This year, the main change at Thorpe Tennis was the development and expansion of mini-camps. The once-yearly Thorpe Tennis Summer Tennis Camp was a much-loved event each June, but was very difficult for me to prepare and run. This spring, I tested a more nimble camp concept, something that would be repeatable on a more regular basis but that included the beloved elements of the more traditional camp I had been organizing.

To my delight, that spring mini-camp was a huge success and we managed to repeat the model six more times throughout the year. By following the ebb-and-flow of the school schedule and other patterns I’ve noticed over the years, I am now able to offer the Thorpe Tennis Mini-Camp Series on nine occasions throughout the year!

I owe a big thank you to Mark Polowczak for his help through the year, both with the mini-camps and also our Sunday Sessions. While he is heading off to college in Texas, he’s already committed to assisting again this summer.

In 2019, I worked on 260 days, including one stretch of 55 consecutive days. I worked with players as young as seven and a few players old enough not to want to be identified by their age! In total, I coached 66 different players during the year, across two high school teams, junior tennis, college tennis, ladies doubles, and competitive age-group mens’ tennis. When I wasn’t working, I was traveling!

My boys’ team at Laguna had a season of growth, after graduating most of the previous year’s starting lineup, but still managed to extend our 50% or better win-loss record to eight consecutive seasons. Having finally made their way into the Tri-Valley League after free-lancing for five years, this group now look primed to make a run at winning that league in 2020.

During the summer, Thorpe Tennis was firing on all cylinders, with mini-camps galore. It was so great to see the progress of players like Caleb Silverberg and George Nicks during that period. In addition, much fun was had, all sorts.

I also had the chance to play some tennis, myself, logging court time in Argentina and Colombia on clay, as well as rekindling my Redlands University partnership with Aron Ouye for the Santa Barbara Open. We made the semifinals of that tournament in doubles, taking out recent grads from the tennis programs at UCSB and Cal Lu in the process.

The fall marked the first time I’ve had a high school team go undefeated. My girls at Cate went 10-0, defeating Santa Barbara, Dos Pueblos, and San Marcos high schools along the way. This was the 10th playoff appearance for Cate Girls’ Tennis in my 11 years coaching at the school and we’ve qualified for the CIF D1 Playoffs in each of the last three seasons.

Another real highlight of the year was the incredible run of senior captains Grace Fuss and Carol Cai in the CIF Individual Doubles Tournament. They repeated as Tri-Valley League Champions (and Carol completed her high school career with four doubles titles in four seasons!), before breezing through three rounds of CIF Regionals. They put in a devastating performance against their first opponents in CIF Sectionals, defeating a top-20 in Southern California team 6-0, 6-1 before their run came to an end in the the Round-of-16.

Both Cai and Fuss are being actively recruited by a number of college tennis programs and I look forward to seeing how their college careers take shape. That said, they’ll be sorely missed on the Cate Mesa. During their four years at Cate, the team went 45-3 (31-0 in league play), en-route to four Tri-Valley League Championships and a place amongst the top-30 teams in Southern California.

I’m as excited as ever to be starting the new year and getting to do it with such a great community of people makes it all the sweeter. Here’s to a new decade full of tennis!

– Coach Thorpe

As I look back on the last three “year-in-review” posts, I am reminded of just how long I’ve been writing what my students affectionately refer to as “the blog.” This is not a new site, and Thorpe Tennis, now seven years old, is not a new thing either. However, I am inspired daily to bring new and better content, methods, and insights to my work.

I feel this way because I have a passion for teaching the game of tennis and particularly for having an impact on young lives. There are few things in this world I enjoy more than seeing the light go on about getting that service contact point up a little higher or cutting off the angles at net; the moment where a player realizes they can compete against that crazy-good opponent; building mastery day-by-day out of desire. These are the little things that make the big difference and not just on the tennis court. These are experiential building blocks for life and I feel very fortunate to be part of that process of growth.

In 2016, there have been challenges, but as a tennis community, Thorpe Tennis has been extremely successful. Here are just some of the many high-points of the year:

• Spent more than 1,000 hours on-court, coaching 61 players from age 9 to 60.
• Directed a third, and perhaps, the most successful year of my tennis camp for middle schoolers and incoming freshmen.
• Coached Laguna Blanca Boys’ Tennis to a 12-4 record, which saw us ranked as high as #9 in CIF D4.
• Led Cate Girls’ Tennis to a 10-1 regular season record, during which time we were ranked as high as #1 in CIF D2 before finishing #4. We also made a return to the Quarterfinals of CIF D2, after recording a 69-68 victory over a senior-laden Xavier Prep. With regards to ranking and division performance, these are achievements accomplished by no other team in Cate Athletics history.
• Individually, my students at Cate had a big year as well:
  • Grace Fuss finished Runner-Up in Tri-Valley League Singles and won a round of CIF Individuals, before finishing the year ranked #525 in the country for her class.
  • Jackie Cai & Carol Cai won the Tri-Valley League Doubles Title and their first two matches in CIF Individuals. Jackie now sits at #860 in the country, while Carol is ranked #1098; Both are primed for a significant jump in the next year!
  • Summer Christensen & Sarah Polowczak completed a remarkable 26-0 regular season and went on to finish Runner-Up in league (l. to sisters Cai), before also making the third round of CIF Individuals.
• Thorpe Tennis can boast a growing number of players active at the collegiate level, with Phillip Hicks and McKenna Madden making the club teams at Yale and Boston College (respectively). McKenna tried out along with 60 other young women for 6 roster spots and made the cut as a freshman!
• Julia Gan began her season as a starter for Haverford College, but will transfer to NYU, where she had been heavily recruited last year, for the spring season.
• Posted 40 blog entries, including many player photos, that were viewed by more than 1,400 visitors to this site.
• Brought together Thorpe Tennis students for an awesome group lesson during the holidays that spanned six of the seven years I’ve been coaching in Santa Barbara (pictured at top).

Happy New Year to everyone out there reading “the blog” and I look forward to working together towards an even better 2017!