No coach, no captain, no problem. Like many other club teams at UD, the club tennis team is completely student run. Instead of typical sports leadership positions the team has an executive board. Each season the team holds elections for each position and team members vote on the candidates they’d like to lead them.
And speaking of elections, the team’s current treasurer Jenay Valentine is seeking re-election. She first decided to run due to her minor in economics: “I wanted to have a little experience in something related on my resume,” she said. “But the best part has been being able to actually make a difference in the direction of the club. Of course as a regular player you also get the opportunity to voice your complaints or suggestions, but getting to actually implement things is so rewarding.”
Responsibilities of the executive board include things like working together to maintain different aspects of the team, like the ledger and finances in Jenay’s case. Members of the board (mainly the president and treasurer) also have to attend meetings regularly and become CPR and AED certified.
“It’s a little stressful because I’m handling money constantly and trying not to make a mistake with that. But we have the support of the club sports coordinators if we need it. For the most part we work things out among the team though,” Jenay stated regarding the responsibilities of the board members.
Now you might think that a team of nearly sixty college students being run by other college students would be unstructured and chaotic, but you’d be wrong.
“I think having it student run really emphasizes the importance of cooperation because you don’t have an “adult” mediator all the time to make the difficult decisions for you and sort out the conflicts if they occur,” Jenay said.
George Carmi, a senior on the team and former External Social Chair also had a similar answer to the question of structure: “We of course get help from the club sports coordinators here at UD, but I still love not having a coach or anything like that. It turns the team into a stress-free environment where we can just go out and have fun playing a sport we love.”
Plus, it turns out that the team already has plenty of structure. “The club tennis team has been around for so many years that we kind of just follow a formula now every year on what to do and how to run the team. We improve on that each year and try to make this team better and better. And our executive board does a great job at making sure the structure stays in place,” said George.
And while the executive board is responsible for the team and maintaining order, it’s not all work and no fun. Being a member of the board definitely has good benefits besides being a leader. For George, being on the board his sophomore year helped him to meet more people on the team: “I just wanted to be a bigger part of the team. I’m not in a frat or any other clubs, so this was the only team environment I had. I just wanted to make the most of my experience and be more involved in any way I could.”
So while it may seem like having no coach or no caption could be confusing for a team sport, the club tennis team has managed just fine without. They have thrived with being fully student run and intend on bettering their team each and every season.