Serving The Next Generation: Boys Varsity Tennis Coach Russell Brown

Redwood boys varsity tennis coach, Russell Brown, has been the head coach of Redwood boys varsity tennis since 2006. Coach Brown discusses how he got into the sport, his favorite year so far as a coach, and everything in between.

By: Fabian Anguiano

Coach Russ was born and raised in Visalia in the early sixties, having a brother, a sister, and a happy childhood.

Coach Russ was first introduced to the game of tennis when he was just in kindergarten, as his father was in a tennis club where he took some wooden rackets and sawed the handles off.

 Coach Russ and his brother would go out when their father would go to the tennis club at COS. They would just hit the ball, goof around, not knowing what they were doing.

Later on, Russ wanted to play baseball, though he idolized his brother a lot, and he joined him as he played tennis at Mt. Whitney, and Coach Russ would shine. “ I was beating the kids around me in the little youth leagues that we had. I was pretty good.”

What inspired Coach Russ to be a coach in the first place were the experiences he had with his past coaches, Chuck Desira and Dave House, at Mt. Whitney. He says, “I always wanted to get back to my roots at Visalia, and I wanted to be a Mt. Whitney Pioneer.”

Coach Russ went to a job fair searching for some employment, and when he heard Redwood, the pioneer in him came out, as he was still into that rivalry from high school. He didn’t want to go to Redwood, but it was a paying job.

Coach Russ’s first experience as a tennis coach was from 1996 to 1997 at Tranquility High School.

 He would arrive at Redwood in 2002 and would become the JV coach in 2003. In 2004, he says, “I coached at Golden West for a year, while I worked here at Redwood.”

Coach Russ was supposed to get a job at Golden West; it was practically guaranteed, but it fell through.

Being a first-year coach at Redwood, Coach Russ felt “A little bit overwhelmed, because that was the one year I did not have that assistant coach, and I had over 30 players, and it was just me. We had the main street courts in the patio, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

The chaos was too much to handle, as Russ had people fighting out on Main Street when he wasn’t supervising them. It even got to the point where players started hitting each other with rackets.

This made Russ contemplate whether he was meant for coaching. He says he went home thinking, “I don’t know if I can handle this many people. The thing is, the coaches from my past had girls and boys at the same time,” says Russ.

Besides all the mayhem, he stayed the course, “I had some rough early years, and I thought I’d leave it. Pretty much, we get some of the best and wisest people that come through that tennis program, and it’s just been fun teaching here.”

The people Russ has coached have just kept bringing him back, saying, “Being able to coach [and] the quality of people I’ve had over the years. So that’s why I keep coming back. It also helps, I’ve had a really good assistant coach.”

Assistant coach and custodian Virgil Madruga is another reason that Coach Russ keeps coming back, as he has been assisting Russ for 20 of his 21 years of coaching at Redwood.

Coach Russ’s coaching philosophy over the years is more grit-oriented than technical, “ I’m not much into all the technical hold your racket this way. It’s more of a grit. I think I’m a coach of grit. It’s a toughness. You’re gonna hit the last ball, you’re gonna win the last point of the match.”

Another one of Russ’s examples was actually the coach to his high school coaches, “He was a coach here for 26 years. His name was Sy Inamindi. I want to get the courts named after him, just like they have names on the buildings.”

So far, Coach Russ’s favorite year as coach was 2013, when they won the valley championship.

For Coach Russ, the part of being a coach that stands out most to him is, “When the former players contact you and tell you how they’ve been doing, that’s the most gratifying part. They throw in the fact that they really enjoyed playing tennis, or how it helped shape them. That’s what sports are all about,” says Russ.

Coach Russ wants his players to look forward to practice and take away a lifelong skill. You can’t play the game of football when you are forty, but you can play the game of tennis.

The boys always start off with a slow start, according to Russ, though they go against some tough competition in most of the Clovis schools.

For this season, it is more of a rebuild year, as in years before, they had some high-level tournament players, though, the last two years, that element.

Having won 100 league games in a row keeps the team pushing. “That’s kind of a motivating factor. We’re probably on track to possibly win league again this year. So that’s always a minimum measure. If we can throw in a playoff win or two, that’s great,” says Russ.

Coach Russ’s goal as a coach is to win the league and hopefully get somebody to qualify for the sectional tournament.

If Coach Russ were to retire as head coach, he would still like to be involved in Ranger athletics, such as being an assistant coach. Russ also runs the scoreboard for football, basketball, and volleyball. 

The reason Russ does not want to fully step away from Ranger athletics goes deeper than the sport, “I won’t know what I’m going to do till I don’t do it. That’s kind of what I’m afraid of, I probably will keep doing it, because I’m afraid of what’s on the other side.”

Tags: Boys Tennis, coach, fabian anguiano, gigantea, Gigantea athletics, rangers, Redwood, redwood athletics, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers, redwood sports, visalia ca