In six seasons with the Washington U. in St. Louis men’s tennis program, Roger Follmer has compiled a 92-36 overall record and led the Bears to six consecutive berths in the NCAA Division III tournament. The 2006 ITA/Wilson Division III national coach of the year discusses why the team matters in a largely individual sport.

Putting the team concept into the non-traditional tennis season is difficult. It’s not an easy thing to do even in our traditional spring season in an individual sport like tennis. Furthermore, the non-traditional fall season presents even more challenges than the spring team season. That’s because our fall non-traditional season is really individual based with the sole emphasis focused around the Fall Regional Tennis Championships where we crown an individual singles and doubles pair champion(s).

So what do we do to make it a team thing in our non-traditional fall tennis season? Well what we do is "morning madness," adopted from Coach Chuck Kriese’s hallmark first week of 6:00 a.m. practices/conditioning workouts at Clemson University with his men's tennis programs. Our men are put through 6:45 - 7:55 a.m. workouts for about three weeks. (So maybe I am a bit of a softy compared to the legendary coach of the Clemson Tigers.) Broken down into four workouts the first week, three the second week, and one the last week, this is a good time to get everyone together and improve our fitness, and more importantly, our team camaraderie.