I just now, as I'm writing this column, I received a call from my long-time friend and tennis coach Emeritus at Dartmouth College, Chuck Kinyon.
We talk or play tennis together pretty much every week, so I thought it was just a quick hello because we got rained out of our tennis sessions for the last two days. But it wasn't a quick hello. It was a call to inform me that our mutual friend Jim Poling had been killed in a cycling accident!
Jim Poling was a legendary college Coach at both Rollins College and The USMA at West Point.
Jim coached Rollins to become a national powerhouse and win the National Championship in 2001!
I was lucky enough to have played with Jim in a couple of 45-and-over events when he spent one summer in Maine, and he generously volunteered for multiple guest coaching appearances when I was operating the USTA Junior Training Center in New Hampshire.
The kids in the Training Center were star-struck every time he showed up and worked drills with them.
Jim focused on the simplicity of solid strokes and the logical tactics that the rectangle of the tennis court demands for players to succeed.
Nothing fancy or crowd-pleasing! Just meat and potato fundamental concepts that hold up under the pressure of intense competition.
Great coaches’ careers are built on their ability to convince their teams and players that achieving excellence is about doing the SIMPLE THINGS incredibly well!
Jim was a great coach and a fine man. His advice is a timeless reminder that sometimes less is more.
The National Coaching Community will be shocked and saddened by this news, but the many hundreds of young men whose lives intersected with Jim on the tennis court will forever carry and be positively influenced by his timeless advice.
God bless you Jim, and thanks for all of the good you did.
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