Czula’s coaching impacted students on court and off

Danny Fahey Staff Writer

The Vassar men’s tennis team played its last season under the tutelage of Head Coach Roman Czula in the spring of 2005. After taking the 2005-2006 season off, Czula announced that he would retire and would not be coaching the 2006-2007 season. Czula will not disappear from Vassar Athletics entirely, as he will return from his year-long hiatus to the position as Head of the Life and Fitness Department and a professor in the Physical Education Department.

Czula’s tenure spans almost 30 years of Vassar’s athletic history. He started coaching men’s tennis in 1976 and has been a fixture in the Athletic Department ever since. When he first became head coach, men’s sports at Vassar were still in their infancy, as the College had become coeducational only seven years earlier in 1969. During his 22 seasons at Vassar, Czula compiled a 151-162 record, won five North Atlantic Conference championships from 1976-1981, and coached Eastern College Athletic Conference singles champion, Cliff Berck in 1979.

Since joining the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association/Liberty League in 2000-2001, the Vassar men’s team has steadily improved; they achieved a 9-7 record in 2004-2005, their first winning record since 1999. Czula was recognized for his central role in the success of the 2004-2005 team when he was named 2005 Liberty League Coach of the Year.

Czula initiated the College’s Life Fitness Program in 1989. Since then, it has grown to include more than 60 classes a week in addition to one-day events and programs. The classes offered by the department are published in weekly issues of the In the Pink newsletter, the motto of which reads “keeping VC healthy, wealthy and wise—2 out of 3 isn’t bad.”
Former players will remember Czula not solely for wins, losses or awards, but also for his commitment to student-athletes.

“I believe that the single statement that best describes the experience for me would be that my tennis players would always run through a brick wall for me,” Czula wrote in an e-mailed statement “[but only] if I gave them a clearly expressed and logical, compelling reason to do so. They would not, like many athletes, just do it because the coach said to.”

Czula’s former players spoke highly of him. Former men’s tennis player Ryan Lee ’00 said, “Throughout the recruitment process, [Czula] made sure that I understood his philosophy towards coaching, and that I was coming to [Vassar] for an education first, and to play tennis second. Playing men’s tennis at [Vassar] wasn’t about winning, but it was going to play a key part to growth as an individual and a [Vassar] student.”

Czula made it clear to his players that he was not only showing them how to be better tennis players, but also how to become better people. Other former players highlighted how Czula used tennis as a means toward helping them grow as individuals. His coaching style was a mix of humor and motivation, they said, and one that made practices enjoyable to attend.

Matt Hornbach ’00 recalled that Czula’s sense of humor made tennis practices “an entertaining getaway from the library and the dorm rooms.”

Hornbach added that he felt Czula’s legacy was his ability to instill “a sense of pride and confidence in his warriors—The Czula Warriors—while helping them improve as people and tennis players at the same time.” During Czula’s coaching tenure, the Vassar Brewers men’s tennis teams called themselves the “Czula Warriors.”

The respect between the Coach and his former players is definately mutual. “My tennis alums...will always evoke in me a smile and a rush of memories of intensely hard work, fun and total joy,” said Czula.

The memories of Czula’s former players illustrate the coach’s motto stated in every men’s tennis brochure: “We are not in the business of developing tennis professionals, but we do turn out some of the best tennis playing doctors, lawyers and businessmen in the country.”