Luke Jensen sat on a bench in a clubhouse at the start of the season. He stared down at the tennis court and he rubbed his balding head.

It was almost gone now. Mere stubble.

The coach tried to ignore it.

‘Some tell me I’m getting older. Some tell me I’m getting heavier,’ said Jensen, Syracuse’s head coach. ‘I refuse to believe it.’

But God still came to this tennis coach after his first season and took his hair away, Jensen said. It was beach bum blond that once draped the coach’s broad shoulders during his championship professional career.

Jensen understood. Four years have passed since he became head coach of Syracuse’s women’s tennis team (5-1). He has aged since.

That was the cost of a winning record of 16-7 for the Orange last year. That was also the cost for his team to mature, for Jensen to believe SU could make a run for the national title this year. His players are older: There’s only one freshman on roster this year. His first recruits are juniors now. All they needed was time.

But as the coach waited for his players to mature, he matured himself.

‘He’s kind of evolved as we became better players,’ said Simone Kalhorn, one of Jensen’s first recruits.

Now Jensen expects more.

‘I want to win a national title this year,’ he said. ‘Two years in a row, seventh in the Big East just isn’t cutting it here for the expectations . . . If we execute, we can win on a national level.’

The coach is confident because of his team’s experience. Jensen’s first recruits – Christina Tan, Jacquelynn Tang and Kalhorn – are juniors. They have carried the anchor as stalwarts to a new coach. They have helped transition later recruits.

And their contributions have shown. Last year, all freshmen had winning records. CC Sardinha, the only freshman this year, won her first three singles matches this year.

‘It’s amazing how much maturity adds to the success of a team. You don’t have to worry anymore,’ Jensen said. ‘It’s so much easier now.’

So as coaching became easier, Jensen pressed harder.

It was Winter Break when he gathered his players on the far court of Drumlins Tennis Club. He brought a TV set and put in videotape. And Jensen featured the aerobic workouts seen on late-night infomercials, those meant for the fitness of the unfit.

‘The P90X insanity? It’s a workout weight-loss video,’ Kalhorn explained. ‘But when (the fitness models) have their water breaks, we do suicides.’

The team enjoyed it, players said. After a routine of 5 miles, 500 push-ups and 100 sit-ups every day, Jensen understood what his players could take. For the past two seasons, it was this level of fitness that prevented any major injuries, Jensen said.

It proved worthwhile.

During the first game of the season, Jensen sat alone near Court 5 of Drumlins Tennis Club. He was still the same. Still the winner of the 1993 French Open doubles championship, still adamant on saving prospects of American tennis. But something seemed missing. As he watched sophomore Alessondra Parra play, he looked down at the court and rubbed his hands.

Then, he rubbed his balding head.

Parra cruised through her first set and found herself at a 0-3 deficit. Laine Mackey of Albany was formidable. Her weight stunted her movement, but it gave her serve and forehand momentum to work with. And by the second set it had worn Parra down.

‘Coach told me I was fitter than my opponent,’ Parra said. ‘He said it was OK to swing out and to pick up the pace.’

Jensen’s first recruits all had losing records as freshman. Parra had finished her freshman year 11-8. Emily Harman, the sophomore standout from West Virginia, earned herself the top singles spot last year. The difference was that those first recruits were there, Jensen said. Callowness turned to confidence. But he did not credit himself.

Why would he?

As Parra rallied back 4-5, it was Jensen who sat by her side. Shouting encouragement. Still rubbing his head. He encouraged his players to serve with both hands, like himself. Like ‘Dual-Hand Luke.’

Jensen misses playing, he said, he misses the court. But he found another game in the strategy of coaching.

‘I know more now than I did four years ago,’ Jensen said. ‘I’m learning every day.’

The difficulties lie ahead, as the team that garnered a winning record last season still lost four straight games on the road.

‘We always make mistakes. This year’s going to be more mental,’ Harman said. ‘But I know how to handle the big moments.’

Syracuse was swept 0-7 by No. 16 Michigan on the team’s first road trip this season. Jensen said his team had learned, and that it was still learning. It was only a bump, on the path to a national title. And it could only confirm what he now knows.

‘We know now,’ Jensen said, ‘that we are a better team than we were in 2006.’

There is a nationally ranked team in Michigan on Jensen’s schedule to test his team. But the coach knows his team is older and mature and experienced because he has waited.

Winning is a matter of executing, Jensen explained, of players placing their fitness and skills into harmony. ‘I just need the players to do what they do in practice, the big confidence to translate into our matches.’

But a national title will still take time.

‘We’re right on track,’ Jensen said. ‘If I could lose more hair and win 20 games this season, that would be great.’

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on February 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm