Once Reluctant Coach Takes Highlander Tennis to Unprecedented Heights

Played tennis for the University of California, Berkeley. Strings rackets for both his alma mater and the Berkeley Tennis Club. On the advisory staff for Wilson's tennis department.

That's a resumé you would expect from a tennis pro–the type of guy who spends his afternoons on the court honing the talents of an individual youngster.

But Neil Rothenberg, whose name sits atop the aforementioned resumé, is very clear that he is not a tennis pro.

“I don't ever want to be on the court working with one person hour after hour," said Rothenberg. "I'm just not good at that kind of teaching tennis.”

Rothenberg is, however, very good at coaching tennis teams at .

By the end of the 2011 regular season he had amassed a 157-29 record at the helm of the boys varsity program. That includes an impeccable 96-0 record for league play.

For his accomplishments this season with the boys varsity squad he was named the North Coast Section coach of the year. That accolade will have company on Rothenberg's shelf—back in 2007 he won coach of the year honors for his work with the girls varsity team. Rothenberg is the first coach in NCS history to win two coach of the year awards.

After Rothenberg accepted his NCS coaching award, his 2011 boys team added one more notch to the belt: for the first time in the program's history, Piedmont made it to the semifinals of the CIF-USTA NorCal Championship.

Rothenberg, a Piedmont resident for the past 25 years, shied away from coaching tennis for as long as possible. Even with his two daughters, he left all the instruction to tennis pros–he'd only share a court with them when they needed a hitting partner.

“I never wanted to be one of those terrible parents that you often get out there over-coaching their kids and having their kids play through you,” said Rothenberg.

Eventually, when his girls were students at PHS, he got drawn into coaching as a volunteer. Soon enough, in 2002 he was asked to be the girls junior varsity coach. A year after that he became the boys varsity coach. And a year after that he became the girls varsity coach.

Rothenberg says his strength as a coach lies in designing practices around the skills that his players bring to the table. Sure, he might make minor changes here and there, but Rothenberg does not bother spending time overhauling any single player's game.

“You're dealing with 16 varsity players and you're one coach,” Rothenberg said. “My focus is more on designing drills to help players. If they're working with an outside coach, [I try] to consolidate and make whatever they're learning from their pros work.”

Rothenberg says the end is in sight for his coaching days. With his wife retiring next month, he is planning on coaching another year and then deciding where to go from there. The couple has dreams of moving out to New Mexico for a bit.

“Hopefully we're going to New Mexico for a year to work at Chaco Canyon, which is a national historic park,” says Rothenberg. “Something we've been wanting to do—be volunteers at the park. Can't keep putting it off year after year because you'll get too old to take on responsibilities for that position.”