Dynasty
The first time Christian Matthews picked up a tennis racket, he was less than five years old.“I’ve been playing my whole life,” Christian says. “But I didn’t really get serious about it until high school, probably my junior year.” On this warm Friday morning in late May, a handful of Walker High School faculty members mill about the main office, but the halls are noticeably emptier. No clanging of lockers, no laughter of students, no bells signaling the end of classes. Tonight dozens of students wearing caps and gowns of black and gold, some perhaps with lumps in their throat and a tear in their eye, will accept diplomas, shake hands, and bid adieu to their classmates, teachers, and coaches.Hunkered in a student desk inside a vacant classroom, decked out in a checked button down polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals, youthful face sporting a beard the same color as his sandy brown hair, Christian looks young enough to be one of his students. “And obviously when I went off to college it became more of a job than a hobby,” he says, referring to his time as a player at Birmingham-Southern College.
From 1999 to 2003, the Walker boys tennis team won the state championship four out of five years, with 2002 being the one exception. That winning streak did not go unnoticed on young Christian Matthews. “That stretch, the success they had, is a big reason I got interested in tennis,” he says.The team repeated that success a few years later, winning championships in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. This time Christian was a player on the team. “That was a heckuva stretch there,” he says. “But if you asked all the kids on that ‘06 to 2010 team, those guys on the ‘99 team, Adam Sparks, David Donaldson, Matt Dover, all those guys were kind of our heroes growing up, and that’s what got us playing.”
Now in his second year as tennis coach at Walker High School, the twenty-four year-old seems to have scored a Grand Slam. “I love Jasper,” he says. “It’s home. I love where I’m at right now. I enjoy my job so I’m not looking to go anywhere.”His coaching method is simple, but be not deceived; simple does not mean easy. “Every day we have three things: we’re going to be the most physically fit team in the state, the most mentally tough, and we’re going to try and make more balls than anybody else,” Christian says. “We just work on consistency. We run these things called ‘Dirty Dozens’. We start out at two a day, and by the end of the year we’re running five or six a day. When we’re making that many balls, and we’re able to play three to four hours every day, we can really wear some people out.”
The strategy seems to be working. The girls team clinched the state title in 2015, Christian’s first year as coach, with the boys team taking second place. This year the boys team took home the trophy, with the girls as runner up. “The boys won Dothan this year,” he says. “That’s almost a bigger tournament than state. We’ve won a lot. Nine out of the last eighteen is pretty good. That’s half of them,” he grins.To assure he’s covering every angle of his players, Christian often consults with one of his long-time mentors, Musgrove Country Club tennis pro Grant Rolley. “I work closely with Grant,” he says. “He’s taught me since I was five, and we have a good relationship. Obviously Grant is someone I look up to, just because he does so much for kids. It’s not about himself.”
Training hard every day and running “Dirty Dozens” certainly plays a major part in winning matches and state championships. However, perhaps the primary reason why the team is playing so well is that the students know Christian genuinely cares about them. “I’m gonna coach them as hard as I possibly can,” Christian says. “My biggest fear as a coach is for them to come back to me and say, ‘I wish you had pushed me harder,’ but at the same time I’m gonna make sure they know that I love them. Before and after practice I tell them I love them. I think if you do those two things, that’s a big reason we’ve been as successful as we have.” 78
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