Smeltzer Hoping to Bring Success to Men’s Tennis

Pitt-Greensburg has seen many new coaches this year, one of them being tennis coach Doug Smeltzer. Smeltzer is a 23-year-old who recently graduated from Pitt-Greensburg in Spring of 2017. He played on the men’s team for three years and also coached the women’s team in the fall.

He said, “The men’s team is going to be a little bit more difficult to separate myself from their coach because many of them were my teammates six months ago. But it’s a great group of guys. They’re all kids that I worked with in the past and I know their tendencies. I know after we get past that first week or two, it’ll be great.”

Last year, the team struggled with injuries that cost them some matches that they should have won. The team will have two captains this spring: Junior Mike Meyer and Senior Jeremy Simms.

Smeltzer talked about this season by saying, “We lost our top four guys, including two all-conference players. We should end up with nine on the roster. The nice thing is that they’re all very close from positions four through eight so there will be a lot of competition and making each other better.”

Smeltzer elaborated, “It’s very much a rebuilding year. We have a lot of new talent coming in so we’ll see what they’re able to do this season and it will set us up for the next couple of years.”

When asked about building a cohesive team, he said, “Until last year we didn’t do anything to build that bond. I’ve started to try and do team chemistry type stuff. Its worked on the women’s team already. We really need that chemistry to be better than the sum of our players.”