Women's Tennis

By PETE IORIZZO, The Times Union


Old Chatham -- To raise money for spring break trips to Orlando, Miami and Puerto Rico, the Saint Rose women's tennis team raked leaves and sold T-shirts.

While players relaxed on the beach between matches, coach Jeff Bloomberg wrote postcards to high school prospects, his way of recruiting on a shoestring budget.

The Golden Knights didn't have money for recruiting trips. They didn't even have tennis courts. In fact, the school shelved the entire program for almost a decade.

But Bloomberg, a resourceful problem-solver who officially will retire from his position today, still managed to deliver his players a rich experience during his seven-year tenure.

He couldn't offer scholarship money because Saint Rose, a Division II school, didn't have any available. So he gave time and energy, hanging out on the Washington Park tennis courts for entire days, so players could come and work with him whenever their schedules allowed.

One spring he packed his team into a van and brought it to Queens for the U.S. Open qualifier. On Sundays he and his wife, Joan, hosted players for dinner at their home near Chatham.

"He did it all with energy and enthusiasm," said Katelyn Mockry, who played at Saint Rose from 2004 to 2008.

Sometimes it seemed those were the only two resources on which Bloomberg could depend.

"I'm always talking about maximizing our limited resources," Saint Rose athletic director Catherine Haker said. "He's done it at every level."

Bloomberg, 68, had coached both the Saint Rose men's and women's teams in 1995 and 1996. After the spring tennis season of 1997, the school eliminated the men's program. Bloomberg resigned as women's coach, too, and within a year the school also had discontinued that sport.

But by 2004, four years after it joined the Northeast-10 conference, Saint Rose brought back women's tennis. A year later, Bloomberg returned, too.

"I told all the players on that first day, 'I don't care how good you are. I just ask that you work hard and get better,'" Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg's teams lost far more matches than they won. His career record was 29-92. But few Division II tennis players harbor professional aspirations. For many, tennis is a college activity, like student government or the drama club.

So Bloomberg catered his style to his players' tastes.

Bloomberg couldn't teach them to be bigger or stronger or to hit a forehand like the Williams sisters. Instead, he instilled fundamentals. He encouraged them, for instance, to get their first serve in play two out of three times, even if it wasn't hit at 100 miles per hour.

"We focused on things we could control on our side of the net," said Bloomberg, who also coached at Siena (2000-03) and Russell Sage (1997-2000).

Even if success on the court was modest, Bloomberg extended the program's reach in other ways.

He recruited women from Switzerland and California. His players posted a team grade-point average of 3.43 this past school year. And most important, he left the program with one of its most basic fundamental requirements:

Tennis courts.

In the past, Saint Rose had practiced wherever it could find court time, sometimes as far away as the indoor courts near Bloomberg's home.

But this past year, the school reached a partnership with Albany High School, which has tennis courts adjacent to Saint Rose's campus. Saint Rose fixed up three of the courts, which the Golden Knights can use for practice.

"It's made them part of the campus," Bloomberg said.

"And it's made the campus feel like they have a tennis team."