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.
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
Tennis thing 