Arundel High Grad Has Seen the World Through Tennis

Doug Neagle, 1991 graduate of Arundel High, has been able to see different parts of the country, and the world, thanks to tennis.

After a standout career at Salisbury University, he played on the French Satellite/Money Tour in the summer of 1997. Soon after that, while still in his early 20s, Neagle was the head coach for Division III Pomona College/Pitzer College in California and led the squad to a No. 12 ranking in the country.

“Those experiences helped a ton, especially experiencing a different culture,” Neagle told Patch on Friday. “I have been over (to Europe) a little bit. It is a totally different system in tennis. Going out to California, I was 22 or 23 and a head coach at the Division III level."

But Neagle, who grew up on Waugh Chapel Road in Gambrills, has several ties to college programs in Maryland. He was the associate head coach at the Naval Academy and helped the Mids to the Patriot League title and the team's first berth in the NCAA tournament.

He was also the associate head coach for the men's and women's programs at UMBC before he was named the head women's tennis coach at Towson University in 2009. 

“The head coach position opened up at UMBC and I was in the running for that," he said. "I was basically the runner-up for that. I was there for one year at UMBC and Towson kept calling. They kept coming after me." 

This appears to be a good time to be in athletics at Towson. The school named a new athletic director, Mike Waddell, in September. Towson named a new men's basketball coach, former Pittsburgh assistant Pat Skerry, earlier this month and on Thursday named alum Mike Hollis as assistant athletic director of fan development after he had worked at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“He is a good guy and a guy full of energy,” Neagle said of Wadell, a former administrator in athletics at Cincinnati and a native of North Carolina. “He is shaking up the athletic department and I think it is for the better. His wife (Heidi) is a head tennis pro, and he is a big promoter of tennis. We have had lunch together."

Neagle, who played three years of tennis at Arundel, hopes Towson will increase its funding to the women’s tennis program. For now Neagle has about the equivalent of three full scholarships that he splits between eight players.

He has players on his team from Spain and Canada. A freshman on the team is Jessi Grim, a graduate of Arundel High.

The Tigers were 4-19 last year in the first season under Neagle. But the Tigers were 13-6 this year after a loss on Thursday at the University of Delaware in a Colonial Athletic Association match. Towson, last out of 11 teams in the CAA in 2010, will begin play in the CAA tournament on Thursday, April 21 at ODU in Virginia.

Neagle, who now lives in Crownsville, played basketball as a sophomore at Arundel before turning his attention to tennis. He is the former tennis coach at the Severn School and was also the head tennis pro at the Sport Fit Bowie Raquet Club.

In addition to his job at Towson, which is not a full-time position, he is a tennis instructor about 20 weeks a year at the Gibson Island Club in Anne Arundel County. Neagle is a member of the athletic Hall of Fame at Salisbury, where he was No. 5 in the country in singles and No. 4 in doubles at the Division III level in 1997.

Neagle is the brother of Denny Neagle, who pitched in the Major Leagues for the Pirates, Rockies, Braves, Reds and Yankees from 1991 to 2003. Denny Neagle splits his time between Denver and Maryland, according to his brother.