Above photos courtesy of UMHB Athletics
BELTON–The final month of the regular season has arrived for the UMHB men’s and women’s tennis teams, and the Crusaders are backed by confidence.
For the first time going back to 2006, the men and women each began the spring with a perfect 6-0 record. And as the spring has progressed, that success has continued for The Cru. The men are 7-4 after a stretch against high-level opponents, and are aiming at their second-straight double-digit win season after finishing 13-6 in 2022-23. The women are 9-2, having already tallied the most wins in a season under head coach Daniel White’s direction, and are still pushing forwards.
Plenty of credit for those performances over the last two months goes back to White’s relentless recruiting over the last five years. Recruiting is the lifeblood of every program, and for UMHB tennis, that fact has been especially true in this year’s success.
“It’s certainly been a journey,” White said recently. “This is my fifth year at UMHB, and I can honestly say that each year, we’ve gotten better. A lot of that is an uphill recruiting battle.
“I try to sell them on our program and what we’re doing. I tell them that what I’m trying to do is build a top-tier national-branded program. The way you do that is you recruit good players and get them to come, and then once they come, you have to develop those players. You have to pour into those players. If you’re only doing one or the other, you’re missing it as a coach.”
As White explained recently in a conversation with True To The Cru, the success his teams have experienced this season is no coincidence. The results have may have shown up in an especially prominent way thus far, but those results are the product of years of hard work from a recruiting and development standpoint.
“The men are 7-2 and the women are 8-1 right now,” White said after The Cru men and women swept Sul Ross State on March 22. “And that is nothing I did this year. It’s five years of developing and recruiting and developing and recruiting that has paved the way. There’s no shortcuts. It’s been a lot of hard work on the court, not just for myself, but for my players. Everyone pushes and builds off of each other. That’s why we are where we’re at right now.”
That development has been key in both retaining talent on the UMHB rosters, as well as elevating the standard within the program. White and his assistants are consistent each week in making sure every player in the program gets a specialized—and individualized—training session every week outside of team practice. That is a significant draw on the recruiting front, and has been effective for The Cru, White says.
“I’ve heard from a handful of players that that is why they chose UMHB,” White said. “They loved that we wanted to invest in them as players.”
Of course, with over 30 players between the men’s and women’s teams, that isn’t something he does on his own. He has four assistants who also deserve credit for the success, a noticeable change from his first year running the program, when there was not even one assistant coach to help offset the workload.
“I’d like to shout out to my assistant coaches [Bill Gates, Alberto JGoenaga, Angelie Juaneza, and Tommie Pernell],” White said. “Two of them are part-time, two of them are volunteering. There’s no way I could do all of [the individual sessions] on top of team practices. That’s where my assistant coaches really make it possible. They’re such a crucial piece of that puzzle. Without them, our players might not be developing as quickly.”
Zoe Male is amongst those who have stood out within the winning for the UMHB women, a true freshman from League City, Texas. The ASC Player of the Week two weeks ago, Male is 11-0 in singles matches this spring, and alongside Emily Higgs, is 6-2 in doubles play.
“She’s our quietest player,” White noted. “She goes out there and wins her matches, quietly and quickly. As a freshman, she has dominated. Over spring break, she won 46 games and lost eight. It was fantastic. She’s been very steady throughout the season.”
On match days, White often has six men’s players and six women’s players battling at once, forcing him to pick and choose where he needs to spend the majority of his time coaching. With a player as mature as Male, despite this being her first collegiate season, he has been able to count on her success at Line 2.
“If there’s players, like Zoe, who I can count on and is able to win, and I don’t have to spend a lot of my time on her court helping her through that, then that’s doubly an asset for me as a coach,” White added.
On the men’s side, Santiago Marin Suarez is the lone senior in UMHB’s lineup. Much like Male, he has a quiet demeanor, but he doesn’t hold back on the court. The native of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico is 7-3 at Line 2 singles this season and has made strides in his play through his second season in Belton.
“He’s playing fantastic,” White pointed out. “Every team we play against has a couple guys at the top who are going to be really tough; it doesn’t matter which program we play. It’s our depth that usually wins us a lot of our matches. Our No. 6 guy can push or beat our No. 1 or No. 2 guy on a good day. When you have a player like Santiago who is at Line 2, and can consistently get results, that’s even more beneficial, as a coach.
“Funny enough, maybe it’s a pattern here, he’s more soft-spoken and doesn’t get too rowdy on the court. He’s always respectful, and comes back and quietly reports his scores…and wins a lot.”
Two weeks ago, UMHB made a trip to Orlando, Florida for the second straight year, facing St. Francis (IN), St. Scholastica, Franklin & Marshall, and Connecticut College. After the strong start to the spring, it gave the Crusaders an opportunity to be tested by out-of-region competition, and the men walked away with a 2-2 record, while the women were 3-1. From a recruiting standpoint, a development standpoint, and for the overall student-athlete experience, opportunities to play in that kind of setting are important to his vision for the program.
“It’s everything. If we do not take trips like that over spring break, we’ll miss out on some high-level recruits. It’s a lot of fun for our players. There’s benefits all around. There’s benefit on the recruiting front, and there’s a lot of benefit to the players we have, because they get this college experience that they’ve been dreaming of and training for their whole junior careers. There’s a lot of camaraderie around [going to Orlando]. It’s also a big part of selling our program and branding us as a national program as well.”
People across the country have taken notice of that rise to national recognition, as UMHB becomes more and more competitive within the ASC. For the first time in White’s tenure as head coach, The Cru was invited to the prestigious Ojai Tournament in California this April, which features some of the nation’s top tennis talent, particularly at the collegiate level. It is a visible sign of UMHB’s success being rewarded, as the stage is large and difficult to earn a place on.
“It’s the most prestigious college tournament that is outside of the NCAA,” White said. “This is the first time since I’ve been here that both programs were invited to apply to attend. It falls on our women’s conference tournament weekend, so the women won’t be able to go, but I was able to get four of my guys into that tournament.
“That’s a really exciting milestone for our program, that we’re being considered with the top programs in the nation to come and be a part of this tournament. In late April, we’ll be flying four of our men out there to compete and hopefully get them nice and sharp before their conference tournament the following week. The way our schedules are set up, we hope to bring the girls out there next year, and just flip-flop based on when our conference tournaments fall.”
Leading up to the trip to Ojai for Crusader men is a daunting stretch of two matches against Hardin-Simmons and Concordia. For both the men and the women, these are duels that are, figuratively, circled on the calendar. Expected to be the top two ASC opponents UMHB will face this season, that set of matches figures to be critical to determining conference tournament seeding.
“Both of those are going to be difficult matches, really for both genders,” White said. “We’ve been building up to that throughout the season. We’ve created the schedule in a way where we intentionally only have one of those matches on a weekend. They’re split. There’s no other noise around those matches, if you will. Hopefully we’re going into those in a good place. Both of those programs are dangerous.”
Of course, they won’t be overlooking the home matches against St. Thomas (TX) and McMurry in Belton this weekend. Especially in the case of the McMurry matchup, considering it counts towards the conference record.
“A lot of what we talk about as a program is that this is the first step of many. Of not only getting into the conference tournament, but making deep runs or even winning the conference tournament,” White said. “[Heading into conference matches] we talk about the fact that we can’t earn our right into the tournament today, but we can lose our right to enter that tournament today.”
The SRSU matches, while countable for UMHB’s overall record, did not count towards The Cru’s conference marks as the Lobos reclassify to Division II. That places even more emphasis for UMHB on the final three regular season contests.
“They know the expectation,” White commented. “They know a fight is coming. We tell them, ‘We need to expect to get hit, and handle it when we do get hit, and come back swinging. That’s what we’re all gearing up for, these big matches that are ahead of us.”
