The Downhill

After the run that the Trinity tennis program had in the 1970s, the team began to go downhill. The team started fading away from the national powerhouse they were year after year. After the many great years the team had, the school spirit and attention the team brought to the university went away in a few quick years in the 1980s. This downhill led to the eventual decision to change the Trinity tennis team to a Division 3 program.

The downhill of the program started in 1980 with some controversy around the athletic department. The assistant athletic director and the sports information director for Trinity University unexpectedly resigned from their positions. According to an article in the Trinitonian, Libby Johnson, the assistant athletic director, said she resigned because she was concerned about the direction of the program and that it is going downhill. Johnson said “I think it’s crumbling,” and that “numerous things are being cut and they’re eliminating programs.” This shows how the Trinity athletic program was not in a good position in 1980. The article also talks about how the athletic department was concerned that there was not enough money to allow all of the current teams to continue. Also, the school will have to reallocate the money to make things work for the program. At this time, Trinity University had a Physical Education major for students. Another concern was that if there were no varsity sports, then the Physical Education degree would be worthless because it is difficult to get a job as a coach without ever playing varsity sports in college. President Calgaard talked about still having intramural sports for students to participate in at the University. The school had a poll about this issue and 95% of students wanted to keep varsity athletics at the school. One big thing from the Trinitonian article was a quote from a Trinity tennis player at the time. Kim Steinmetz said she thinks that “the program has gone downhill because of its quality, not because of lack of interest, because the interest has been there.” This demonstrates that the athletic program has gone downhill in the past few years. The quote confirms that students are interested in the athletics at Trinity University and that there is good school spirit, but the decrease in the quality of the program was because of the administration not doing their job. This is not the only instance where the administration was ridiculed for not doing their job of supporting the athletic program.

Trinitonian sports writer, Pedro Andarsio, blames the administration for the failure of the athletic program. Andarsio writes about how the administration has “goofed” and specifically talks about where they are slipping regarding the tennis team. The article talks about how Trinity has one of the nation’s top men’s tennis teams, but people are unaware of it. This confirms that the attention around the tennis team has dropped in the last decade. Andarsio writes that the reason for this is that the school has not hired a much needed sports information director. He calls out the administration by writing about how the school will not hire a SID because they do not have the money to do so, but they just spent $30,000 on an inauguration ceremony. This shows that the school was not focusing its efforts on the athletic programs and more on the academics. Andarsio believes that this behavior will lower the quality of the school. He writes that this is a lack of common sense by the administration by not hiring a full time SID to exploit the tennis team that makes the university comparable to the bigger schools in the country. This also shows how important the tennis program was to the school because it was the only thing keeping it in the ranks with the big schools in the country. Andarsio writes that the team is “one of the best in the country and is not receiving the attention it deserves.” He concludes with the fact that the school needs to hire an SID that will make sure that the quality tennis program gets the attention it deserves which will in turn improve the image of the university which is what “we all - especially the administration - want.”

Butch Newman, the legendary Trinity tennis player from the 1960s, became the tennis coach in 1986. Coach Newman experienced the downfall of the Division 1 program firsthand and told me about it in our interview. Newman told me how when he was a player, the team was made up of all players from America with no foreigners, making it easy to have great team chemistry between the players. That all changed for the team in the 1980s. Newman told me that the program started to get more foreign born players and it was difficult to recruit American players. When Newman took over as coach in 1986, the team was 80 percent foreign athletes. Coach Newman said that this was a problem because the players were from all different parts of the world and all spoke different languages. This made it difficult for the players to communicate and bond and Newman said that there was a tough team atmosphere and no team unity. The school board also started to realize this was a problem because the foreign players would never come back to the University and contribute to the school or help out with the program. The board was not happy about the lack of alumni support for the tennis program which is another factor in the decision to switch to Division 3.