As Much Impact as a Backhand Serve: Boys Tennis JV Coach Virgil Madruga

Though many know Virgil Madruga as one of our campus custodians, he is also one of the pillars that has help built Redwood Tennis in the past twenty years.

By: Fabian Anguiano

Coach Madruga, born and raised in Visalia, attended Redwood as a high schooler.

Coach Madruga leaned into the game of tennis thanks to his older brother, as he played tennis at Redwood, so he gave in.

Madruga would make varsity in his senior year. The team would go undefeated until the valley championship, where they ultimately lost to Clovis West.

As a player, Madruga believed that he was decent; he believes that he could still make varsity.

Madruga believes he could have been better as a player by saying, “I could have listened more to my coach. Sometimes your coach says something, and you don’t agree with him, but then later on, you realize he was right,” says Madruga.

Madruga was first hired at Redwood as a custodian. He would ask the current coach if he needed assistance, though they were already set with helpers.

Two years later, Coach Russel Brown would arrive, and that’s when Madruga would step in, “He knew my brother, he came and asked me if I would be interested in helping him with tennis, and I was excited about it, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Madruga’s first year with the team, they would actually fall to second in league in both varsity and JV, though they have not looked back ever since. He says, “We’ve taken first place every year since then.” 

They have also tied a couple of times one year with Golden West, and then a three-way tie with Golden West and El Diamante.

In his twenty years, Coach Madruga’s favorite year has been “2013, my son went to school here, and he actually played tennis for us, and that was probably the best part about coaching, I got to coach my son. He started his freshman year, his junior year, he made varsity, and they came in second place.”

They would lose in the valley finals that year, though they would win the valley championship the following year, just like his son said, but tragedy would strike.

“The only negative part about that year was he tore his ACL,” says Madruga.

Coach Madruga believes he has grown since his first year by having more patience with students and athletes; he believes he gets a better point across to the kids.

The impact Madruga wishes to have on the young men he coaches is for them to understand that tennis is a sport they can play for the rest of their lives, “I’m over 50, and I can still get out there and play, not as fast or as mobile as I used to be, but it’s a game I can still enjoy and play,” says Madruga.

Madruga wants them to take competition seriously, but not too seriously to the point where it takes the fun away.

For the rest of the season, Madruga’s goal for the team is, “ I feel like we can go undefeated again this year, and that’s JV and win. I think varsity is going to do the same thing. I think varsity and JV will be undefeated this year in league.”

Madruga’s goal as a coach for the rest of the season is to get kids interested, though he knows, “tennis isn’t always for everybody, so we’ll have somebody who will come out for tennis, and then it’s not their thing, and they’ll go somewhere else.”

Madruga has experienced this before, but some don’t make it clear off the bat, “we’ve had a few people do that, and sometimes they won’t tell us, they just won’t. They’ll stop showing up.”

Coach Madruga’s favorite part about being a coach is watching the athletes improve. At the beginning of the year, they had difficulty with hitting the ball and keeping score, and by the end of the year, they looked ten times better.

Madruga’s lifetime goal as a coach is to simply make people want to play the sport. He wants them to remember it as one of the best things they did in high school.

“I graduated from Redwood, and now I’m here coaching at Redwood, and it’s been a dream come true that I actually get to come back and put more into the school.”

Virgil Madruga, Redwood High school Boy’s JV Tennis Coach

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