Boys' tennis coach uses youth to his advantage

Claire GoldbergStaff WriterBoys’ tennis coach Patrick Massey graduated from Samo merely four years ago, but he’s not letting his age impede him from being a great coach. This season, Massey hopes to use his youth as an advantage in his coaching, from inspiring players to even practicing with them.Massey got started coaching when he was 18 years old when he began giving private tennis lessons. In 2009, he started assistant coaching for the Samo boys’ team and had been for three years until he took the position of head coach this year. He does not think that being only 22 is a disadvantage, though.“I don’t think it’s so much about the age. It’s about the time you’ve put in,” Massey said. “I’ve been playing tennis for a long time and coaching for four or five years. It’s more about how you conduct yourself and how you present yourself to the team and to other players.”Massey played on the Samo boys’ tennis team when he was a student and incorporates techniques he learned as a player into his coaching.“I run things a lot like how things when I was playing here because I thought it was a really great way to motivate the team,” Massey said. “Being an alumnus and not graduating too long ago keeps me motivated to want to bring a ring to the school in the next couple of years.”Team members see the difference in having a young coach and like having someone relatable and understanding to help motivate them. Being a young coach could be disadvantageous because of less knowledge and experience than someone who has been playing and coaching for a long time. This doesn’t matter to Ben Gelfand (’14) who believes that having a younger coach is better for him, especially since he plays himself and spent the first two weeks of the season conditioning to help get players prepared to play.“He’s making us run a lot which is good,” Gelfand said. “A lot of kids were out of shape here and having two weeks when we got back in shape really helped.”Co-captain Alex Smolentsev (’13) likes how Massey makes the team feel like a family. He feels that the team is like a brotherhood with the intimate relationship a young coach brings.“He’s very personal with us and truthful,” Alex Smolentsev said. “It’s not like a coach-student relationship; it’s like a friend-friend relationship. He understands us better because he’s still quite fresh in his head.”Robby Gottesman (’13) has been playing tennis since he was a freshman and joined varsity this year as a co-captain. Gottesman took private lessons from former Coach Poon and also recognizes the differences between the two coaches.“I think [Massey] is a lot calmer and understands us a little more,” Gottesman said. “It’s overall less pressure than usual. Even though [Poon] was a lot older, I think they are even in how well they relate to us.”Massey, who played in high school and college, knows a lot about what tennis entails, despite his young age. He wants to change the outlook of the players so that they are not just playing as individuals, but cooperatively as well.“We have a lot of individuals on the team,” Massey said. “Tennis is usually an individual sport, so it’s tough to try to get the guys to want to play for someone other than themselves but in high school that’s what it’s all about.”cgoldberg@thesamohi.com