She also got rid of a UH alum assistant coach who had been around for over a decade.
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Was the coach a game changer or something?
Our facilities are lacking Iām sure, she probably wanted upgrades etc, we poor, so she said the hell with it and got out of dodge
And she replaced her with coach who had been fired midseason from Missouri for abuse. And we are so lazy and cheap Iām sure we will just give him the job now. FFS we canāt get anything right.
After seeing the article in the Chronicle, " Houston loses head tennis coach to alma mater, fellow Big 12 school ", I took a minute to email UT ex Shapiro thanking him for his continued negative reporting on UH athletics.
When did this article appear? I want to read (Iām a subscriber) but missed it. Thanks.
I donāt know what you posted but if it made the moderators mad it probably had value
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Iām sorry but how is that negative reporting?
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This is just sad. I get it. I donāt blame her.
But itās sad to see this. We struck gold with Katarina
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Itās negative news. We had a coach leave for another job. Shapiro is consistent reporting negative UH news
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Itās not negative news. He reported what happened. She took a job at her alma mater. Itās a conference rival. What is he supposed to do? Put exclamation points? And anyways, āchron.comā is more of an opinion website. Itās different from āhoustonchronicle.comā where Duarte reports from. Too different sites.
Alright, Iāll bite and post here for the 1st time in 3 years. Why should someone turn down their alma mater, one of the top resourced programs in college tennis (OSU hosted the '24 national championships) to stay at a program that doesnāt even have lights at its facility? Kat had a team that shouldāve by all rights been selected to the NCAAs (multiple B12 programs with worse records got selected over us) and UH got shafted by lazy polling and other teams in the conference being āname brandsā.
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Tennis selects NCAA at large participants with an RPI ranking. Itās objective. We didnāt make it because she scheduled a soft nonconference schedule. It didnāt have anything to do with bias. The cut off was I believe 41 and we finished 45 and thatās that.
As far as the reasons for leaving for Oklahoma State, I canāt argue with any of that. My point is that when she decimated her previous program to come here and brought most of her team with her, it was pretty easy to see that she was going to do the same thing to us the moment she got the chance.
If we can keep our current players and not hire her assistant (ser above), then I will say that she was a good hire and will be thankful to her for having nearly turned our program around and having left it in good shape for someone else. If we just rented her for two years to not even get us to the NCAA tournament only to have her poach all of our roster, itās hard to say she was a good choice.
Try to change my mind, but itās hard for me to see it other way than that.
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I donāt think our administration anticipated Katarina to be successful this quickly.
But the good news is that it is possible for UH tennis to became a great program. However, we lack the facilities and support to compete. Until then, we will either be mediocre or a stepping stone (just like football during the G5 years).
Yeah we didnāt make the tournament, but it was still an historic year in the program that clearly drew eyeballs nationally in her benefit.
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Was it really historic? We rattled off a bunch of victories against soft teams and promoted the hell out of the streak, but that scheduling is ultimately what cost us our spot in the tournament. But props to her, youāre right that the relentless self-promotion and social media presence and ālook at me outfitsā did draw eyeballs. Iām sorry if I dont care about her career one bit once she has dumped us and moved on.
Despite her social media campaign leading you to believe that UH Tennis has been a barren wasteland before this season, it has been a while but I believe that we have been in the top 25 under two or maybe 3 separate coaches (see below). Of course someone that attention-seeking is not going to embrace the past, but to those of us lifers itās not breaking news that UH Tennis can be great. Itās not great again yet, we are almost there, but trust me it aināt gonna be that great if she takes half our team with her.
Iād like to find a great coach that will stick around. We havenāt had many of those.
You might find this interesting:
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I have no interest in changing your mind or anyoneās here.
You hire good up and coming head coaches regardless of whether or not you think they will stay long term, regardless of sport. UH lucked into one of the greatest to ever do it in (CKS) and who was willing to stick around. Thatās not the norm, though. Certainly, the goal is to have any good coach stay here long term but that will never be realistic for this specific program with its current resource levels. If UH hires a good up & coming coach to replace Whitting in baseball, he has a good 2-3 years and his alma mater/a program with much bigger resources comes calling, safe to assume weāll have to sweat keeping them. I have found this kind of cycle frustrating in 2 decades of being a UH fan, but Iāve also seen how much worse it is when nobody wants your HC because the team is bad.
Even with the support challenges that still exist, Kat improved program facilities and peripherals as much as you can do in 2 years and made the job more attractive simply by actually winning Big 12 games at a program that was historically challenged (2 NCAA apps this century) prior to her arrival. If you donāt see that, thatās a you issue.
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Also I assume for all your clear bitterness towards this person that you attended lots of matches the last 2 seasons and gave to Tennis specifically, right?
As an avid tennis player, I completely agree with your take. She was a phenomenal coaching get for us and it was shocking how quickly she turned things around with limited resources. Didnāt attend any actual matches since Iām based out of Cali, but am hopeful we can identify a similar profiled coach to follow up.
Any preferred candidates from your perspective?
My top choice would be Tarletonās HC Eliane Douglas Miron because she built a good, consistent winner from scratch in D1 (they probably wouldāve gone to the NCAAs if theyd been eligible in 22 and took a point off the whorns in this yearās NCAAs). But there are other good candidates out there Iād be happy with.
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Kat is an excellent coach. I think we all agree on that. I donāt like her style, but she turned around a dumpster fire. Like I said before, if she leaves our roster alone, Iāll consider her an excellent hire.
I attend some tennis matches. I give to menās basketball and football. Nothing against the other sports, but if you want to turn a business around, you invest in the parts of the business that can make money.