welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight in tennis and how to go to college for tennis my cook my guest today is scott vague and he is the heads men's and women's tennis o i played football and really didn't give serious consideration to college until really during my senior year and found out i was so far behind the eightball i really didn't realize that i was that i did things poorly in till after i was done and i was coaching i didn't i would say i wasn't well informed by and by nobody else's fault i just i didn't have a great handle on the process and i guess that's one of my big things as a coach now is making sure whether they after you or not is inconsequential i want to make sure that the recruits understand the process and her family understand the process so how did you have schools like mammoth university finding you if you were starting so later he's that good in  football enough i guess i mean you know tall on that and i guess those are there to the big players are looking for so i was what was at the time called the proposition forty eight a partial qualifier academically at a high school and so the the two parts are  your academics and your steadfast testing scores and my scores were fine and my grades were fine but the classes i took were not college preparatory level classes all the way through clearing that up as a partial qualifier and  few other schools were still interested in would have honored it i wanted to play right away so nothing that's wise or unwise for me probably wasn't the best idea but at seventeen on a play and had a friend of the division three school and said hey come check us out and that's where i ended up and at the time it's no longer exist the proposition forty eight but it didn't apply to division three schools and how it works are and i want to work in wilkes barre ok so wilkes so you're there you're playing so unique road i suppose when i was all done with school i was working in fitness strength conditioning personal training and all that fun stuff and had a chance to work with a student athlete from f privately through conversation found out that one of my former teammates at wilkes was on staff there so i said you know tell you know coachella so i said hello and a half hour later my phone rang and then he said scott i need  so here's here's the fun story came to after you through football few staff changes became a full time football coach really there is no such thing as a part time football coaches just how much money they want to give you a so i was a full time coach usually reserved for coordinators and i didn't have that skill set so we hired a coordinator and my role my my pay my role been changed my my pay went back down to part time and ice went in to talk to athletic director said coach i love it here it's a great schools a great environment really enjoy i can't stay for part time money so he had a meeting with a coach who was stepping down as the part time instead of coach offered me to supervise the men's tennis team of this is two thousand and four and i said i want to supervise anything no head coach on my resume said what you know about tennis is all about you so we had a little do a laugh and he said listen guys i trust you recruit organize motivate and discipline and you'll learn tennis and so i took that team you know the two thousand and fourteen which was a good group of young men and they were good tennis players but they had found some trouble they had found ways to be be successful young young men you teach me and there were no preconceived notions on either parts it was i'm here to help you help me will be great and those seven guys i'm still in touch with some of them on a weekly basis so when you believe i never thought i would be i would love being a college tennis coach i don't know how often to the guys in the football office but i think i enjoy it just as much as possible and you still coaching imo this year i have a defensive line i've been involved the show conviction aspect of coach titans in the past i think for coach to race i am the guy who fills the hall you know you hire a lot of young coaches you hire some coach that are going to dedicate all their time to football anywhere to come to fairly they can see university madison a look just about anywhere whether it's a recruiting web site whether it's a local match i'll go and see it torment even if it's not local i'm much of a little bit to see them the ones that we've done the best with as far as bring them into school them then succeeding both athletically academically are the ones who take care take charge of the process they'll reach out to me or they'll come on a visit that's not the only w find them but the ones that we've had the most luck with are the most success with are the ones who are in charge of their culture so we will look wherever you know i'll on cover whatever stone there is there but the success very often comes in the kid who's in charge of the process so now is the fine kids that they're doing it as early as freshman year you find kids really doing it still junior and senior high school we have i'll have through tennis office and i know some other coaches in our department will have plenty of freshmen and sophomores who will contact them on our timeline certainly for tennis and also in the in the football office i'm not talking a freshman yet i'm still working i'll respond and let  really starts on aren't but you know as a division three that is not an elite university a very good university the process really doesn't and you know if if a young man or woman contacted us this week and was looking for this fall and the academics were there we'd still be tried so so now what are some of the requirements they look for for men's and women's tennis is it grades is it stats for the tennis what are you looking for i don't worry too much about statistics and when one of the things that like you know folks are watching this to know statistics don't matter as far as your athletic statistics they don't matter can you handle it academically are you the kind of kid that's going to come in and get your degree in four years or four and depending on the program are you willing to compete you know if if if your first question is how many kids are returning probably not the right fit for us compete come in work hard be the guy in front of the grown for any of that your spot and i think that's true with any college sport if you're not willing to compete if you're not ready to compete if you're not serious about competing in that sport or work and you know people who enjoy the hard work aspect because i try and make we're division three tennis there are very few if any division three tennis players who have gone pro as a playing professional certainly many of the teaching professional so i want them to enjoy their experience that doesn't mean we're  hard we're going to work but if you don't enjoy working if you don't enjoy practice if i don't make practice so that it's hard and fun we're all making a mistake so we want the kid who wants to love their experience and wants to help the teammates love the experience that's that's who we're looking for so now how many kids are on the team and is there any kind of money or scholarship for anything that a division three school has well at at the division three level we're not allowed to award any money based on your athletic ability what we can do or what i like to do is make sure that you're speaking to the right people and you're on the right time for it so while we can offer you a scholarship what we can do is help be a liaison between you and our admissions department or our financial aid department can speak on your behalf but i can make sure you're doing it well and do it correctly speaking to the right people make sure your you know your but there's across your there's monies available at the school other than athletics sure yeah and we you know i don't know the exact percentage but the vast majority of our students are on our receiving financial aid whether it is need based academic award or an award of some other kind and they're certainly out there as far as how many people are on the team were probably coming into fall camp men and women i practice them together men and women together for when it's appropriate sometimes it is sometimes it is and when it's appropriate they're all together and look at twenty eight this year i think fifteen and thirt logic is yeah and i try i try and use as many as possible when appropriate if i don't think a player can help us i'll let them know that i don't cut them based on ability but i let them know i don't think your skill set is where it needs to be i'm not getting rid of you the same rules still apply for you as far as practice attendance match tendence all those things you know keeping your g p a where it needs to be but i don't see any value in getting rid of that kid and less they're gonna hurt themselves or somebody else or unless their presence is taken away from somebody else's court time that can be tricky at times but i try not to cut kids  requirements i'm almost always looking for kid who is either a late bloomer they're late to tennis they switch from soccer they switch from basketball they just took up recently they did well in the other sport are new tennis or they're undersized usually the kid that is been playing tennis for fifteen years they you know they're the best player at their school he's six foot three or she's six foot tall they're left handed they can serve out wide when i get a kid and if we are getting their kid they're not going to be happy i like the kid who wins through work you know one of one of our most successful with two of our most successful women's players right now converted from basketball in their high school career and fell in love with tennis they are they're not sick of it hasn't run them down you know tennis hasn't run their course and it's run its course in their system yet and then on on our our men side problem most successful player right now was a third best player on a very good team came in our place in those other guys had high you know division one division two opportunities and he didn't came to our place and is the big dog in love so it's usually that player that is either second  a transition to tennis recently and then we have several multi sport has had soccer volleyball basketball over the years where they play both their concentration is one of the other doesn't really matter but often it's it's the concentration is the other you know when you get to college it's all about the sport and not about academics what do you say about that i would say i don't think you could be more wrong i think it is an integral part of the collegiate  experience but to separate the two i don't think work you are you're not an athlete i still like to think i'm an athlete you know i have friends who i played with high school college who i hope still think that they are athletes it's who you are you only get a finite window to be a student athlete that window closes pretty quickly and what we've found that our school statistically is the student athletes have a higher g p a than the non athletes it's a higher graduation rate than the non athletes and through athletics there are more opportunities to stay on track whether it's the coach staying on top of your or a study hall or or whatever there are more opportunities to do so i think if you are an athlete just as if you are i'm musician and go to college and don't get involved in a band you're missing out if you go if you're an athlete and go to college and don't get involved in sport i think you're missing a certainly a division three level where playing opportunities are there for just about anybody if it's at the right institution i would say i hear from people every year who say i'm going to sit out my freshman year to concentrate on academics and my response is usually that's fine but when you're when you were just a to life without athletics and then trying to transition back in it's got change again and then you'll need to adjust again you know so the students  family they can see university and what's the process of the year so they get to campus august and they get the campus september and take me throughout the year to go build or our calendar i try and make it as user friendly as possible our students don't come in or stay late for any semester they get their full summer and then we start our practice is the second week the second monday of school and then where our fall season is twenty to thirty days depending on the calendar of the academic year and we'll shut them down in time for thanksgiving so that they'll get that break we when we come back in the spring we start going around february first so they get their whole winter break once february first comes it's it's tennis all the time you're either you're in class you're involved in tennis or you're doing something else that i know about and then we usually wrap up around may first unless somebody's going to keep inviting us the postseason tournaments in will keep going yes so it's really the crux of our season is mid march to early may which is a pretty short window as far as our playing season our training season is year round as far as strength conditioning and that kind of stuff but the playing season is basically mid march we go to help as south carolina every march bring our whole squad in for it's not a tournament it's called spring break tennis but it's competition with other like schools other division threes whether they're local or whether ohio schools or michigan's or whoever wants to play and then that's basically our kickoff so tell me a little bit about the team and the school ok so while tell you the team first the schools are much bigger story the are our team like i said we're comprised of somewhere between twenty five and thirty kids men and women combined obviously you can only play for the men or the women but i like to bring them together as often as possible to practice makes their schedule easier makes my schedule easier and i think no matter the campus the larger your group the easier it is to get recognition in the room reservations respect from whomever bigger groups do better and women are our men lost in the finals a share our women were a little bit down this year but we're not losing anything everybody was freshman or sophomore at one junior everybody else is either returning or part of a few players that are that are good i guess the best thing that i would say about our team that both men and women number one is competitive and number two they're good people so i see a lot of successful timing this year from from both men and women and the more over they've become a very good team on and off the court they're their friends you know and i've been involved in a lot of teams that really weren't cohesive  it's more joy of the coach the people who get along and want each other to win and are willing to compete with each other to help each other way so it and the school so what about family they can see university the madison campus so the school is as you know division three we are athletically would play in the middle when a conference which is us and manhattanville two schools from maryland and everybody else's eastern pennsylvania private schools we are a mid level division three school admissions standards you're you're looking at a minimum of a nine fifty in the to participate if a kid is in the air in the range of a three point zero g p a though they'll get  in some lower than that will get in they may not get academic money the campus is beautiful if you haven't been there it's certainly worth a visit it's an old venerable the state so the venerable mansion and i was surprised when i first got to the school  went to my interview and we walked out of the back of the rec center and it was like ah yes this is the beautiful forest and i never saw such thing like where has this place been it really is i mean you know where we're sitting it's pretty close to one of the pretty schools in the country and princeton university as far as schools in new jersey i don't know how many are better than penn after us or after step down from princeton it's a beautiful school it's a fun atmosphere a lot of good young professionals on campus  help getting kids involved and making sure that that first year experience is quality so the rest of the years can be quality it is a i would call a small college town us true and college st elizabeth on the same street some some friends are friendly rivalries there but you know i think good people so madison's a good little town and morristown is a you know a twenty said early thirty's crowd it's good it's a good environment so now you've been there a few years i have here i got there in over four left for a very brief time to pursue coaching position outside of education and came back you know at the school's request about eighteen months later so how do you how do you feel about the school  basically grown up on campus and i have a ten year old son who thinks he owns the campus and sometimes you've got to root real him back and let him know he's not really in charge but he's the ball boy for the football team and then all three kids are at our matches and it's very i don't know if it's because of my family or we're just you know a successful byproduct of the campus but it's very it's family friendly and i feel so and that's what i want for student athletes as i want i want my players to refer to our campus at home while they're there wherever they're from that's great go go back to where you're from or go make your own life whatever but while you're there i'd like to call so so what some of the what some of the things that the school  peaks interest from the students that come to schools there so so so of our top academic programs education we've got a five year program a color quest program where in five years you can have your your bachelor's degree your master's degree and your student teaching done in five years and that's it's so many of our students i've been involved certainly student athletes as well the business program businesses in our area is bigger so many fortune five hundred companies that are looking for in terms of looking for job placement and our campus as a great job of get people involved their entrepreneurial studies same way if you like start your own business it's a great place for that psychology psychology has been one of our calling cards for years and there and now are and within recent years i really don't know how long it's been but i've noticed an uptick recently in the drama and theatre and arts programs more and more student athletes involved in that stuff and i guess it's my own ignorance outside of athletics if it happens outside of athletics sometimes i don't see it but i've noticed more athletes involved in the in the german theater in fact one of our our best tennis players was a theater major a few years ago and he kind of my eyes to some things i possess standing he had such a good experience and  so yeah those are but there are many more options but those are those are a lot of ones that are of have been calling cards for us for years it's great that this thing when we come in to the end of our show usually i asked my guess what advice you want to give to the students that they want to play tennis at the college level they're interested in fairly they can see in university what advice do you want to give to those students well if they're interested enough to you the advice is call me and call me today if they just want to be collegiate tennis players anywhere and not just tennis i would say any student athlete or rising collegiate athlete is take charge of the process select the schools that offer what you're looking for outside of your sport and narrow it down that way i think way too often  don't know how many coaches would appreciate me saying this but i think too often a collegiate coach will steer the process for somebody because of their athletic ability to charge a process is that the kind of school you want to go to do you want to live there for four or five years and if the list if it's somewhere where you could see yourself living take it seriously visit take an overnight visit that the coach doesn't know about if possible if you know from there if you met somebody online or whatever somebody through social media side that you found has that connection to that school stay with them for and see what's really like there's only so much i can tell you about going after us i think other hear from the people who are there right now take charge of that process and then see if that support fits it because my experience has been more often when someone chooses the school strictly because of the sport probably