Colleges

College tennis needs foreigners

By GREG AUMAN and ANTONYA ENGLISH
Published March 2, 2005

In a perfect world, Florida tennis coach Roland Thornqvist would love to recruit all of his athletes from within the United States. But these days, if you don't have good international players, you won't be among the elite collegiate teams.

"I think in general, in all sports, schools are looking for a larger talent pool in order to compete and right now in women's tennis there are not enough top-caliber players from the United States for all schools to thrive," Thornqvist said. "In order to stay at the very top, if you don't get the best American players, you have to get the good players from abroad."

At Florida, four of the seven players on the women's roster are foreign-born, as are five of the six on scholarship at South Florida. At Florida State, six of the team's 11 players list their hometown as outside the United States.

"We're actually in decline (with American players)," Thornqvist said. "We lose athletes to soccer. I think soccer is just killing tennis. Young girls, the social aspect is there for soccer where they can go play with a friend, and you lose that in tennis. But I think we're losing a lot of athletes to golf, and primarily soccer."

[Last modified March 2, 2005, 00:47:18]