Clancy Shields knew what he was getting into when he was hired to coach the UA men’s tennis team three years ago.
The Wildcats had won only six conference matches in 10 years, and none in the previous two years.
Under Shields, Arizona’s improvement was slow — it would take the UA three years to claim one victory in Pac-12 play — but steady. The Wildcats won two more conference matches within seven days of their first one.
On Friday, Arizona — riding the momentum of a breakout season — will take on No. 21 Oklahoma in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, held in College Station, Texas. If the Wildcats win, they’ll play Saturday against the winner of Texas A&M’s match against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
There are a number of reasons for Arizona’s turnaround. One of them: A narrow focus each week, regardless of the opponent. Shields said the coaching staff laid out “little bread crumbs” for players to chase. It was a way to keep the team improving, even when the win totals weren’t there.
“They just knocked out on a task and we laid another bread crumb, another task — try to go after that. So they didn’t get caught up in going to the NCAA Tournament; they got caught up in, ‘what we are trying to achieve this week?’” he said.
“Maybe it was, ‘Guys, I just want to have a great week of practice. Can we all just dig in and have a great week of practice?’ And that was the goal. And we did, and ‘Oh, we knocked off a good team.’ Or this week, ‘I want to have great energy in practice.’ And we did, and ‘Oh, we knocked off a great team.’
“Or going into the Blue-Gray Tournament, I told the guys, ‘I just want you all to be thinking and saying we’re doing it all week.’ And it was like every minute you heard, ‘We’re doing it, we’re doing it.’ And in the matches, the guys were saying, ‘We’re doing it.’ And I’ll tell you how empowering it is to hear them saying, ‘We’re doing it.’ It’s a pretty powerful phrase. And we did it.
“I want to challenge the guys and my staff to keep putting challenges up and knock them off. And that’s the way we’re going to do it.”
Playing in the Pac-12 against perennial top teams like USC, UCLA and Stanford is tough. Recruiting against them is even tougher. Shields knew he had to focus in areas where Arizona stands out.
“We have to be honest with what we can recruit,” he said. “We probably are not going to out-recruit some of these California schools. And recruiting is tough, but we have to be the very best at developing our players.
“We have to be the very best at having a culture of tough kids who, they are just a little bit grittier than the California schools. They are a little bit tougher. That’s why I like Tucson. You are in the desert, it’s windy, it’s hot. I think it breeds tough kids. These kids have been out in the 100-degree weather. They are tough.
“We really just built our culture around trying to excel in the areas we can be better than other teams. That was in our culture, in our work ethic, in how we go about training every day.”
The Wildcats stand out in other ways, too. During matches, they cheer on their teammates — chanting, singing and yelling like fans a soccer match. Fans notice them — and the UA takes note of opponents who seem less interested in supporting their teammates.
“I think it’s been really empowering when we go play teams and we look across the net and we don’t see them supporting each other like we do,” said Shields.
“They don’t see them playing as hard as we do for each other. I think that togetherness and that team, that camaraderie, that band of brothers — it’s so much different than other programs. It really empowers our guys to believe they can do something special.”
This year, Shields said on one of his podcasts that his type of player is a “junkyard dog.” Now whenever someone makes an effort play, it’s a “junkyard dog” play.
The plan for the Wildcats is to give it their all and have no regrets on Friday. And the latest bread crumb?
“I think a powerful thing for our team is asking if they want it to end today,” he said. “Because when you’ve been on one of the most incredible rides of my life and their lives — I think it’s very simple. You ask them, ‘Do you want it to end this week? Do you want it to end today?’ I think those guys will say ‘Heck no, there’s no way we want it to end today.’
“I want to stir what’s inside of them, but at the same time keep a really keen focus on what we’re going to have to do. We’re going to have to play our best tennis to go out and knock off Oklahoma and, if possible, Texas A&M.”
Notable
- The Wildcats will play this week for their one senior, Jonas Maier, “and he means a heck of a lot to these guys,” Shields said. “I just say, ‘Go out and play for our senior,’ and that’s going to get our guys all lit up and ready to go.”
- Shields said Swedish freshman Jonas Ziverts, the UA’s No. 1 singles player, is the most talented player he has ever coached. To help take him to the next level, Shields has had to find different ways to connect. One of those ways is through humor. Shields started calling him “King Ziverts,” because of the way he “sat on his throne” in practice.
“I also pulled him aside and said, ‘Look, I’m calling you this because I think you are the best player in college tennis and I think you can beat any of those players,’” Shields said. “So we’re playing at the Pac-12 Championships and he’s playing the No. 12 guy in the country, former No. 1 junior player in the world (Stanford’s Axel Geller), and he has a match point and squanders his winning moment. And he digs back down and turns the match around and finds a way to win. After the match, I asked him how he turned it around. He’s like, ‘I just thought about what you said that I’m the king out here and I deserve to win this match.’ It’s those little things that maybe we don’t think about as coaches, how we have that impact. But in that moment, somewhere deep down inside of him, he found that inspiration to win.”
- Sophomore Filip Malbasic, another Swede, is ranked No. 69 in singles and has won 18 matches this season.
