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Category: College tennis

  • A Tennis thing chat with tennis professional, Long Dao

    I learned about tennis professional Long Dao while researching an article about the rise and fall of the Pierce College tennis team. I have come to think of community colleges like Pierce as stepping stones for students who lack something they need to go directly to a four-year college or university. Sometimes what’s lacking is financial, other times it’s academic and often it’s a combination of things that bring students to a school like Pierce. As a guy who went from Pierce to UCLA, I’m very grateful the school was there for me in all the ways it was. As I think back on the professors I had both at Pierce and UCLA I am pleased to think that, in many ways, it was the professors at Pierce who had the most consistently positive impact on me.

    I didn’t play intercollegiate sports while I was at Pierce but I knew they had a great tennis team. By the way, I went to Pierce in 1980 so we’re talking about a good long while ago. Finding out Pierce no longer had a tennis team was a real shock to me. You see, a couple years back I took up tennis and this has brought me to consider a lot of tennis playing what-ifs, one being a musing about playing tennis for Pierce back in the 80s.

    But, let me connect my first thoughts about community colleges generally to intercollegiate sports. It is more than a shame that Pierce College does not have a tennis team. To me, it points to an institutional failing that may be centered at the Los Angeles Community College District or it could be a home-grown failing with the administration of Pierce College in Woodland Hills. No matter. It is a very unfortunate example of Pierce College failing its students.

    Even though we’ve just reached the day when colleges are able to directly pay their so-called student athletes it’s important to acknowledge that only the most elite athletes playing for the highest-profile colleges are likely to see much of anything in terms of financial compensation. One can argue this an elevation of student athletes at all schools but I would argue that what it really does is create an even greater separation between elite athletes and the kind of true student-athletes who have always been a part of competitive sports at schools like Pierce, or even Division III athletes. More is the pity.

    I am very grateful that Long Dao, the last coach of Pierce College, has been generous enough to be interviewed by Tennis thing.

    Thank you, Long!

    Coach Long Dao with student athletes at Pierce College, 2019 (Photo by Chris Torres)

    Tennis thing: Tell me a little about how you got started in tennis. Who got you into the game and where did you first play?

    Long Dao: My first exposure to tennis was around when I was five or six years old when my family (aunts, uncles and cousins) would play and I would tag along.  But I never did any serious training  until I got to high school.  Essentially, I did not start my tennis career until I was 14 years old.

    Tennis thing: By the time you became a student at Pierce, had you ever heard of Coach Paul Xanthos?

    Long Dao: I had not heard of Coach Xanthos until the first day of fall practice when I joined the team in 2005.

    Tennis thing: How long did your own playing career extend? Did you continue to play while you finished your education at UNLV and Long Beach?

    Long Dao: Competitive tennis ended for me right around when I transferred to UNLV.  I may have played a few tournaments here or there but training and regular tournaments practically ended around then.

    Tennis thing: I know you were an assistant at Pierce before taking over the team yourself. What were the most important lessons you learned from Coach Xanthos? Also, what did you have to learn for yourself the hard way, from your own coaching experience?

    Long Dao: Simplicity.  Coach Xanthos would always try to simplify the game for us as players.  That is something to this day I try to do for my students.  

    As a player, I was always one to drill and drill, be extremely repetitive in training, till I reached my goals, whether it was to perfect a shot or execute patterns.  I was relentless in how I went about that.  I have come to learn that many students, especially the younger players that I have worked with, learn and process things differently than I do.  So being able to change teaching styles to reach and connect with different players was something that I had to learn over time.  

    Tennis thing: I didn’t know Pierce was forced to abandon their tennis program until earlier this year and I was very disappointed. As I point out in my article, it was hard to believe a school with an enrollment as large as Pierce could not field a team. I know it’s ancient history now but do you think Pierce valued its tennis history enough? Could the school have done more to keep a team under the school’s banner?

    Long Dao: Short answer, no. I have some of the fondest memories there as a player and coach.  I have had the pleasure of meeting wonderful people there from teammates, players and staff members to fellow colleagues and coaches from Pierce and other schools, many of whom I’m friends with to this day.  Some of my favorite coaching memories happened there, taking the team from last in the conference to challenging for the conference team title and winning an individual conference doubles title. 

    But, it was shortly after that accomplishment I learned tennis at Pierce was, sadly, not valued as much as I had hoped.  It simply was another class that was offered and if it does not generate the revenue from enrollment or participation than, like many other classes or offerings at the school, the program will end up getting cut.    

    Tennis thing: I’m sure it’s very different for you, being a tennis professional, rather than coaching a group of college students. Do you miss coaching a team and can you see yourself coaching at the college level down the road?

    Long Dao: There are some aspects of coaching a team that I miss and others I don’t.  Will I ever coach another college team? I honestly don’t know.

    Tt

  • The Rise and Fall of Tennis at Pierce College

    A couple days ago, I stood at the net with my new Monday hitting partner, George. I was helping him with his ball striking. No, not his tennis ball striking but his golf ball striking. My instruction is not what’s interesting about the story. George was talking about playing a local course, the Moorpark Country Club. I winced, knowing what I did about his game. I tried, subtly, without saying he wasn’t nearly good enough to play that course, to convey that golf should be played only on courses that a player can handle.

    “Tennis is different,” I said. “Look at this court. It’s the same size a every tennis court you can name. Even Pope Leo XIV’s court is the same size as every other tennis court though we cannot be sure of the dimensions of Pope Julius III’s court (1550-1555) since it no longer exists.”

    Even though the popularity of tennis, at least in the United States, rises and falls, tennis courts are everywhere. Nearby Pierce College in Woodland Hills has nine tennis courts for its 20,000 students. What it doesn’t have is a tennis team.

    Pierce’s Tex Smith, 1962. Photograph by George Birch.

    Founded in 1947 at the Clarence W. Pierce School of Agriculture, Pierce has been home to some great tennis teams and tennis players. Its first team hit the scene in 1961 and by the late 1970s Pierce was a local tennis powerhouse. Coached first by Nick Buzolich, a 6′ 7″ alumnus of Pepperdine, himself a fine tennis and basketball player. Buzolich lost in the quarter-finals of the U.S. Clay Court Championships to Pancho Segura. Early players for Buzolich included Steve King and Tex Smith, both valley boys.

    Starting in 1965, Paul Xanthos took over the Pierce team for the next 30-plus years. By 1995 the team had amassed a record of 550-94. I attended Pierce from before the time I graduated from high school in 1979 until I transferred to UCLA in 1981. I can remember seeing the name Xanthos on virtually everything on campus that had anything to do with tennis. He was a walking institution and has been recognized by both the USPTA and the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.

    By 2005, the Pierce team was led by a former student of Xanthos, Long Dao. A year later, Xanthos died in Hidden Hills. From then until 2020, Dao caoched the team. As late as 2018, the program had success in sending players to the The Ojai Tennis Tournament with the entire roster nearly advancing to the competition. Darvel Lossangoye went the farthest in the singles competition reaching the Round of 16. The 2018 Pierce team finished the season 7-4.

    Days before the team’s February 2020 opener, Interim Athletic Director Susan Armenta made the decision to pull the plug.  “Looking at the previous seasons, when it came to the facilities and participation, it made the most sense to drop the program and not pursue another season using some of the resources that we have,” Armenta said. The previous season, Pierce tennis was disqualified heading into every match because of their player shortage. The era of Pierce tennis that spanned from 1961 until 2020 had come to an end.

    As a Division III school, Caltech does not offer athletic scholarships. But, with a total undergraduate enrollment of right around 1,000 the school is able to field a men’s (and women’s) tennis team. I know, I’ve seen them play and there are some excellent players on Caltech team of eight. As I noted above, Pierce College has something around twenty times the number of students as Caltech, but no tennis team.

    Despite these facts, the then-Dean of Athletics Genice Sarcedo-Magruder said one of the reasons the program was dropped is because of the low enrollment. “The athletic programs are also classes,” Sarcedo-Magruder said. “If there are less than 15 students they tend to get cut, so that is part of the challenge. Our facility is not that good so when you bring in players and they see the courts, they would get discouraged.” 

    That last sentence is what really motivated me to research and write this. When we think of Pierce we are thinking of eighteen to twenty year olds who lack either the academic preparedness or money to attend a four-year college or university. To believe that population would show up at Pierce, see its nine courts and then move on strains credulity. For reference, Division I UCLA has three tennis courts at its much-vaunted Los Angeles Tennis Center.

    Obviously, the issue is not that simple. But, I fear the essence of the problem is far deeper. Pierce College doesn’t need elite athletes. It needs true student athletes. I’m disappointed in the school’s inability to generate enthusiasm for a once-great program that made its mark decades ago. Is it too much to ask for the administration to do all it can to show how those past successes can lead the school to a future that includes tennis? Tt