Steve Clark is currently coaching in his first season with Eastern, and he is bringing more than 25 years of collegiate experience with him.

“I’ve been with the [team] for a about a month and a half,” said Clark. “I feel we’ve gelled, I feel like I’ve known them a long time.”

According to Clark, he is having an easy time fitting in and adjusting to life at Eastern.

“The people here I find are extremely friendly and help where they can, when they can,” Clark said. “The people in the athletic department, I think they’re agreeing with the vision and the direction that I want to go.”

Growing up, Clark played a variety of sports including football, baseball and basketball. He started playing tennis at 13 years old. He gravitated towards tennis because of the unique skill level that the sport had.

“13 [years old] is relatively late,” said Clark. “But, my athleticism and all of those other things were already developed.”

In Clark’s senior year of college, he was an All-American tennis player and No. 2 in the country.

“I wanted to play pro, and while I was doing that, I ended up coaching at my alma mater as an assistant and I just loved it,” said Clark. He was one of the youngest head coaches in the NCAA when he started working at Orange, California’s Chapman University.

Clark ultimately chose a career in coaching instead of playing tennis professionally.

His previous coaching positions include working at Chapman University, Texas Tech University and the University of California, Irvine. In his most recent job before Eastern, he was also the director of the Spokane Racquet Club.

During his first coaching position at Chapman University, Clark led the school to a No. 4 national ranking. In 1992, he was hired by Texas Tech where he earned another national ranking as a head coach. Clark also led the Red Raiders to a victory against top 15 University of Texas for the first time in 30 years in the 1990’s.

Clark later coached at UC Irvine where he led his team to national rankings in each of his 14 seasons. He helped UC Irvine win two Big West Conference titles and earned bids to the NCAA tournament seven times. Clark has coached players who have had high rankings nationally as well, and many of his players also went on to play professionally.

“He loves the game [of tennis], he’s very competitive,” said Redshirt junior Eduardo Martinez. “He inspires us to become better players.”

According to Sophomore Luke Ness, Clark knows when to turn his competitive spirit on and off.

“On the court, [Clark] can be a pretty serious guy, he’s all about tennis,” said sophomore Luke Ness. “But, off the court, he can joke around a little bit and he can be your friend. If you get to know him, he’s a really great guy.”

As head coach at Eastern this year, Clark has his players learning a new philosophy, FOCUS, which stands for fundamentals, opportunities, conditioning, unity and success.

Clark said that it is important for his players to practice the “fundamentals” of the game in order to avoid opponents exploiting their weaknesses on the court. He also mentioned that “opportunity” is another goal where he wants his team to play in competitive tournaments and matches.

For “conditioning”, Clark wants his team to be in better shape than their opponents. “Unity” comes into play where he wants his players to have good chemistry with each other.

The last aspect of his FOCUS philosophy is “success”, where he explained that if all four mindsets are applied, success will take place.

“Each one of those is a goal,” said Clark. “But ultimately, my goal is I want to win conference, and I think it’s reasonable.”

So far, Clarke has taught his players important lessons in the early stages of the season.

“I guess the most important thing is having the belief in yourself that you can win any match,” said Ness. “Even if the guy is better than you, you still have the ability to stick to your own strengths and you can win no matter what the circumstances are.”

This season, Clark has EWU men’s tennis working together as one unit.

“This year it has been really nice to actually have team unity and common goals that [we are] working towards,” said Martinez. “So I think that’s a big part of what he has taught us.”