FEATURE: Poole appreciative of men's tennis team's breakthrough season, championship moment

With each agonizing point, Bert Poole paced back and forth along the back fence on the adjacent tennis court. For the past 10 years, the Averett University men’s tennis program that Poole has put his blood, sweat and tears into had come so close to hanging a banner, but the championship trophy had eluded them. Would this finally be the year?

At first, it didn’t look like it. His then-No. 37 Cougars fell behind 3-0 in the finals against Old Dominion Athletic Conference juggernaut Washington and Lee University, which had won 14 consecutive ODAC titles. The Generals had been Averett’s nemesis for the past two seasons since the Cougars joined the conference, beating Averett in the championship match in 2023 and 2024. 

In a matter of a handful of minutes, the next three singles matches finished up with the Cougars winning each to knot the score at 3-3. It all came down to No. 5 singles, which was in the third set. Poole and his team found their way over to that court to watch it play out. A nervous ball of energy in any close match, Poole stood about 10 feet behind his other players as he walked to the corner. And then back to the bench. Then back to the corner. Then back to the bench. 

When the final point was won by Averett to clinch the match and the ODAC championship, Poole collapsed to the bench behind him, slouched over with his head in his hands for a moment. 

The emotions overran him, just as they still do as he thinks back to that moment.

“Part of it was that long, 10-year journey — the hard work to get it here. So part of it was me feeling like I've accomplished something, but that that was a small part. The big part, and this is the truth, is just gratitude,” Poole said this week as he teared up, pointing toward his players as they practiced in preparation for Friday’s NCAA Tournament First Round matchup with Asbury University in Atlanta.

After a decade, Poole can breathe a sigh of relief after capturing his first men’s tennis conference title at the helm of the Cougars’ program, which hadn’t won a title since 2000. 

Poole took over the men’s and women’s tennis programs in July 2015 and has built both programs into annual contenders over time by continuing to break in talented players and adding depth. He’s had talented players and teams over the years, but something just felt different about this men’s team. Poole’s motto for his program over the years has been “Tough, Tireless, Together.” And this year’s squad embodied that thought from the camaraderie on and off the court to their mental toughness through the season. It was special.

Poole has thought long and hard about something he once heard legendary UConn women’s basketball head coach Geno Auriemma say about great teams over the years.

“He said you assume that all those national champion teams were just like the great teams, and they did everything right, and they were together,” Poole recalled. “And he said a couple of them, they did everything right and they reached their potential. He said there were several that didn't really reach their potential and that he wanted more from them. He wasn't entirely happy with the way they played. He said they just had so much talent that they beat everybody, but they didn't really maximize their potential. He said some teams met their potential, some didn't.”

That’s how Poole has felt about his men’s team over the past decade. Plenty of potential and success, but they never fully developed to what he felt they could have been. The Cougars came up short in the conference finals in 2017 and 2022 as members of the USA South Athletic Conference, and then had lost back-to-back finals in their first two years as members of the ODAC. 

“That's very typical here,” Poole explained. “We've always had talent here in the men's team, so we were lucky. From the beginning, we had pretty great talent on the men's team, but we didn't consistently have that mental toughness and the work ethic. We had individuals who did it … but as a team, we didn't, in my view, have that team that really did it right consistently all the time. And last year was the first team in my ninth season that did it right. We weren't the most talented team that I've ever had, but they did really well. This team did it even better, close to perfect.” 

All the stars seemed to align for Poole this season, and he felt positive when the team returned to campus after last summer. 

“We had a lot of things in place that gave me a lot of hope,” Poole said. “One was we had an experienced assistant pro in assistant coach Henrique Leal with a real fun, positive attitude with a lot of energy who could create a lot of positive laughter, but still have the confidence and have the respect of the players. That's always a nice thing to have. A lot of times, assistants are just learning their craft and lesser experienced and not quite so sure themselves, even though they develop their skills over a period of years.  But he was already very much set in how he did things, comfortable in his abilities. So that's a big plus, starting from Day 1, to have that.”

Another sign was having several veteran players who were crucial to the leadership and set good examples for the large freshman class that came in last fall. Junior Prabjeet Chandhok was the vocal leader that kept the group energized and focused. Senior Jaeden Mukkaladyil was the lead-by-example guy who always stayed steady, calm and collected — whether he won or lost.

“I could tell this team was special from the get go,” Leal said. “These guys have been working hard from Day 1. We knew it would be hard to get everyone on the right track, especially having five freshmen, but with great leadership from the upperclassmen, everyone had their mind set on making each other better. These guys are more than just a team, they are truly a family. No egos, no excuses — just hard work, accountability and being there for each other every single day. That’s what makes them special.”

Chandhok lamented that in his previous seasons with the team, it was evident that they had talent. However, they never took the needed steps to keep getting better outside of the normal practice and playing season. And from Day 1, they all had the goal of winning a conference championship.

“One thing Coach told me and I realized as well was that we never got better in the offseason,” Chandhok said. “We always dropped down. This was the only offseason where we actually went up. As soon as a season is over, you want to relax and chill out, but this time we really stepped up on our game and that’s what made the main difference. When we were done in late September or October, we still all came out every single day on our own and played matches every day. We brought a great attitude every day and we just worked on ourselves.”

The coaching staff also noticed.

“They were not only hitting, they were competing against each other, making each other better,” Leal said. “So when the spring season came around, there was no picking up needed, they were all on top of their games. All Bert and I had to do was to keep pushing them, but they were already extremely motivated.”

Motivation is one thing, but performance is another. And the Cougars kind of stumbled out of the gates this spring, losing 7-0 to a nationally ranked University of Mary Washington team and losing 5-2 to a nationally ranked Salisbury University team a few weeks later. Given their high hopes for the year, It would have been easy for the Cougars to be down on themselves. That’s another area where this team was built different.

“For me, the biggest thing was the belief,” junior Alex Donnelly said. “This is my second year here after having experience at Division II. Just the feeling of togetherness on and off the court … it’s a really good culture. Early in the year we had a tough loss to Mary Washington and a tough loss to Salisbury, but it never put us down. We used it as fuel instead of negative energy.”

In early April, Averett lost consecutive matches against nationally ranked Christopher Newport University and a regular season meeting with Washington and Lee. But even in defeat, Donnelly said something shifted their mindset. And that paid off weeks later when the Cougars got their rematch against Washington and Lee in the ODAC championship.

“The actual belief that we could beat them,” Donnelly noted. “They had won 14 years in a row, and I feel like last year we respected that too much. They are just tennis players on the other side of the court. I feel like we really saw that when we played CNU and had a chance and scared them. And then we went to Washington and Lee and saw the same thing. Something in the final really felt different.”

Facing off against the Generals on their home court on May 4, Averett shocked Washington and Lee on the big stage to end the program’s 25-year NCAA Tournament drought. As his players celebrated the accomplishment, Poole needed the moment to himself to take it all in.

“When they give everything they got, as a coach, you appreciate that,” Poole said. “They're rare, and that's what Geno said. This is a rare thing, you know? I know it, and I appreciate it because I know how hard it is. It doesn't have much to do with me. They're the ones that do it. I try every year, but it's up to them. It's always up to them and the team they're going to have. So those were my emotions of that moment. It's just an incredible appreciation and gratitude and so happy for them. So great. Mental toughness and reaching that potential has been a huge part of their success and to this point.”