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Girls tennis

Denis’ dedication leads to milestone win for Hollidaysburg tennis

High school girls tennis

By Michael Boytim 7 min read

HOLLIDAYSBURG -- As Hollidaysburg and Huntingdon's high school girls tennis teams lined up for introductions Monday at their season-opening Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference match, the size of the teams stood out to anyone watching.

The Lady Tigers could have fielded four teams with a varsity roster of 29, and the Lady Bearcats did not even have enough to fill all the spots in the match with just six players.

It's no accident the Hollidaysburg roster is as healthy as it is.

Twenty-six years ago, the Lady Tigers' program looked a lot like Huntingdon's -- and many others in the area -- do now.

"When I took over, the year before, the boys program had to forfeit some matches, because they didn't have enough kids," Hollidaysburg girls and boys tennis coach Brian Denis said. "My first year I took the girls program over, I think we had eight or nine kids. Our retention rate has been really good over the years. I feel like if they are coming back, they must enjoy it. We want to keep it fun and like a family, but I think the success has been the icing on the cake."

If success has been icing on a cake, Denis has probably been on a sugar high for a long time.

Monday's 5-0 win over Huntingdon was the 700th of his career between the boys and girls varsity programs.

"I will say it's humbling, and we're blessed to have these numbers," Denis said. "I tell the parents all the time not to take it for granted, because it's a very unique situation. There is no other program in the state that has all these guys from one district in both the boys and girls program, and they all get along."

Beyond the 29 players on the varsity roster, Hollidaysburg has 15 junior high girls players in seventh and eighth grade and an elementary program. This summer, 140 kids showed up to Denis' Blair Regional YMCA summer camp.

"He just puts so much time and effort into it," said Brian's daughter and senior star Crosby Denis. "I look at it and think about how we have the tennis league going on throughout the summer to help develop all of these kids. With the team, he started the junior high team, both boys and girls. He does lessons, he does the indoor clinics at the Summit. There's just so many things. It's not like he's just a coach during the two or three months of the season. He's a coach the whole year."

Along with his wife and Crosby's mother Amanda, Brian Denis also runs a summer league with four teams that play an eight-match season with junior high and high school level players. The first year it was held, 40 players signed up.

"I have been doing two full-time jobs for the last 26 years," Denis said. "I teach 40 hours a week and do probably 25-to-30 hours of tennis every week, but it's definitely a labor of love. We have never gotten tired of it or frustrated enough to say we can't do it anymore. Amanda has been key. She doesn't get nearly the credit she deserves, because it's like having a twin of me out there. I know if it was just me out there, I don't think I could do it. Having someone that pretty much finishes my sentences, she learned from her dad at Altoona, I learned from him. He passed it both on to us, and now we're both on the same wavelength. We're technically more co-head coaches than head coach and assistant."

Amanda's father, Herb Faris, was Brian's coach in high school at Altoona and serves as his inspiration.

"I played all the sports growing up at Altoona (Area) High School," Denis said. "I kind of got jaded by the politics of team sports at a young age and wanted to try an individual sport. I started playing tennis in eighth grade and played for the legendary Herb Faris at Altoona, who ran an absolutely amazing program. That got me hooked. I went and played in college at Dickinson where I didn't have a great experience, because the coach was a part-time coach. He didn't put time and effort into it. I knew if I ever got back involved in tennis, I wanted to do it more the way I learned in high school and how that program was handled."

Denis took an assistant tennis coaching job at Hollidaysburg and took over both the boys and girls program the next season. He started building the program with Sunday clinics and expanded that into a summer program with elementary players.

"I'm always shocked when we play other teams (at how small they can be)," Crosby Denis said. "It's incredible to see the program we have and we have created. I have known all the girls on our team for years. The younger girls, I fed to them when they were kids at tennis clinics. It's just so cool to see how everyone grows up through the team."

Hollidaysburg has never had a losing season under Denis in either boys or girls tennis, but he isn't the type of person to relax and rest on his laurels.

"The work is to maintain it," Denis said. "I have a perfectionist attitude, so I feel like the moment I stop working hard to keep it, then who knows where the program will go? But I am getting older. That's the hard part. I don't have as much energy as when I was 25 or 30 now that I have just turned 50. I'm slowing down a little bit."

Last year, Hollidaysburg's girls team defeated a WPIAL school in the state playoffs for the first time and won another District 6 championship over State College.

With Crosby Denis, Grace Muriceak and Emma Moritz -- all Altoona Mirror first-teamers last year -- returning, the goals for this season are even higher.

"I think because we have the same team as last year, I think this is our best chance," Crosby Denis said. "We have all worked really hard this offseason."

Improving to 700-128 on Monday in a match where Hollidaysburg won all four matches contested 10-0 didn't seem to really hit home to Denis, because it doesn't seem like he's anywhere close to the end of his career.

"I joke with Amanda that they will probably scrape my body off these courts someday," Denis said. "Like I said, I don't foresee the passion ever going away from either of us. To me, 700 is just a number. It's more about the friendships I have made. It seems like every day, someone pops up on my Facebook feed that's a former player that has a birthday. I like to make a habit of reaching out and wishing them the best, and they'll text back that they just had a baby or got married. It's a cool thing."

Denis said as long as the family atmosphere he and his wife have created that involves high school kids taking care of junior high kids and junior high kids taking care of elementary school kids, the team's success should continue as will his run as coach.

"God willing, I hope to do it as long as I'm alive, or they get rid of me first," Denis said. "Whatever number that ends up being isn't going to be as important as all the bonds I have made. One of the junior high kids I have now is the eighth-grade daughter of one of the girls I had my first year coaching. I'm old enough now to start getting second generation kids. It would be cool to someday coach a grandkid, so maybe I'll stick around for one more generation. We take everything one season at a time."

SINGLES: 1, Denis, H, def. Boonie, 10-0; 2, Panaro, H, def. Stapleton, 10-0; 3, Onishi, H, won by forfeit.

DOUBLES: 1, Kranich-Stiffler, H, def. Weller-Wiser, 10-0; 2, Horell-Wagner, H, def. Dolan-Huang, 10-0.

Records: Huntingdon (0-1); Hollidaysburg (1-0).

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