In the 2003-04 season, the Oregon men’s tennis team qualified for the NCAA team tournament and sent two players to the NCAA Individual Championships.
All-Americans Sven Swinnen and Manuel Kost both lost in the first round, but Swinnen ended the season with a No. 16 national ranking and Kost finished at No. 31.
Looking back on his time with the Ducks, senior Markus Schiller says that the Oregon men’s team peaked that season. In Schiller’s eyes, it went downhill from there.
“Two years ago, we made the NCAAs and we had a really good team. Then the coaching change came, and Oregon dropped. And we’ve lost the respect of the tennis community,” Schiller said.
In 2004, the Ducks lost head coach Chris Russell to the Washington Huskies, and thus began the Kevin Kowalik era, which officially ended last Friday, when Kowalik resigned the head coaching position, citing personal reasons. The Emerald’s attempts to reach Kowalik for comment were unsuccessful.
Many of the players think that some damage has already been done. Schiller and fellow senior Thomas Bieri said that the success that Oregon enjoyed from the late 1990s to the early 2000s has definitely been derailed over the last two seasons.
The Ducks went 15-28 overall between 2004-06 and won just one Pacific-10 Conference match during that time.
Oregon started this season with a five-game winning streak, but then the team sank into a downward spiral. As the weeks passed, it became apparent that the team was wracked with problems from within.
Now, most of the players agree that Oregon tennis and Kowalik were a bad fit.
“I wish him the best, and I hope he does well,” junior Vlad Pino said. “But I think the big problem was that the U of O is a very player-oriented school. They really care about who comes here. And once you’re here, you’re part of a family.
“The athletic department tries to really take care of their student athletes, and I don’t think (Kowalik) realized that when he first got here.”
Right from the get go, Kowalik appeared to have a more results-oriented coaching style.
“The best way I know to have people improve is competitiveness,” Kowalik told the Emerald earlier this year.
This philosophy was exemplified by the way Kowalik maintained a roster of nine to 10 active players, even though the team only traveled with eight. That way, Kowalik reasoned, the guys who were not traveling with the team would also feel a need to keep improving and to keep getting better.
Kowalik also organized playoffs within the team, making players compete with each other for roster positions. But this contributed to the rise of tensions amongst team members when, according to Schiller, the playoffs were conducted unfairly.
“Kowalik had playoffs to fill the lower roster spots,” Schiller said. “And the juniors, Vlad and Eric (Pickard), were made to play in the playoffs. But two of the freshmen didn’t even have to play. They hadn’t proved anything, but they were getting special treatment and benefits that they hadn’t earned.”
Episodes like these lost Kowalik the respect of many of his players, and the atmosphere of constant competition against each other also mentally wore down the team as the season progressed.
“In order to have a successful, cohesive team, you can’t base everything on just competing against each other,” Pickard said. “And I’d say that occurred to a certain extent this year.”
Pickard thinks the players were pitted against each other more than was necessary and this undermined any sort of unity the team could have found in each other.
“I don’t think that was the coach’s intention at all, but to a certain extent, it did occur,” he said.
Schiller and several other players believe that the problems the team had this year resulted from more than just a lack of team cohesiveness.
“I kinda feel bad for (Kowalik),” Bieri said. “… He was too overwhelmed dealing with players from a level he’s not really used to. I don’t think he was ever really happy in Oregon.”
Bieri said he thinks that Kowalik had trouble adjusting to the Ducks’ traditionally more down-to-earth, interpersonal style.
“He did not understand at first that Oregon cares about student-athletes and how they come up more than the results on the field,” Bieri said.
Even though Bieri stressed that he has no ill feelings toward Kowalik, the last two years of turmoil have taken their toll on the senior.
“I’m really mentally worn out from the last two years,” said the soft-spoken Swiss, who posted an 18-32 record between 2004-06 after having gone 31-33 in his first two years as a Duck. “I had to force a lot and go alone with a lot of things that I wasn’t really OK with, and that really cost me. I really have to regroup and restart.”
According to Schiller, that’s the way most of the players are feeling now.
“A lot of guys are fed up with tennis,” he said. “If you’re forced to go out and practice every day, and practice things that you personally, and the team, think are not good for you, it’s kinda tough to stay focused.
With Kowalik’s departure, women’s coach Nils Schyllander has been named the interim coach of the men’s team and a national search has begun to find Kowalik’s replacement.
“I think one of the things that’s going to be very important with the next coach is having an open two-way communication between players and coaches,” Pino said. “Nils does a great job with that; I feel like I can talk to him.”
But for now, all Pino and Pickard want to do is try to help the Ducks put their troubles behind them for good.
“We’re going to do more team-oriented things. Simple things. Corny things like going out on the weekend and doing team bonding. Just hanging out more off the court,” Pino said. “And communicating more. We need to build on communication and team spirit and try to put this behind us and just turn things around.”
Kevin Kowalik resigns as head coach
Daily Emerald
May 23, 2006
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