As an athlete on the Ludlow Girls Varsity tennis team, our Spring season has already been throwing us for a loop. For some background, last year’s team was coached by a former Baird Middle School teacher, Mary Jordan. While the team had a fun and successful season with her, Coach Jordan unfortunately took a job elsewhere and was unable to return to coach the team this season. This created a short-lived crisis within the tennis community, as a lot of things were up in the air.
Who will our coach be?
What will the season be like?
Will we even have a team this year?
Leading up to the Spring season, our athletic director, Tim Brillo, kept us updated on the status of our ongoing search for a coach. It became increasingly apparent that there were little to no serious inquiries, but Brillo vowed that there would still be a team, it would just be run by the “athletic department” until a long-term coach was found. So coming into the first practice of the season, nobody expected there to be 24 girls stuffed into half of the main gym, being coached by Brillo and a former student athlete, Malina Dinis.
Malina, graduating class of 2024, was our first singles seed last year. With assistance from Coach Brillo, she decided to take the responsibility of head coach just a week before the season started, while juggling her freshman year of college at Western New England University. She was motivated to offer her assistance because she “knows how Ludlow runs” after 4 years on the team. This decision, while daunting, has been successful so far, as we have gotten through the preliminary parts of our season and are now beginning gameplay.
Malina’s top priority as a young coach is to “keep a coach-athlete relationship” with the team. As much as she has already formed relationships with most of us as a teammate and friend, she is now working to keep a more authoritative position in order to effectively coach the team. Another goal of hers is to win Western Mass, which is a general goal for all coaches but would be even more of an achievement for a young coach.
When asked about her biggest challenge, she said that it was the ability to balance time between the girls that are newer to the team and the returning players. With an influx of athletes as compared to seasons before this year, there are many athletes that are still learning the ropes, which requires more 1:1 direction from the coach. While trying to build those players’ skills and confidence, she is also tasked with finding time to work with her older athletes to perfect skills and build strategy.
Our team has fallen into its usual schedule now that we aren’t worried about not having a long-term coach. Most of us are already comfortable with Coach Malina, having played with her before. Although the season started rocky, I think we are set up for success, having already secured a few wins this season.