Andy Strout doesn’t mind juggling two things at once. He’s used to it, actually. Has been for a while.
During the fall semesters of his junior and senior years at Springfield College, Strout returned to his alma mater, Cape Elizabeth High (class of 1975), to help coach soccer. When the season was over, he went back to college.
From 1991-99, Strout coached both the boys and girls tennis teams at Cape. During that time, the girls won nine state titles and the boys won four.
It wasn’t a big deal, then, when Cape athletic administrator Keith Weatherbie asked Strout to step in and serve as the head coach of both the boys and girls varsity tennis teams again this season.
“It was more or less a mutual agreement between myself and the athletic administrator,” said Strout, who has been coaching the Cape boys tennis team continuously since 1979. “He came up with the idea that we could go back to that because he was interested in streamlining some of the different coaching positions to save some money, and he knew that I had done that for nine years before.”
Strout did have some concerns when the plan was first talked about, though. When he coached both teams during the nineties, there was a JV coach and there were assistants for the boys and girls teams. This year there’s no JV coach, and, at one point, there was no girls assistant.
Strout wasn’t too worried about the boys team because he knew his assistant, Ben Putnam, would be able to step right in. He didn’t feel comfortable with the girls side of things until he got a phone call from Jeff Barrett, a teaching professional at the Portland Athletic Club.
“We were very fortunate in finding a gentleman by the name of Greg McIntyre,” said Strout. “Jeff gave me a call and said, ‘Hey, you might want to think about this guy. He’s interested in that position.’ So we were pretty fortunate to catch up with him.”
The way it all works is Putnam and McIntyre always go to matches with their teams, and Strout travels with whichever team is playing the more important match.
So far, so good. Through Monday, the boys team was 5-1 while the girls were 3-2.
“It hasn’t really been a problem so far, and I don’t think anyone really sees it as being a problem,” said Cape junior Will Hall, the No. 1 player for the boys team.
Senior Mary-Katherine Huebner, a singles and doubles player for the girls team, agreed.
“It’s not that different because we still have a coach at every practice and at every match, so it’s really not that big of a deal to us,” she said.
If there is one drawback, though, it’s that Strout doesn’t get as much up-close-and-personal, one-on-one time as he’d like.
“Personally, I don’t feel like I really get the connection with the kids like I would like to have,” he said. “You work with them really hard at practice and then you only get to see some of the results with the team that you go with.
“Then,” Strout said, “you feel bad if the team lost – could you have done something more? But it’s one of those things where you can’t be at all places at all times.”
This coming weekend, Strout will try to be in as many places as possible. The boys team will be in South Portland for the regional singles tournament, and the girls will be in Falmouth.
Said Strout: “I’ll be running around a lot.”
Good thing he likes to juggle.
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