Assistant Coach Eric Rodrigo recently won the Best Assistant Coach Award in Illinois from the Illinois High School Tennis Coaches Association (IHSTCA). The association holds an annual conference, during which they discuss improvements in coaching, and awards are presented near the end of the conference. After receiving the award, Rodrigo reflects on his past coaching and his time with the BHS tennis teams.
“I started back in 2005, first coaching the boys’ team. This upcoming year, I will have been coaching for 21 years. Then, I started coaching the girls’ team in 2012. So, currently, I have been coaching the girls’ team for 13 years. So for the girls, I do JV, but that’s also considered assistant coaching,” Rodrigo said.
Rodrigo reflects on his early years of coaching and how he first started to get into coaching tennis, and how his love for the sport contributed to that process.
“I mean, back in grade school, middle school and high school, I played tennis a lot. So that helps a lot, the fact that I just enjoy the sport,” Rodrigo said. “Then, of course, as I started teaching, I wanted to get involved, besides just the teaching aspect of school. I wanted to give myself a chance to acclimate to teaching first, and then eventually we decided that the boys’ tennis program would be best. I met coach Ron Coney. He’s a very personable person, and he persuaded me to come out and join the program. Basically, from there, I just started coaching and, getting to know the kids, in a different limelight was the biggest reason why I wanted to do it.”
Rodrigo spoke on some of his best experiences he had with assistant coaching and narrowed it down to being able to be completely one-on-one with the kids.
“Being an assistant, it’s a unique position, because that’s what you get to focus on. As a head coach, there are a lot of extra responsibilities with managing bus times or managing uniforms, and whatnot. What I get to do is really just work one-on-one with the kids, which is really cool,” Rodrigo said. “So the best part of the job is on the court. So, whether it’s during practice, I really enjoy seeing how they do during matches. And just like other sports, it’s a little different compared to, for example, coaching basketball. You can yell at them while the game’s going. For tennis, you have to wait till a changeover to talk to them. And I really like being able to impact matches that way as well. So, both from a practice aspect, but also during the match.”
When asked about his legacy he wants to leave behind as an assistant coach, Rodrigo speaks on how he wants tennis to have a life-lasting impact on the kids he coaches.
“Winning is important, you know, I think if you can win that match or win that as a team, that’s great, but I think you have to have fun first. Number one is you have to have fun with the sport. You have to enjoy the sport. So forget the wins and losses. All I care about is, are you enjoying yourself? That’s all that matters. Because I still currently play a lot of tennis myself, and I hope that the kids that we coach still play and find it, you know, enjoyable. It’s a very sociable type of sport that you can play no matter the age. That’s the biggest thing: do they do it for the love of the game?” Rodrigo said.
