Colorado Mesa University (CMU) tennis head coach Dan MacDonald was inducted into the Cowley College Athletic Hall of Fame, as a member of their 1989 national title-winning tennis team.
A ceremony was held in Kansas Jan 18 for the induction of the team.
Courtesy of Dan MacDonald
“We’re friends, lifelong friends, we stay in contact. I hadn’t seen a few of them in over 30 years but most of us have stayed in contact, so it was really, really cool and unique to go back and see each other one more time,” MacDonald said.
The 1989 men’s tennis team was the first team in Cowley’s history to win a national title. A junior college based in Arkansas City, Kansas, Cowley had the national tournament won before the finals even began. In this tournament format, players winning accumulated points, which added to the total of their team.
In his 15th season as the Maverick’s tennis head coach, MacDonald still applies lessons he learned as a part of his time on that team.
“I like to tell my players this a lot: Everything that I’m asking you to do I’ve done,” MacDonald said. “You’re going to give up things in life if you want to be a college athlete, to get to a certain level. I always tell [my athletes], you’re playing for Colorado Mesa University, yes, you’re playing for coach MacDonald and [assistant coach David Smith]. But more importantly, you’re playing for each other. I want you guys to look each other in the eye everyday and know that you’ve done your best in practice.”
“Everything that I’m asking you to do, I’ve done.”
“He often tells us about his ‘glory days,'” women’s tennis redshirt sophomore Alexi Klabunde said. “I think it’s great when he does because these times can be learning opportunities for the team.”
MacDonald has been coaching tennis since he was in college. “I always try to tell kids that I work with [as] student athletes, you know, it’s easy when everything’s going your way, you’re winning easy, you’re doing great school but who’s going to be the person that can stay tough and bounce back when you have a tough loss?”
“He does lots of reading and researching and is very updated on today’s coaching tactics,” women’s tennis senior Kristen Kirby said. “He sends us links to articles that explains strategies of the game, [and they] give insight into the mental aspects of tennis.”
“We really had amazing depth,” MacDonald said about his Cowley team. “Tim Shanahan and Bill Shaw were pretty solid at [number] one and two, and then Doug Owens played three, Jason Grose played four, I played five, and Eric Wedemeyer played six.”
Courtesy of Dan MacDonald
Everyone on the team was so competitive their head coach Larry Grose had to break up confrontations on more than one occasion during the team’s practices that year.
“Right before [Shaw’s] final match, he’s in the finals at [flight] two singles, he told our coach, ‘hey man, after the bloodbath you put us through [schedule-wise], this is gonna be pretty easy for me,'” MacDonald said.
“Lessons are being learned on the tennis court, they’re being learned on the basketball court, they’re being learned on the baseball diamond, on the football field. But not everything’s going to go your way. We had some ups and downs in our season with that schedule we played, but we stuck together and we had a greater vision. [We knew] once we got to the junior college tournament that we [had] experienced enough adversity and had overcome some obstacles for each other, not just as individuals, but as a team.”
