Published: May 19, 2015
East’s Carrier to retire at season’s end
Coach with program for 45 years
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
West Bend East boys tennis coach Al Carrier will retire at
the end of this season after 45 years as the program’s coach. Carrier is the
only person to have coached the Suns’ boys tennis program since West Bend High
School split into East and West in 1970.
“It’s time to go,” Carrier said after East’s practice Monday
as the team prepares for its final home match today against Beaver Dam.
The match starts at 4:15 p.m. at the West Bend high schools’
tennis courts.
At 71, Carrier believed he was forgetting more stuff
associated with the team and that was causing an uneasy feeling of not
providing a proper service or experience.
Former player Ben Vande Zande, who graduated last season,
would disagree.
“He shaped me into the player I am today,” he said.
Vande Zande just completed his freshman season at St.
Norbert College in De Pere.
“He pushed me to be a better player,” Vande Zande said,
adding he wasn’t a very skilled player when he joined the team as a freshman.
In Vande Zande’s senior year at East, he was second-team
All-Wisconsin Little Ten in singles. The first-team representative from East
was three-time state qualifier and teammate Matt Zurowski, who just finished
his freshman season at UW-Whitewater.
“Forty-five years is a long time; it’s crazy to think about
it,” Vande Zande said.
Vande Zande added he wasn’t surprised to hear of Carrier
retiring.
“He was ready,” he said.
Carrier got into tennis when he was a freshman in high
school. He chose tennis over baseball because he liked being active and didn’t
like how much standing around that often takes place in baseball.
In addition, there were only four players on the West Bend
tennis program in a city that was a major supporter of baseball.
So Carrier bought a $4 racket and went out for the tennis
team. Later, he played tennis at UW-River Falls, which no longer has a tennis
program.
Carrier started coaching tennis in West Bend in 1968 when he
was an assistant for Jim Cahoon at West Bend HS.
Cahoon, a successful baseball coach in West Bend, was hired
as the head coach without tennis experience. But he and Carrier were good
friends so Carrier was brought on as an assistant.
When the school split, Carrier applied for the East job and
got it. Butch Buddenhagen got the West job.
It’s been Carrier at East ever since.
“I’ll miss it that’s for sure,” Carrier said. “I never
thought I’d last this long.”
He’s contemplated retirement for quite some time, but more
so in the last couple of years. The biggest reason for his retirement is his
three grandkids, age 7, 5 and soon to be 1. And to see them, he has to travel
to do so, including going to Nashville.
He said he’d like to chase his grandkids more. But the
tennis season has often tied him up from doing things with his grandkids. He
wasn’t able to see the birth of one of them because of it.
“It’s gotten in the way of a lot of things,” Carrier said.
“My wife and I do a lot of traveling and we have for years.”
He also thought his ego got in the way of him stepping away
earlier.
“We’ve had some good runs,” Carrier said.
Tennis won’t be eliminated from Carrier’s life as he remains
active in the sport, playing in matches against players at his age level.
Carrier doesn’t remember the wins and/or losses. What he
remembers is the good feelings of seeing players develop.
“I love to compete,” he said. “Hopefully someone else can
take and run with it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment