Hugh Curtler Coaching and Academic Achievements

Tennis2000: Inducted into Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Hall of Fame1992-1993: President of NAIA National Tennis Coaches Association1992: Inducted into Southwest Minnesota State University athletic Hall of Honor1991-1992: Vice-president of NAIA National Tennis Coaches Association1990-1991: Secretary of NAIA National Tennis Coaches Association1990: Named Wilson Sporting Goods/ITCA National Coach of the Year1988-1993: Member of NAIA National Ranking Committee (chairman 1990-93)Northern Sun Conference: Conference coach of the year five timesNAIA District 13: Named district coach of the year ten times

Coaching • Two Arthur Ashe Sportsmanship and Leadership Award national winners • Three NAIA first-team All-Americans • Six NAIA second-team All-Americans • Three academic All-Americans (who won multiple academic Awards) • One GTE All-American • 135 all-conference or all-district players

Academic Education: Bachelor’s degree, St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland. Master’s and PhD from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Awards and Honors: Maryland State Scholarship; Northwestern University Fellowship; Younger Humanist Fellowship; Visiting Fellow, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, California.

Author: Twelve books, dozens of academic journal articles and papers.

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

HUGH CURTLER: MORE THAN A HALL OF FAME COACH

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” —George Eliot

For fourteen seasons, from 1979 through 1992, Hugh Curtler coached the women’s tennis team at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota, thirteen miles south of Cottonwood. By the standards of the rural prairie of southwest Minnesota, Marshall is a large town, a regional center — population of about 13,000, home to a four-year university and the global headquarters of the Schwan Food Co.

But it is still rural and remote, far from where most reasonable followers of college tennis would expect a national power to emerge at any level of competition — NAIA, NCAA Divisions I, II or III. Yet, clawing from an early existence in which their courts were makeshift or battered by the cold spikes of Minnesota’s spring winds, Curtler and his Pintos became not only a national power but a model of how to build a college program the right way. They ended up being one of the most successful NAIA teams in the country, and played against — at, at times, defeated teams from NCAA Division programs like Wichita State, Creighton, Iowa State, Drake, the University of Minnesota and Ohio State.

A remarkable era, that, more than decades later, players and their coach continue to hold close. Jamie Horswell viewed her tennis experience so fondly she said she would prefer a reunion of her SSU tennis team over a high school class reunion. Once word got out of Horswell’s comment, in the spring of 2011, other players said they wanted in. Sharon DeRemer offered to host the reunion at her new home in rural Marshall. Holly Logan volunteered to organize it.

“I could literally write a book about my experiences as a member of the SSU tennis team,” Robin Steele said. “To say it was the time of my life is an understatement. It probably changed all our lives. Not only did it enhance the college experience, but it taught us so many lessons and created lifetime friendships. I don’t think our experience would have been possible without Hugh Curtler. Sure, we would have still had fun, maybe had a good team, but to be coached by him was so much more.”

* * *When Curtler took over, SSU’s program was only three years old. The school

itself was only in its twelfth year of existence. As with any new endeavor, when Curtler became coach, there was work to be done with the program.

But Curtler knew how to build. He extensively renovated two houses in Cottonwood, where he and his family lived. And, with a neighbor, he built a new garage from the ground up. In his renovations is a sort of metaphor to what he did as a coach: Curtler sometimes made do with material at hand, or adapted material he found for a new, but fitting, purpose. In one house, he took a pair of tall cupboard doors to fashion two outward-folding doors at the base of a narrow staircase—they fit perfectly, and, in weather extremes, could be closed to keep either the heat or cold out of the upstairs of the house.

And he built the tennis program, too. By the time he retired, his teams had won nine consecutive Northern Sun Conference titles, and he had, at the time, the best winning percentage of any coach in any sport at SSU.

Although new to women’s tennis, Curtler was no novice as a tennis coach. Six-foot-two, lean and fit, he had played intramural tennis as an undergraduate student and coached men’s tennis at the University of Rhode Island and Midwestern College in Iowa in the 1960s. He had many years of experience as a United States Professional Tennis Association tennis professional—a competitive professional and

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

a teaching pro, including in the Chicago area while he attended graduate school at Northwestern University.

Curtler was hired for the faculty at Southwest State in 1968 as a philosophy professor and chairman of the philosophy department. He founded the Honors Program at SSU, designed to give top students a challenging and rewarding academic experience, and directed it from its founding until he retired as a professor. However, in 1978, he had not coached any sport at SSU, and never had coached a women’s program anywhere. He was an athletics outsider, in a setting in which most coaches had physical education/health backgrounds and taught classes in the PE/health department. In some major sports, such as football or basketball, coaches might not have taught at all or were allowed reduced teaching loads, being given what is known as “release” time from an academic load because of the demands of their coaching responsibilities.

Even as his team became dominant, Curtler never stopped teaching in the classroom.

“I think his intelligence guided his coaching. I think that he was an excellent communicator and, even more importantly, a good listener,” said Carmen DeKoster. “He could pick up on how his players were feeling, whether it be on or off the court. He had the patience of Job. And probably the most important thing, his players respected him on his knowledge of the game. And if they are feeling like he is the best coach they could be playing for, it is going to make them a better player. And fair! They knew he was going to make all of them part of the team and looking out for their best interest.”

One way to summarize Curtler’s effectiveness is to say he knew what he taught, believed in what he taught, was consistent and clear in communicating what he taught, and cared about those he taught. He made it personal.

Curtler is viewed as someone who absorbed the experiences of life and, in turn, formed a style of leadership that—while, he said, developed naturally and intuitively—foreshadowed many of today’s structured, corporate-taught advanced leadership and team-building training methods.

A little bit legendary college basketball coach John Wooden, a little bit the nineteenth- century author George Eliot, a little bit the tolerant and patient father figure, a little bit modern psychologist and probably even a little bit the determined underdog who snaps at your heels long enough that, by the end of the day, he’s holding the leash.

* * *Like a lot of the region’s earlier pioneers, Curtler did not grow up a son of the

prairie.The coach, whose full name is Hugh Mercer Curtler II, is the great-great-great-

grandson of the Revolutionary War hero Dr. Hugh Mercer. Hugh Mercer was a brigadier general in the Colonial Army, serving closely with

George Washington, according to Paula S. Felder in her essay “Hugh Mercer: An Unexpected Life.” Mercer and Washington were friends before the Revolutionary War, and had been since their service in the British Army during the Seven Years War (also known as the French and Indian War), when they took part in the battle at Fort Duquesne. Mercer then moved to Virginia, where Washington’s family was wealthy landowners. Mercer became the physician of George Washington’s mother, Mary.

Mercer helped advise Washington on the famous surprise crossing of the Delaware River that led to the rout of the British at Trenton, New Jersey, in December 1776, and was at Washington’s side during that battle. Not long after, however, Mercer suffered bayonet wounds at the Battle of Princeton. After nine agonizing days, he died January 12, 1777. His death became a rallying point for Washington’s troops and Mercer became a war hero: Counties in seven American

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

states are named for Mercer, as are two cities in Pennsylvania. There is a statue of Mercer in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Another of Dr. Hugh Mercer Curtler’s great-great-great-grandsons was the World War II hero General George S. Patton. And another was the famed twentieth-century composer Johnny Mercer. Both were of the same generation as Curtler the tennis coach.

The history- and success-laden lineage of General Hugh Mercer was interrupted, jarringly, by Curtler’s father, Hugh Mercer Curtler, who divorced Curtler’s mother when Curtler was two years old and committed suicide when Curtler was a graduate student.

Curtler himself was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on New Year’s Eve 1937. He moved to Baltimore at age two after the divorce, and moved to Connecticut when he was six.

“[My father] was an alcoholic and a womanizer,” Curtler said. “I didn't know him at all. When I did get to see him I liked him, but his death wasn't something that touched me deeply. I was in graduate school and was told on the phone by a family friend who wanted to take charge of the burial. I feel about my sons the way a father who loves his children dearly does. It's too bad my own father never had that. I am more comfortable around women than around men for obvious reasons: my father deserted us early on and I was raised by two women (my mother and a sister). I have always felt more comfortable around women.”

Curtler always liked to multi-task, and finish tasks as quickly as he could, but is not sure if there was a psychological connection between that and his childhood. However, his answer to a question about it suggests probable connections.

“I don't know why I feel the need to finish things completely (and quickly), but I know I need praise,” he said. “I suspect I finished things in order to receive praise. One of the positives of the tennis team was the attention if brought me. But I don't think that is the whole story. I really cared about those women and liked being around them and seeing them prevail. I was solidly in their corner with no hidden agendas. Perhaps they sensed that? I don't know.

“I do think the divorce resulted in insecurities—which led to the need for praise. I worked hard in order to get stroked. This is one reason I was so upset after [SMSU’s handling of] my retirement: I thought the university was just saying ‘goodbye’ without giving me the credit I thought I deserved. I felt there was a cluster of faculty at that university who deserved more recognition when they retired. They did so much more than simply punch their time card.  I still feel bitter about that. I brought an awful lot to that job and when I retired I was [regarded as] just another old fart fading into the sunset. Anyway, that's another story. But it gives you an idea how I feel about getting the recognition for the things that I feel need to be recognized: and that carried over into my coaching. I gave praise and recognition whenever I thought it deserved—and so often it was. I knew how important it is to a person's self-esteem.”

* * *Curtler graduated high school in 1955 from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

in Baltimore, where he played the sport of lacrosse but not interscholastic tennis.After high school, he received a Maryland state scholarship for academics and

obtained his undergraduate degree at St. John’s College in 1959. Curtler earned his master’s in 1962 and doctorate in 1964 from the Big Ten’s Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He and his wife Linda were married during this time: They marked their fiftieth anniversary on June 15, 2012. (They have two sons, Hugh III and Rudy.) In graduate school, Curtler stood out, earning a Northwestern Fellowship three years in a row. As a professor, he was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a board member for the Minnesota Association of Scholars.

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

The topics and titles of the books and the stream of scholarly papers he wrote and had published give an idea of how deeply his mind runs, how arduously he thinks: Responsibility, Shame and The Corporation; Rediscovering Value; Recalling Education; Provoking Thought; and The Inversion of Consciousness from Dante to Derrida. His papers address freedom and civil disobedience, morality, virtue, cultural values, the role of media in society, classic literature, and sports.

Along with papers for academic journals, Curtler authored several articles on tennis. They include six “Tennis Tips” articles published in Tennis Magazine between 1974 and 1985. He also had “a fairly long instructional article (complete with cartoons!)” published in Addvantage, the official publication of the United States Professional Tennis Association: “Six Strategies for Courting Success.”

As he developed his academic record, Curtler stayed close to tennis, though.For five summers, when he was a college and graduate-school student, he taught

tennis at a boys camp in Maine, a job that seemed to affect his developing tennis mind the most. He admits to somewhat fudging his resume to get the job, but once in it, he learned as much as he taught.

“When I applied for a job as a counselor in a boys camp in my junior year in college I put down that I could teach tennis and was hired to do precisely that. I was lucky enough to hook up with an older man who was an excellent tennis player and we took the game apart and figured how to put it back together. I taught tennis at that camp for five years.”

Early on, he also was influenced by the wisdom of John Wooden, who coached the UCLA men’s basketball team to ten NCAA Division I national championships in twelve years, from 1964 to 1975. Wooden didn’t use a hammer, or a scream. His famous trademark image was of a calm coach on the bench, a rolled-up game program in his hand.

“When I was younger, I remember reading a story about John Wooden in Sports Illustrated,” Curtler said in a Marshall Independent story on March 13, 1992. “The story said that eighty to ninety percent of the comments he made to his team were positive. I think that’s something I would like to be able to say, too.

“Wooden, in my mind, is one of the greatest coaches who ever lived. He knew that there’s so much stress from the game itself that you don’t need to add to it. What a coach should do is diminish it, be a buffer, a cushion—and let the team play at the highest level it can. In fourteen years, I’ve learned a lot about people. I just hope I’m able to contribute a tenth of what I’ve gotten out of it.”

In an extended answer to a question in an e-mail interview, Curtler continued: “I honestly do not think coaching the tennis team was a giant ‘ego trip’ for me. True, I did enjoy the accolades and the recognition. But I knew full well who hit the tennis balls, scored the points, and won the matches, and IT WAS NOT ME! I was blessed with very talented people whom I liked and I simply tried to help them be as good as they could be. I was never as confident in myself as I was in them, strange to say. And I was keen to make clear to them the confidence I had in them.

“I enjoyed taking them places and watching them win, especially toward the end when we had players like All-Americans Leslie [Jacobsen Bosch], Josiene {Eggens], Carolina, Martha [Garzon] and Michelle [Olson]. I sometimes got the feeling when I looked at other coaches that they felt their team was lucky to have them as coach. I felt the exact opposite: I was lucky to have such skilled players on my teams! My pleasure came from their success, and their success bred continued success.

“I would also note that I think coaching, like teaching, is largely intuitive. You can read about others and talk to others, but in the end it comes down to your sense of what a situation calls for. You either know what to do or you don’t. It’s almost instinctive. It helped me immensely that I both liked and had confidence in my players, and that I had experienced pressures of competitive tennis myself and understood about tactics, especially doubles tactics. I also learned a great deal by attending coaching clinics—especially about the value of drills. But when the match

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

started, I tried to step aside as much as possible, because I knew it was now up to them. I watched and listened and stepped in only when I thought input would help. I was alert to the temptation to ‘over-coach,’ and I avoided that like the plague. I recall [former SSU trainer] R. A. Colvin’s story about a friend of his who was a track coach in high school. He had a good pole-vaulter who could vault 15 feet, and after he worked closely with him he became a pretty good pole-vaulter who could vault 14 feet! I took that advice to heart. I think you have to be willing to put yourself second and not take yourself too seriously. That doesn’t strike me as an ego trip, but, if it is, then perhaps I was on one. I ‘got off’ on the success of those players on the court and the way they handled themselves off the court.

“In the end, I love the game of tennis. I have been a student of the game for many years. I had a grasp of the mechanics of the game, enjoyed teaching tactics, and enjoyed being around most of the players I coached. It was not a chore. It was a delight. I looked forward to the practices and even to the long rides to matches. I tended to take it too seriously and it took a lot of time away from my family, but it was something I loved.”

His first recruit in 1979, Anne Pryor, who now does leadership training among other business interests, suggested Curtler had more than ten percent of Wooden’s greatness. “He was such a beautiful coach,” she said. “He inspired us. He has a gift to bring the right kind of people together to do the highest good,” Pryor said. “That’s because he was always trying to do the highest good.”

Others noticed. “There was a definite sense of pride for the SSU tennis program,” Deb Denbeck,

who became the university’s women’s athletic director in 1985, said. “It helped all programs because of the visibility we had through the tennis team.  I am not for sure if people really realized how special they were.  I believe it was hard for others to imagine that we could do this.”

Bob Pivec, a longtime Coon Rapids High School coach who sent several players to SSU, said Curtler’s academic stature gave him another edge over some coaches: Curtler had tenure as a professor. He wasn’t going anywhere, so recruits could trust he would be their coach all four years they played. “Places like St. Cloud State would hire a person who was a grad student or someone who was part-time and they never developed the continuity. You knew Hugh was going to be there, and that meant stability.”

Holly Logan is one of the brightest examples of a former tennis player carrying on the academic emphasis. In 2002, she was named the Minnesota Science Teacher of the Year by the Minnesota Science Teachers Association. She has been nominated for the National Association of Biology Teachers Environmental Teacher of the Year Award and for the Radio Shack National Teacher Award in 2002, among other honors.

“I think coaching and teaching are two in the same,” Logan said in May 2011. “Most coaches for any sport are also teachers—it just has a complementary fit. Hugh had high expectations for our academic success. He supported me when I went through my issue with a couple of professors of the major I was in during my junior year, and then switched out of (then picked up later, too). That’s probably the most angry I had ever seen him—how I was treated by these two professors. He got on the phone and was talking with them in a booming voice after I came to his office upset. I remember that like it was yesterday.

“He also made sure we were all good with our finances. I worked in the philosophy/foreign languages office as a student assistant. That gave me extra income, which is always good.”

Because many of his tennis players also were in the Honors Program, he was directly involved in their classroom work.

“As if tennis weren’t enough, to have a class with Dr. Curtler was a privilege,” Robin Steele said. “I took a couple of independent studies and he was tough but fair.

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

He really wanted you to understand the concepts and to use your creative imagination to expand on those. I recall many conversations in his office about various subjects. He was always so open to anyone stopping by to chat. Dr. Curtler was an amazing mentor.”

“I was academic adviser to a great many students in my forty-one years of teaching at the college level,” Curtler said. “I grew fond of many of them, especially the honors students who required a great deal of one-on-one advising, since they had to design their own General Studies plan. Often, the conferences went beyond mere academic advising and I happened to work with a number of students who had personal problems as well as academic problems—though I have always been reluctant to give advice. As a rule, my advice amounted to listening, caring, and helping people work things out for themselves.

“But the relationships between my tennis players and me was much closer than any of those relationships. After all, we spent a lot of time together, I had recruited most of them to Southwest, and I felt responsible for them—to make their experience at Southwest as pleasant as possible. I genuinely liked most, if not all, of my tennis players. We laughed a lot. That made working with them on and off the court easy. I was delighted to do whatever I could to help them over the hurdles that stand between a freshman and graduation.

“A coach has a special bond with his or her players, and I felt that. I suppose it comes from seeing them at their best and at their worst, dealing with success as well as failure; and they saw more than one side of me as well. The bond is stronger than anything I felt for my other students and it required that I be honest and forthright with them, and I expected them to feel the same toward me. I knew there was a line that I could never step over: I was not to be their pal, their buddy, but I was to be their facilitator and supporter, a friend in the broader sense. There were things they did not tell me, and I respected that. There were things I felt they didn’t need to know as well. But for the most part I was very up-front and open with them because I respected and really liked them as interesting people who were fun to be around. Trust comes about naturally when you feel that way about the people you feel responsible for.”

Bob Pivec said Curtler’s teaching side clearly affected his coaching side. “As a coach, I think there are some people who are a teacher and a coach—and it depends on what you are first. If you are a teacher first, and have a really good background in tennis, you can coach. Some people are good tennis players but they can’t explain the game, they can’t teach it. Because Hugh was a teacher, that allowed him to use his tennis knowledge in a way that someone who doesn’t understand education at all couldn’t do. Hugh understood education, the learning process, and had a terrific background in tennis, and I think he put the two together very well.”

* * *While there is much to learn about leadership, team-building and goal-reaching

from Curtler’s methods and coaching career, there is no magic formula in what he and his players did. There are no short-cuts, and no late-night-TV-infomercial promises of instant, life-changing success. The answer is found in age-old traits, and just a few words: Work hard and think hard.

That kind of coaching is built through experience, education and a mind open to new ideas and new people. It is built through communication, teaching with consistency, and being the stabilizing presence in the midst of challenge and change, and planning with precision. It is built through determination—a will or spirit strong and enthusiastic enough to convince others there is value in the effort, that with talent, heart and practice, it doesn’t matter how shoddy the facilities or how minute the scholarship pool, success can be reached.

“During the early years of coaching at SSU I played in numerous area tournaments, winning a few,” Curtler said. “I played in a couple of mixed doubles

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

tournaments with Anne Pryor early on. My skills as a coach came from my own experience as a player and also from the days when my friend and I took the game apart and put it together on the courts of the boys camp in Maine. I always considered myself more a student of the game than an expert player. I was good, but not great.”

Scott Boyer was a teen-ager who moved to Marshall from suburban Bloomington, Minnesota, in the 1980s. Marshall High School did not have a boys tennis team, so Boyer, a tennis player, had to search for people to play. After watching Curtler on the court one day, Boyer decided he would like a match against Curtler, too. But the high school kid did not approach the college professor directly.

“One day, I saw his car and left a note on it saying to call me if he wanted to play sometime,” Boyer said. “That year, we played once, twice a week. The next summer, we played almost every day.

“Hugh was by far the best tennis player [in Marshall]. I found him to be a challenge and everything else. I liked his sense of humor.”

A friendship flowered. Along with becoming a regular playing partner, Curtler brought Boyer into the SSU women’s program, first as an unpaid assistant while Boyer was a student at the university, then as a paid assistant.

Boyer is now the head teaching pro at the Rochester, Minnesota, Athletic Club. “Everything I learned about coaching that I feel has led me to this job, I feel I

really learned the foundation from Hugh,” Boyer said. “He just grasped the idea of an all-court game. He had a really good idea of what it took to have a complete game.”

Boyer also picked up leadership and personal skills from Curtler, and suggests he probably didn’t need to take the Dale Carnegie self-improvement courses the Rochester Athletic Club paid him to attend.

“The RAC sent me to the Dale Carnegie classes and other leadership courses,” Boyer said. “Hugh was doing leadership way ahead of the time. He addressed mistakes individually, he praised publicly, he encouraged. He just did all the things that leaders should do, that we expect them to do.

“I got a minor pretty much in philosophy because I took all his classes. It opened a new world to me. Sometimes, for me, I find myself doing something as an administrator and I don’t know why. It was because I learned from him. Now, I’ve put a name on it. I learned to coach, to stay even-keeled from Hugh,” Boyer added. “But you still had to have that passion for the sport, and he definitely had that.”

All-American Martha Garzon continued her tennis career after she left SSU. She played professionally and became a top-level teaching pro at various clubs in the Southeast and leader of a business that uses tennis to teach cardio-fitness.

“Today my style of coaching is very technical and I feel like Hugh gave me the perfect background for what I consider my philosophy of coaching,” Garzon said. “One piece of advice that Hugh gave me, and I remember up until today, was that a player doesn't need to be perfect to win; most of the time seventy percent is just enough to win if the head is in the right place.”

Logan earned all-district honors four times and all-conference twice in singles or doubles. She said she found Curtler to be an approachable teacher and coach, willing to discuss any topic.

“I did. That sums him up pretty well,” said Logan. “I don’t think I ever saw Hugh raise his voice in anger directly to any one of us my entire four years of playing for him. He was very analytical about everything we did on and off the court. He would pull us aside after our match and tell us what he thought we did well, and what we still needed to work on. He would be really supportive when he did come out and talk to us on changeovers. He would give us suggestions on what he thought we could do to turn things around.

“During a game, if I was struggling, I would look for him in between points and see if he was close by to get his look—he had distinct looks and body language that I

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

could read, ‘silent coaching,’ so to speak. The best thing I liked is that he always gave us a hug after our match.

“He really gave his heart and soul to us. He would always celebrate our success with us, too. He deserved it just as much as we did, no doubt! I remember him publishing a doubles strategy article in the USTA Magazine—we all really thought we were cool when that came out. Our coach in the USTA Magazine! “

Some former players and colleagues have described Curtler’s teaching and coaching methods as being ahead of their time. He borrowed methods from psychology, from philosophy, from history, and molded them, with his own experiences, into an effective approach.

“He was willing to work with the athletes that needed improvement, but thrived on coaching, teaching and motivating the highly-skilled athlete,” Ed Meierkort, later the head coach at NCAA Division I University of South Dakota, said. “I was stunned by the talent he had and how he was able to keep their egos in check, always working for a common goal. I was an assistant to Coach [Gary] Buer on the greatest football team ever at SSU. As good as we were, Coach Curtler's teams were succeeding at a higher level. I am always eager to brag about Coach Curtler's success at SSU. He is a great coach, and I was lucky to learn from him.”

Curtler was not the only coach, certainly, to experiment with emerging teaching techniques or who was said to have been ahead of his time. But because his methods were received so well by his players, and led to impressive results, and because many of today’s leading management and business consultants use techniques and catch phrases that sound a lot like Curtler, he invites study.

respond warmly and enthusiastically to leader-ship behaviors; companies need and recognize it.”

In an effort at education reform, the state of Colorado in 2010 provided grants to public school districts whose students have performed poorly on annual measurement tests. Working with a California company, the school districts are pilot programs in a reform effort called the Colorado Growth Model. In this specific program, the training is led by teachers, and collaboration, research and the open sharing of research data are considered essential to success.

A southern Colorado teacher who was also a trainer at her school described a process in which a teacher a) tells the student the type of problem or question she is going to have the student solve, b) presents the problem to the student, c) has the student repeat the problem back to her (x + 2x = 12, for instance), and d) repeats the problem together with the student. The discussion is concrete and points the student toward a result: “This is what we are going to do, and this is what you need to answer.” The teacher and student are on the same page, with the student knowing—understanding—clearly what the teacher expects of him. The shorthand, nickname term for the process is, “I do, we do, you do.”

Again, Pryor said Curtler coached with the same method thirty years earlier. “What I remember is that he was really the first coach to tell you [how to

correct a flaw in a swing], then show you, then do it with you. When he told me, I could sort of see it. Then he showed me, and I could sort of see it. Then he’d do it, and I could feel it. He’d stand behind me, manually, and he was able to help facilitate the change. He could communicate with you at a level you could understand.”

Curtler understands why his approach was compared to training models, but he is reluctant to claim the business label or connections to strict models that don’t permit individual variation. Maybe his approach resembled a business model in that similar descriptions are used for each, but his certainly had a personal stamp—and an interpersonal one.

“I have always hated the business model and thought it totally inadequate outside of business. In fact, I eschew models and, when I coached and taught, I tried to listen to my players and students and to adapt what they needed to know to what

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

they were saying. When I was giving tennis lessons, for example, I would hit with the student for a time and then suggest ways to do things a bit differently, applauding them when they got it right. If they didn't seem to know what I was talking about, I would change the wording and say the same thing in different words—sometimes repeatedly—until it struck a chord and they saw what needed to be done. I never put them down and tried to stay away from negative comments [learning from John Wooden]. Models tend to lock us in. The business model—regarding students as ‘products’—seems to me to be totally off the mark. Students are people and every one of them is different.”

Former player Sharon DeRemer, who became a business leader, said Curtler’s recognition that leadership efforts must adapt to human factors lifted him above the typical business training programs.

“Your comparison of Hugh to today’s leadership styles/training is right on,” DeRemer said. “I’ve attended a number of educational seminars, etc., over the years and he would certainly fall into the category of an individual who brought the team together for the common good. However, each person was also an individual trying to meet two goals: fulfilling their part of what was needed for the team but also we were there for the education and what came after the college years were over. Hugh definitely used the mental aspect of the game with many of us on the team to improve our play. However, there were a few that this approach did not work with. As every strong leader does, Hugh then took another approach with those individuals. In some cases, it may have been to just concentrate on the mechanics of the game.

“I have also thought the philosophy background Hugh brought to teaching and tennis was interesting. It probably gave him an edge because of his skills to analyze the situation. He also taught a logic class which I took in my senior year. This really stressed the mathematical concepts of logical thinking but pulled it into written language. I think it brought about ways to look at reasonable thinking in different ways. These would all be skills Hugh had in his tool box.”

Curtler may not have had a hard-and-fast model for leadership, but there was structure within his philosophy. He didn’t enter a tennis court or classroom with the intent of improvising his way through the day, willy-nilly drawing upon what he knew. His approach was grounded in moral and ethical beliefs, his teaching framework included high expectations for his students and athletes, and he had expectations for himself to communicate clearly, care, and create the foundation for life-long learning. His approach was structured, but flexible enough to work within different conditions, with different students.

“I always felt that if I was working with good athletes, I needed only to work on essentials during practice and pretty much leave them alone during the matches. I just stressed technique and worked on building their self-confidence. Even though coaching is allowed in collegiate tennis during the changeovers, I saw too many examples of over-coaching and I was not going to fall into that trap. I knew we were good, and I simply told my players that, in a matter-of-fact way, and they bought into it. They were good. I recall Amy Pivec telling me one time that when she was warming up for a match she looked to her left and to her right and saw her teammates warming up and she realized what a terrific team she was on! She was right. It must have given them all a good feeling. I know it did me!

“…But it was not all about winning in my mind. If the women played their best that was all one could ask. And they pretty much always did. One exception was [a player in the mid-1980s], a spoiled kid who had immense skill but put out very little effort. I yelled at her once when she was dogging it on the court during a match and she got so mad she played out of her mind and won! But I only yelled at a player one other time and that was during practice and off to the side—not in front of her teammates. I didn’t believe in yelling. I learned that from John Wooden! Stress

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

fundamentals and strategies and practice hard—hitting as many balls as possible in the two hours of practice, and then let the chips fall where they may.

“When a player made a mistake and missed a point, I would never dress her down. I always felt that the player already knew she had blown the point and felt bad enough already. She didn’t need me to rub it in and make matters worse.

“I never belittled or embarrassed a player in front of her teammates. I seldom criticized them even in private—though I had to have a serious talk with Carolina after she stormed off the court when losing to a player she thought (rightly) she should have beaten. I held her out of the next match. But on the whole I was very respectful and even fond of the women who played for the university and felt it a privilege to coach such a group of interesting and talented players—several of whom were better players than I.

“I made a mistake once in preparing for a match with Gustavus. I told the team we matched up very well against them at number 1 through 5 and we had a good chance to win (which we did). But Michelle McLean played at No. 6 and I had slighted her, thoughtlessly. She played the match of her life—one which I figured we would never win—and beat the tar out of her opponent! I apologized to her in front of the entire team at the next practice! I dare say that wasn’t the only mistake I ever made as a coach, but it stands out!”

Scott Boyer remembered that incident: “To me, that is one of the signs of leadership, when you can admit you made a mistake.”

In another case, Curtler recalled an all-conference player who left the program. Curtler said he lost credibility with her.

“She was one of the very few women who quit the team in mid-season,” he said of that player. “She had beaten several players on the gym floor who played ahead of her and she thought I was being arbitrary. I knew her abilities and her limitations better than she did. And the gym floor was not the surface they would play most of their matches on. But we would never agree about that! It was one of the bleak moments in my coaching career. It happens, but it is not fun.”

“He gave each one of us his attention and I truly believe no one ever felt slighted. He had a way of making you feel like you were the only one in the moment that he was concerned about,” former player Robin Steele Dreyer said about Curtler. “His knowledge of tennis was amazing, as were his skills. He was competitive, but supportive. Little did we know how much we had it made with him. Now, watching other people coach my children, I realize a special coach is a gift. Hugh was that.”

One example is the time in 1984 when DeRemer injured her wrist on summer break.

“Sharon was a senior and had hurt her wrist over the summer. so I had ordered a ‘kindlier’ racket, made of alloys, that was supposed to make less vibration than her metal rackets and be easier on her wrist,” Curtler said. “She played several matches with it but was clearly uncomfortable. I called her mom in Coon Rapids and after dinner one night, Linda and I got a babysitter for the boys and got into the car and drove [about one hundred miles from Marshall] to Glencoe where we met Mr. and Mrs. DeRemer at a restaurant. We got a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and talked with them for a while (neat people, by the way) and they handed over Sharon's old rackets. I didn't say anything to Sharon, but the next day when we were about to play another match, I called her aside and handed her the two old metal rackets. She grinned from ear to ear and went out and beat the stuffing out of her opponent!

“True story!”

Coaching MechanicsCurtler’s one-on-one teaching abilities were effective in practices, as he worked

to refine strokes, approaches, and more mechanics of the game.

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

“He was not the type to yell,” Carolina Gomez, who played from 1986-89, said. “He was just kind of serious. He’d just come over and approach you one on one, make a comment or tell you what you did. Sometimes, he also was pretty funny. He would call me ‘Coffee Bean.’ His approach was the right way, I think so. He really trusted our abilities as players. I think he thought we needed more strategy and mental work [than working on physical skills].”

Yet, Gomez recalled patient work on the mechanics of her game.“For me, he worked on my approach to the net with the backhand. He focused

on that. His approach was nice because there could be so many things and he focused on one thing at a time. Also he would have us practice some game situations. ‘OK, Carolina, it’s 4-2. You’re up 4-2, and you’re going to serve now.’ We would rehearse key points, and work on what you would do, psychologically, if the other player beat you in a set, to come back in the next set. It was really helpful. We would do a lot of quick sprints, front and back, high balls, so we really worked on every aspect of things. Drop shots. He loved drop shots. So we practiced a lot of that. He’d laugh and laugh when you’d hit a drop shot.”

“Carolina had trouble with her overhead. She would let it drop and hit the net often. Hugh saw that, and worked on that,” Boyer said.

Curtler worked to improve Horswell’s second serve, a change that was as much psychology as physical mechanics. Horswell had a powerful first serve, but when it missed, she’d follow with a weak, safe second serve just to be sure it stayed in bounds. Curtler described her serves as a rhythm of “bang! then dink, bang! then dink.” He tried to get her to put more force behind her second serve, but finally suggested she simply vary the pace from time to time — the soft shot first, then a blast on the second serve. He figured it might have an effect similar to a baseball pitcher’s use of a changeup. It might throw her opponent’s timing off.

Horswell tried it at a key moment—in a match against St. Cloud State: “In a very crucial match, she goes ‘dink!’ on the first serve and caught the player flat-footed,” Curtler said.

While he wasn’t loud personally, Curtler wanted aggressive play: “I made them play the net. I made all of them play the net. Robin [Steele] was scared to play the net, afraid she was going to get hurt. I had seen that [the sporting goods company] Prince had a new racket with a huge head. One of my perks, through a connection I had, was I was able to get one of those rackets at cost. Robin got that Prince racket and was just bold—she wasn’t afraid anymore. She and Jamie just beat the stuffing out of people in doubles matches. At the net, they were just tigers.”

“You would think a typical young college gal would dread practices,” Steele said. “Not our team. Not only did we practice hard, but we had fun. Hugh taught us so much and knew every drill in the book.”

Curtler said using drills was the best way to teach in the confined space of the PE gym. Some coaches pair off players for scrimmages or full matches day after day, often because it is easier than detailed skill work. In SSU’s case, scrimmages or matches would allow only four players at a time on the tight courts while the rest stood idle. Drills got all of Curtler’s players involved at the same time. If he did open the floor to scrimmages, it was for doubles, where there would at least be eight players on the court instead of four playing, the remainder standing around.

“I believe in drills. If you have drills then they are hitting lots of balls in a short amount of time,” Curtler said. “And you can stress the sort of shots I wanted them to work on. Half-volley, drop shots. . . . We didn’t play matches too often inside [in practice].

“At practice, the first fifteen to twenty minutes, everything was volley, volley, volley at the net. I would talk to them about how to hold their racket depending on the level the ball was at [as the opponent returned the shot]. If it was lower than the net, then they needed to hit a lob or soft volley back. If it was higher than the net, they could get their arm extended, take a full swing and just put ‘em away.

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

“The more you back up, the more you’re giving away. At the net, you get seventy to eighty percent more of the court to hit to because you’ve got more angles.”

Although Curtler’s methods may have been advanced, he did not often use advanced technology. He once did use technology to make a point about playing at the net: “Josiene wasn’t believing that she was backing up during volleys. I said, ‘you’re backing up and giving up the advantage you have at the net.’ She said, ‘no, I’m not. I’m not.’ And I videotaped her and played it back at practice and she said, ‘oh, I am.’

“It’s also a hard thing to be playing from just behind the service line; they call that ‘no man’s land.’ But for about fifteen minutes a day, we’d work on it. These kids learned to get down, get the ball and they did it well because we used the fast floor. Normally, you’re not supposed to play at the service line because most balls land at your feet there and you can’t return them.”

“Some were more successful with that [working on mechanics] than others, and could adjust their game, and some just said, ‘I have my game and that’s how I’m going to play.’” Sharon DeRemer said. Then, with a laugh, she added, “he and I tried to improve my serve for four years, and it still ended up being the weakest part of my game!

“I think at times there were some pretty structured efforts to make changes in players’ games. I was always a baseline player and he got me much more used to going to the net. We worked a lot on my forehand, too, because my backhand was always stronger.”

Boyer said drills were specific and demanding, but not always laborious. “A couple drills I learned from Hugh I still do today,” Boyer said. “One of the

drills is a game called 21, a ground-stroke rally game. The other is the Killer Drill. That would work you aerobically and it was a hand-eye thing, working with you up at the net on your quickness.”

“One of the reasons our doubles teams were so good was I worked on tactics a lot,” Curtler said. “A lot of drills. One was Four-Ball. I picked up a lot at clinics. Rick Yates, the head pro at Lilydale Racket Club [in the Twin Cities], ran a lot of good clinics, and I modified this one from his camp.

“(1) The first ball, short. Hit an approach down the line, come into the net,” Curtler said, explaining the steps. “(2) Second ball at the service line. Stop and hit the low volley. Move forward. (3) Third ball, right at you: volley. (4) Fourth ball, over head. Crunch it!

“We were always good in doubles. Even when Gustavus was better than we were, we usually took two of the three doubles matches. We spent a lot of time working on doubles strategy, hit it down the middle, take it high, and be aggressive. And we were aggressive.

“We used hand signals. The net player would signal to her partner where she wanted the serve so she could stay, poach, or fake a poach.

“The women became quite adept at hitting low, fast-moving tennis balls—or moving in and taking the ball in the air before it could bounce and skid away. The practices on that gym floor became something of a spectacle and it was not unusual to see a couple of dozen people watching from above as the women ran drills and hit balls with incredible speed and dexterity. Scott Novak, who used to coach at Gustavus, said, ‘your kids finish points better than anyone.’ And that was because we worked on those things.

“I always structured my practices very carefully—stressing weaknesses I saw in the players during their matches. I ran drills and had them hit as many balls as time would allow. I built the drills around the specific skills I wanted them to perfect. All of the players improved by playing such tough opponents [on their own team]. We practiced many, many tiebreakers. So we were good on fundamentals, very quick at net, excellent at doubles, and very good at tiebreakers!”

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

Match DemeanorWhile he could be hands-on and detail-oriented in practices, Curtler’s approach

was different during matches. There, he often adopted the stance of someone who’d done his best to prepare his players for whatever they’d encounter, and stayed calm and quiet as his players competed. Yet, his players always wanted him to be within eyesight—at a crucial moment in a match, even if wordless, a glance or gesture from Curtler could be a difference-maker. “One year, I had to play Martha in the district finals and Hugh was three courts away,” Jacobsen remembered; “That was tough.”

“I saw too many examples of over-coaching. Over-coaching leads to self-consciousness. I had good athletes. I wanted them to have fun, relax as much as possible, and do their best. Thought is an obstacle in sports; in life it is essential. When an athlete is ‘in the zone’ he or she isn't thinking at all. It is mere reflex and reaction . . . pure spontaneity. In that regard, tennis and life differ. But in so many other respects, one can learn a great many valuable life lessons from playing tennis.”

The pressure in organized youth sports has swollen, matching the increase in money invested in programs by parents and communities—thousands of dollars a year, now, for camps, weekend tournaments, travel, and equipment. That is frequently compounded by parent and community expectation placed on young athletes, sometimes to the point where corners are cut in training, skills teaching and ethics, in order to get kids playing competitive games as soon as possible.

As a parent with children involved in Twin Cities-area youth sports, Robin Steele has seen examples of poor behavior by adults at games run by an organized association. She believed such behavior will influence young athletes as they grow into high school or college athletes. In fact, she said some of the wrongdoing and ugly attitudes of today’s big-time adult athletes likely can be traced to what they learned or saw as kids.

“My [fifth-grade] son’s basketball team just finished playing in the championship game in Edina,” she said in February 2012. “An Edina cop, a police community services officer and a Police Reserve were in attendance per the association’s request. The other team’s coach as well as the parents displayed poor sportsmanship as well as a total lack of respect for the game. The problem today in youth sports is that no one is taking control of the behavior of the parents or the coaches. The youth see this and then model their behavior accordingly. Parents and coaches need to be thrown out of games and held accountable for their actions.”

She later added, ”I don’t remember Dr. Curtler ever raising his voice, telling us we played pathetic, etc., and yet even when we played our worst, he was able to create a successful winning team.  I think a lot of coaches today could learn a lot from him.  [He could start a new business teaching coaches how to make] motivational speeches without all the screaming and tantrums!”

Curtler talked about the importance of his players having fun, and playing the game the right way. If players were to give their time to practices and road trips, with minimal scholarship money in return, Curtler at least wanted the experience to be positive.

“I planned out every single practice to the minute,” Curtler said. “I kept the practice schedule each day on a note card, and we stuck to it.”

In part, that was because he wanted to maximize the learning in the time he had with the players—and not waste their time. They seemed to appreciate it, he said: “These kids were not getting any money (for tennis scholarships), but they were there every day, and they laughed a lot. They had fun.”

“I used to watch my players warm up and then leave and get a cup of coffee!” Curtler said in describing his demeanor during matches. “When I came back, I had to wander near the courts to watch for missed calls and to intercede if there was a

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

conflict, but I seldom coached during the match. If I picked up something in an opponent's game, I would pass that along, but usually I didn't have to say a thing!”

When he did say something, it was not mindless chatter or a generic cheer. It was incisive, maybe just enough to tip a match in favor of a Pinto: “He saw so much by looking at your game,” Gomez said. “In meets, you wanted him watching your match, because he’d quickly see things and then tell you at the changeover or between sets.”

“He had a great knowledge of tennis,” Suzie Hintz said. “I think that’s what I got out of him a lot, the knowledge of tennis he’d bring to the game as coach. He’d always sit back at the fence. You knew what he was thinking. He said very little, but you knew what he was thinking.”

Attention to DetailSometimes, Curtler acknowledged, he could “micromanage” the team or a player

and was not always a good delegator. But more often, his focus on even the smallest things ahead of a match was valuable, Boyer said.

“He looked at every little thing in what he could do to prepare the team for a match. Attention to detail, from the food, to when we had to arrive, to making sure the players had extra socks. . . . He strung rackets and gripped rackets, just a lot of attention to detail. . . . He would be straight-forward and honest, prepare them from travel time to the time they had to be on the courts to stretch time. That attention to detail. ‘Do you have extra socks? Do you have extra shirts? Extra grips and rackets strung? Are you ready for this match?’”

In part, Curtler had to attend to all of the details of the program because he often had no other staff—certainly no tennis staff, until Boyer came along and another assistant, Marianne Zarzana, in 1990. He got extensive administrative help from Maggie Larsen, the philosophy department’s administrative assistant. Gomez praised Larsen as “always being patient and supportive and willing to help.”

But on the court, on road trips, for many years, it was just Curtler and his players—not even a trainer. The coach learned how to wrap ankles and knees, which proved valuable on many occasions. “[Trainer R.A. Colvin] would give me a large container of water on match days and send me off. He and his assistants had to be at the spring football practices. He did wrap ankles and knees before home matches, but on trips I had to do it. He taught me.”

“My attention to detail was, in the main, positive,” Curtler added in an interview in March 2011. “I am compulsive—that describes it. As soon as I got my schedule of matches for the upcoming season, I got my hotels lined up months ahead of time. I’d call, and the hotel would be, ‘are you sure?’ And I’d say, ‘yes.’ I don’t want to wait when there’s something to be done. When I get the bit in my mouth, I take off. It drives Linda crazy.

“When we would go on a trip, we worked the budget out ahead of time—how many miles, how much gas would we need? Maggie helped me a lot.

“On the day of a trip, I’d go to the campus food service and roust someone to load sandwiches and fruit. I am big on attention to detail. I don’t always do it right, because I want to get it done, but I was able to do six things at once, when you think about it: directing the Honors Program, chairing my department while I was teaching classes, coaching tennis, writing all those articles and having a family.”

Visualization and Mental ApproachCurtler borrowed from methods commonly used today in psychology—such as

self-hypnosis and mindfulness (teaching a person to concentrate his thoughts on the current moment, the “now,” and not dwell on mistakes made just moments ago, or a week ago, and not worry about events in the future). At other times, like the day in the dark gym, he employed exercises designed to have the players think specifically

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

about the future: plotting strategy, seeing themselves in hypothetical situations against an upcoming opponent. The aim was to have them be mentally comfortable and confident when the real thing took place, so they could play at a sharp, intense level.

To some, it may have looked or sounded strange to see the players working on what some considered futuristic or non-sports sorts of training. What would a coach who believed solely in push-ups and running laps have thought had he walked into that darkened gym, and seen players prone on the floor? Some players had little use for the techniques, but others found them effective. They believed the methods improved their performances and, thus, enthusiastically embraced them.

“We started meeting in a lounge-type room now and then to listen to tapes of ocean waves either live or on our head phones and cassette players—lying down with the lights real dim,” Holly Logan said. “Every now and then we would hear his voice say one word or a short sentence about tennis: The ‘visualization’ you mentioned. We were encouraged to listen to the tapes frequently. His work on our mental psyche was a little crazy, we all thought at first, but it really had an impact on our ability to stay focused on just being ‘in the tennis moment’—not worrying about anything else—just playing and having fun. Playing with confidence. That’s what we would say to each other while we were playing, or before starting a match.—‘Be the ball,’ ‘confidence,’ or ‘Just have fun!’”

Visualization is a technique used by psychologists to help patients overcome anxiety or fear, of an upcoming event, or, on the court, not be surprised by whatever turn events take. The person repeatedly pictures himself in the situation, from its physical details to noises, smells, and stressors. Then, when the moment arrives, even if they’d never been in that exact situation physically, they had been mentally: they know what to expect, largely, and are not mentally surprised.

Not everything was exotic or even complex. DeRemer said one of the most effective tools she used to prepare for matches was a notebook in which she kept details of previous matches. But Curtler’s methods caught the eye of other SSU coaches.

“Hugh was a very unique coach, much of this due to his extraordinary wisdom,” said Denbeck, who was also the head volleyball coach. “He taught his players to out-think their opponents in so many ways. Yes, he did spend a great deal of time on visualization—I once had him come into my volleyball practice to work on our passing, and much of it had to do with [having players] identify a panel on the ball to help follow the flight of the ball and I know he practiced this same drill with his players as well. He was really able to help pick apart the opponents’ weaknesses and he trained his players accordingly.

“Sometimes Hugh saw the game in a completely different way than most would ever think. He taught the game in a philosophical manner. Don’t get me wrong, he still trained them physically for endurance and quickness, but he taught vision of each shot and coordinated that with the pace of the game.”

Curtler did not view the mental-preparation methods as gimmicks. They were a serious part of the teaching process.

“You have it right. If the player visualizes the key points, the mind learns how to deal with the situation without actually being in it,” he said. “By the time she is actually playing the key points, she has done it hundreds of times and it's no big deal. You remove stress by imagining yourself in stressful situations again and again—and always escaping victoriously—and when the time comes you are more relaxed. It's a Zen thing, as I recall.

“I also had them listen to relaxation tapes and use self-hypnosis. I remember reading about a player who wrote the message ‘You love tie-breakers’ on a small piece of paper and taped it to his mirror. Every day when he shaved or brushed his teeth he read the message and said it over to himself and eventually became a bear at tie-breakers. I tried anything that I thought would help them. I always thought of

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler

tennis as a bit like life: it can be stressful, and any technique we can teach ourselves to deal with the stress will help us be more relaxed.”

Two players, Gomez and Eggens, remember some of the more inventive tries.“We also had to carry our tennis racket face up and never let it hang,” Eggens

said about one drill. “And every time you hit the ball, you’d say the word 'yes' in your head. I still use this when I play. I think these kind of practices cannot come from a hard-nosed coach. He was a real good coach. You could tell he was a doctor in philosophy.”

Sometimes when he did say something, it could be in a burst of pop-psychology, with surprising results.

• When it worked: “My favorite coaching memory of him was in a match where I was playing poorly and he was like, ‘well, play better!’ And I did!” Katy Pivec said, laughing. “He just asked me what was wrong and I said I was doing badly, and he said play better. I think he trusted us. He gave us good advice and trusted us to play well.”

• When it backfired: “We were at a St. Cloud tournament and Carolina was struggling with a weak player,” Curtler said during his remarks at Gomez’s Hall of Honor induction in 2011. “We do better against teams that hit the ball hard, because we hit the ball hard, we’re aggressive, because of our gym floor. And we don’t do as well with push-ball players, and this girl was just pushing the ball back to Carolina, and I could see she was getting frustrated.

“Normally, I don’t say much in a match. But here I thought, hey, I’m a philosopher, and I figured let’s try some philosophy. I went up to Carolina and said, ‘Carolina, you’ve got to see the bigger picture. It’s just a tennis match. It doesn’t matter.’

“She looked at me in shock and said, ‘YES IT DOES.’ So I shut up and let her play.”

•••Curtler stepped into a program with no money and no facilities. He recruited

players, at first, who were asked to enter the same situation. Later, he brought in players from around the world to play for SSU—the metaphoric equivalent of bringing a player from tennis-heritage-rich Coon Rapids to Marshall in 1979.

Everyone took a leap of faith, in other words. So, was it all worth it?“I have often wondered why I worked so hard at the tennis (and Linda has asked

that question more than once!),” Curtler said. “After all, in the grand scheme of things women's tennis at Southwest is a speck on the horizon. But I always thought that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. I worked hard and loved what I was doing. I have always loved tennis and have been struck by the parallels between life and tennis (as I mentioned). There are highs and lows, days when you can't miss and days when everything seems to go wrong—but you have to persist. If I didn't think tennis had lessons to teach us about life, I don't think I would have worked so hard at it. I think that permeated my approach to everything I did with the tennis team.”

Dana Yost: A Higher Level Excerpt Coach Hugh Curtler