Images Courtesy of SC Jaguars
By Eduardo Ruiz
Like most coaches and professors, the venerable tennis coach Susan Reasons wants to see her student-athletes thrive.
She also knows the first step to thrive is to survive.
Reasons said her 23-year tenure as head of the women’s tennis program has been turbulent as a bumpy jetliner crossing the Rockies in the winter.
“We’ve had some ups and downs, that’s for sure,” she said. “It has been a roller coaster. Hold on for dear life!”
Reasons has reasons to hang on, she said. Southwestern College administrators have promised a sparkling new tennis facility and all new courts but have thus far failed to deliver. To say a planned November 2023 grand opening has been delayed is like saying Amelia Earhart is running a little late. The project has yet to break ground.
Cessation of maintenance on the current courts has allowed them to deteriorate at a frightening rate, Reasons said. Players from Southwestern and visiting colleges have been injured tripping on cracks on poor surfaces.
“The courts haven’t been resurfaced because they’re going to build a new tennis facility, so they don’t want to spend the money,” she said. “Our season has gone down the toilet because we have had a lot of injuries. If you take Patrick Mahomes out of quarterback for Chiefs, they ain’t winning the Super Bowl.”
Women’s tennis at Southwestern College is theoretically protected by Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 because it provides a semblance of balance between opportunities for men and women. Balance in the case of women’s tennis, is evocative of Dr. Martin Luther King’s observations about the segregationist “separate but equal” policies – “they sure are separate, but they sure ain’t equal.”
Women’s tennis players have access to a half-century old shack next to the courts where they can stash their belongings. Their lockers are about a third of a mile away, in another quadrant of campus, adjacent to the football stadium.
Players make do with the equivalent of athletic hand-me-downs. This year’s team received new skirts from the college, but still wear vintage six-year-old warmups.
Reasons has singlehandedly saved women’s tennis at least twice, including during the 2009 bloodletting when former college president Raj Chopra cut 439 classes one semester, including the men’s and women’s tennis teams. Reasons risked being fired to claw back the women’s team from extinction.
Despite her ferocious defense of the program and its athletes, Reasons is philosophical about winning and losing. When her athletes are happy, healthy and learning, she said, everyone wins.
“Tennis is an individual sport played under the umbrella of a team sport,” she said. “Part of being a leader and a team player is to embrace the work of others. Our players, unlike too many people, find joy in the successes of their teammates.”
Life does not revolve around the spinning yellow Spaulding in the sky.
“Almost everyone in my team has a job, they work, they help their family out,” Reasons said. “They are giving their time and energy to represent the school. My hat’s off to them because that is awesome.”
Altruism abounds on the sand and burgundy courts, Reasons said.
“Players get nothing,” she said. “There are no scholarships at this level, there are no incentives. You get nothing tangible. The best gift I can give to these women is happiness. They are having a good time, they’ve made friends for life – and that’s hard to do in (community) college. We are conditioned to just go to class, sit there as the teacher lectures to us, then get up and leave.”
Challenges abound, but Reasons said deep down she remains very positive about women’s athletics and her scrappy tennis players.
“They will remember that they got their degree, and the hard work they did to get it, but will not remember every single class,” she said. “This is where they get to relax from the required courses.”
Retirement looms, but Reasons said she is not going anywhere until the new tennis center is complete. Moses never entered the Promised Land, but Reasons said she would kick in the door if necessary.
“I would like to be here when that happens,” she said. “We’ve had to do so much with so little for so long. I think the drawing and the plans for the tennis center are really cool. I want to be here to crack open that first can of balls.”
