it really is time to change womens tennis into a national power. no excuses. thanks for the memories.. You hear me Dollar Bill?

He's already using the 'it was the injuries' excuse

$Bill is too busy planning to rape football fans with ticket prices

Fortunately for Kleinecke, women's tennis is probably last (or close to it) on $Bill's list in sports as far as its importance to Aggie athletics. I think that the program will have to continue to steadily decline to a level quite a bit worse than this in order for a tenured coach like him to get flushed.

I do think that the better mens tennis continues to do, the more Kleinecke is on the hot seat. $Bill should just hire the girl at SMU. I'm sure we could steal her from the ponies for half of whatever Kleinecke must be making at this point.

Is it really the coach ?

Maybe, Maybe not, but it will fall on the coach

Should be interesting. I hope Bill does what he normally does, but I doubt he will.

He seems to be a decent person. Is it his recruiting or his coaching? Or Both??

Hard to say. There examples both of him failing to recruit good players, and failing to coach those players well. There's also examples of him recruiting good players, and examples of him coaching them well. There's just not an excuse for the backslide that they took from last year to this year.

It may just be one of those things where it's time for a change...

14-11 (9-2) last year to 14-10 (8-3) this year...Not sure how thats a backslide...

Not siding either way, I can see both sides of the argument here.

It hasn't really been a decline, we just haven't been much good since 2004 after a run of having been good for several years before that.

Last 10 Year-end Rankings and NCAA tournament results

2001 - 19 (as high as #9 during the year) NCAA 1st round

2002 - 22 1st round

2003 - 24 1st round

2004 - 16 (as high as 13, never out of top 25)
Sweet 16

2005 - 31 2nd round

2006 - 29 2nd round

2007 - 25 2nd round

2008 - 31 2nd round

2009 - 38 1st round

2010 - 35 and dropping, 1st round

6-10 NCAA tournament record during this time.

I have said this before, but it's kind of an R.C. Slocum situation. Seems like a great guy and has done well for a long time but can't seem to win the big games. Also similar to R.C. in that there is certainly no guarantee that someone else can do better, although in my mind there is no excuse for having a weaker program than Baylor, SMU, and TCU.

To me, the problem is recruiting. This year's team had 3 studs and a bunch of end-of-the-bench players. Even Nick Bolettieri couldn't get wins out of the bottom 3 in our lineup. I have been watching this team for nearly the entire run above and it is by far the weakest 4-6 we have ever had (sadly, with probably the strongest 1-3). Bring in 3 more good players nd we've got exactly what the men's team has: talent AND depth!

The bad news is that now he has to replace Potgeiter, so we really need 4 good players.
The good news is that at least he has two shots to do it with the Turpin scholarship open and he hasn't signed any mediocre American players so I am hoping for a couple of 6' girls named Maria and Svetlana to show up for fish camp. Even so, best-case scenario we're still going to be weak at 5-6.

Enough about this, we have the men to cheer for in Athens!

His overall results have been a waste of scholarship and coaching dollars.

quote:

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Also similar to R.C. in that there is certainly no guarantee that someone else can do better, although in my mind there is no excuse for having a weaker program than Baylor, SMU, and TCU.

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Thanks for putting all that together. While I agree there are "no guarantees", there is absolutely no reason A&M should not have one of the top tennis programs in the country. Those are facilities any coach in the country would die for. This is a case where the AD has to be willing to pay that little extra and get a top coach to match the facilities instead of hoping the facilities will recruit on their own.

bigfoot, I guess although the record is still strong, the backslide has been in terms of:

1) How well they were playing at the end of last year (when they seemed to really be jelling) versus how they came out this year. and
2) How poorly the bottom half of the lineup has been playing compared to last season. Those girls were never world-beaters, but they were above .500 last year. Looking at the stats, last season the only player who played at least 20 matches that won 50% of them was Turp. This year, there were 4. The team's overall winning percentage in single's matches dropped from .641 to .570. I know there's more that goes into it (who they play, etc.) but that's a pretty significant drop.

I would argue that they've never been very successful. 1 sweet 16 ever. Lots of 1st round losses.

Great post Harry.

Recruitng is a problem. I hope we can add two quality recruits to replace Else and Turbin. Janelle C has the potential to be another addition to the top six.

As to development, our young women do not improve much while at A&M. Christi Liles has gone down hill.

I would give Bobby one more year. Bobby should hire Sarah Foster away from SMU as our assistant coach. Sarah would be a very good recruiter.

Assitant coach is not the problem..Weaver is better than a some chick from SMU. One of the best men's players in the history of A&M and has pro experience.

for the record, Sarah is the asst at TCU, not SMU.

Also, Christi is a very social girl, as a lot of the team are. Her priorities have not seemed to be right this year. I think she may have been having a little too much fun off the court, which got in the way of her tennis. Not saying that is or isn't BK's responsibility, just saying.

I've heard similar stories bigfoot...if the team has a lack of commitment to the sport, can't feel bad for them. This could be viewed as Bobby's fault, but you've gotta wonder if the girls are doing what they need to do to be an elite D-1 athlete. It's not like high school, more has to go into it than showing up and playing your match. Success at the D-1 level in any sport comes from a way of life, not just practicing and playing. That's a club sports mentality.

I know of one girl on the team that really just wants to be social, and basically is on the team for the benefits of being a tennis player.

Sad really. I miss the days of Roberta Spencer and Nikki and TCliff and Jess Roland. Girls who put their all into tennis first, because they were basically being paid to do it thru scholarships

If this is true, inevitably it does fall on the shoulders of the coaches to correct this. Both through recruiting girls that are dedicated to tennis and through developing an atmosphere where the team's priorities are correct. Part of being a coach in college sports (both women and men) is being a father figure to kids that are still trying to figure out what is important in life. Although you can't control what college kids do during the 21 hours a day that they are not playing tennis, you CAN not tolerate a lack of dedication and commitment to the team. These kids are basically being paid a lot of money to play tennis and if they don't want to, there are PLENTY of very talented girls that would love a shot do play for the Aggies.

I have commented before that the team looked very unfit this year and even though I know a lot of that is nutrition, I think that the coach does have some control over that. I know that if we had showed up fat in August when I was in college, our coach would have had us leave our rackets in the locker and run until we were fit enough to play. If we showed up hung over for a Saturday practice, we would run until we threw up. A couple of practices like that and you stop drinking Friday nights. As a matter of fact, we had early practices Monday through Saturday for that specific reason and we knew that our partying was limited to one night a week.

That's coaching 101 isn't it?