PEABODY — He didn’t say it in so many words, but one of the benefits of coaching a sport like tennis as opposed to football is that it helps first-year coach John Sousa get in touch with his softer side.
Sousa, a former football player back in the Ed Nizwantowski era, was an assistant for the sport for 10 years under a series of head coaches, the most recent being Mark Bettencourt. He was mainly a sub-varsity coach, but even at that level, he said, the work was intense and took him away from his family.
So he turned to tennis, helping out Eric Burke when he got the girls varsity job last year.
“I wanted to progress in my role as a coach,” he said, “and it was time for me to step away from football to go my own route.”
Burke stepped down at the end of last season, and Sousa said some of the girls on the team really pushed him to apply for the job. So he did. And he got it.
The problem: He’s not exactly John McEnroe.
“Tennis is not my sport of expertise,” he said. “I love the game. I played a lot of table tennis, pickleball, stuff like that. And I was able to help Evan as the head coach.”
So far, so good, Sousa said. As of Saturday, the team’s record was 6-5, and the Tanners have defeated the teams he expected them to beat.
“First, I needed to tell the girls I wasn’t just here for one year,” he said. “I’m in it for the duration. I am trying to rebuild this program, and establish a foundation.”
“I want it to be a program that Peabody can be proud of, and I want our girls to be recognized for the awesome student athletes they are,” he added.
Last year, he said, the team started off without winning a single game.
“In the first half, we were losing games 0-6 every time,” he said. “But we started gaining their trust as the season went along.
Sousa believes in positive reinforcement, especially with newer players who haven’t participated in the past. He did not turn anyone away this year, and even with a large group of girls, he sees improvement from everyone.
At the same time, he wants his girls to understand that this is a varsity sport, not a club. There are rules, requirements, disciplines, and they are expected to conform.
“We had a goal in the beginning to turn these girls into athletes,” he said. “We are here to be athletes. To compete. If they come every day, I will bring out the best in them. Winning is an attitude.”
Sousa is a math teacher at Higgins Middle School, and he tends to view sports as a series of measurements and equations. Even tennis. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking singles or doubles.
“The court is divided up in areas that are so long, and so wide,” he said. “So you, as a player, know how big the area is that you have to defend. You also know that the closer you get to the net, the tougher it is for your opponent to hit one past you.”
That’s the same concept as a hockey goalie coming out of the crease to cut down the angle of a shooter, he said.
The first singles player is Jessica Chau, who, he says, is the team leader. Valentina Goga doubles as the morale-builder on the team. Yasmine Giacalone is at third singles, and she brings a girls hockey player’s grit to the squad, Sousa said.
He rotates his doubles tandems among Jill McGrath, Theodosia Kourtelidis and her sister Efthyghia, Jessica DeMiri, Vanessa Kolani, and Argiro Psyhogios.
To help him with this transition, Sousa picked his friend, Keith McCabe, who actually is a tennis buff, to be his assistant.
“He teaches me a lot,” Sousa said. “The girls see us confer, and I think it reinforces the idea that you can learn from everyone. Right now, we’re all learning together.”
