistant at NCAA Division II Drury; moved on to be a head coach of both the men's and women's teams at NCAA Division I Niagara; transitioned to the assistant coach position at NCAA Division I Purdue and then the associate head coaching rol...

Dave Mullins was very fortunate to coach against Chris Young for eight years while he was at the University of Oklahoma. Dave witnessed firsthand the amazing impact Chris has had on the Oklahoma State women’s tennis program and is thrilled that he is able to share some of his insights with a larger audience today. Chris is now the Director of Tennis at Oklahoma State and has managed to turn a very...

Matt Knoll spent 22 seasons as the head men’s coach at Baylor amassing an astounding record of 510 wins & 150 losses, 13 Big 12 Regular Season Conference Titles, 6 Big 12 Coach of the Year awards, 3 ITA National Coach of the Year awards, two individual NCAA titles, an ITA Indoor National Championship and one team NCAA title.   He has now turned his talents to helping others as a college sports men...

Nadia Abdala played four years at Arizona State University before playing professionally on the WTA tour reaching a career-high of # 517. Since 2014 she has served as the Assistant Women's Coach at the University of San Diego. Clarisse Baca was a standout player at Sacramento State, helping her team to four straight Big Sky Conference Championships, and was herself a four-time All-Big Sky selectio...

Dwayne Hultquist has almost completed 21 seasons as the head coach at Florida State and is the winningest coach in Florida State history. Like many of our guests, he has won his fair share of coaching awards through the years.   However, as much time as Dwayne has put into developing his team into ACC and NCAA title contenders he also recognizes the need to spend just as much time building communi...

Darryl Cummings accumulated over 600 wins during his 20 years as a college coach at Norfolk State University, Virginia Wesleyan and Old Dominion University. You have probably come across Darryl on social media or on his YouTube channel , you may also know him as one of the founders of the UTR and Cummings Athletics. In this podcast, Darryl shares his insights into how coaches can develop their ent...

Bev Buckley is now in her 35th year as the Head Women's coach at Rollins College. She has led her teams to over 500 wins and has coached 21 All-Americans. She was also a standout player herself competing in Wimbledon, the French Open, and the US Open. Bev was recently recognized for her extraordinary commitment to the ITA and college tennis after being named the recipient of the 2020 ITA Meritorio...

Chad Stoloff was the head women's coach at the University of Northern Colorado. Unfortunately, the program came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2020 due to athletic department financial concerns around the Covid-19 pandemic.   Chad began his career as a volunteer coach at San Diego State before eventually making his way to the head men’s coaching role at the University of Nevada, where he led th...

Jeremy Loomis  is now in his 20th year as the head women’s tennis coach at Swarthmore College. He recently conducted a study named Perceptions of Division III college tennis coaches during the Covid-19 pandemic national emergency. Jeremy possesses a Masters Degree in Exercise Science and also an MBA. He has coached at Duke, Maryland, Miami of Ohio and oversees in Jakarta, Indonesia. In this podcas...

David Sammel is well known in British and ATP coaching circles. He has coached many of the top British tennis players throughout the years. He regularly writes articles and publishes content about sport, psychology. He has now developed an online course ( Mindset College ) to help athletes reach their potential on and off the tennis court. David has also worked outside of tennis consulting with En...