Marisa Arce is in her 5th year as a head women’s tennis coach and has nearly completed her first year as the head coach at Depaul University. She started her college coaching career as a volunteer assistant at the University of Oklahoma in 2012 shortly after graduating from the University of Illinois.
In this episode we discuss her decision to start her career as a volunteer, if it was worth it and how she has transitioned from volunteer to assistant coach and on to becoming a head coach. We discuss the challenges of combining college coaching and parenting and how she is navigating her new job, her new-born baby and all the other obligations she is facing at this point in her young coaching career.
Key points of this conversation have been indexed for easy listening here:
2:14 – When did it dawn on you that your career would be as a college tennis coach?
4:20 – What was the feedback you were getting from the programs that you were applying to?
8:35 – What was different about moving into a full-time assistant role?
17:05 – “Better Allies” by Karen Catlin – 37% of Women’s Tennis coaches are women.
18:20 – Do you think that a male athletic director would have hired you knowing that you were nine-months pregnant at the time?
23:23 – How do you deal with the struggle of having a family and being a coach? What adjustments did you have to make?
29:05 – Are there any lessons that you apply today that you learned from any of your coaches along the way that you’re applying to your team today?
On The ITA College Tennis Coaches Podcast, Dave Mullins and his guests deliver the best and most correct tennis information through discussions. Current coaching topics, trends, guests, and some fun along the way will make this your new favorite tennis knowledge podcast. The Coaches Podcast hosts a series of discussions with current and previous coaches in the tennis industry.
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