April 20, 2020 at 11:32 a.m.
A joyous journey
With HOF induction pending, Rhinelander's Heideman reflects on tennis career
A joyous journey
To date, Heideman has 591 career victories, 21 conference championships, 22 subsectional titles, two sectional titles and 51 individual state tournament entries. It's a hall of fame-worthy resume.
That day will be coming sometime soon for Heideman, who was selected to be part of the Wisconsin High School Tennis Coaches Association's 2020 Hall of Fame Class. The induction ceremony was to have taken place last month in Madison, but was postponed as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to take hold across the state and the nation.
Though delayed temporarily, Heideman said the award is an affirmation of a career dedicated to tennis.
"I've been a very fortunate man, to have good fortune over this long of a stretch," Heideman said in a sit-down interview with the River News last month, prior to the postponed induction ceremony. "That means that there's been an awful lot of people, not just players, but parents, my family, they've just kind of been there over the years. It's made it a joyous journey."
The beginning
It's a journey that began as a bit of an afterthought as Heideman was seeking employment in the district back in the early 1980s. Basketball was Heideman's No. 1 and the sport he thought he would coach in the district. Heideman said offering to coach tennis was a matter of necessity.
"When I got my job in '84 - unlike today where, in Rhinelander, if they get five applications, they're doing pretty well - (superintendent) Bob Hanson came out with a stack of applications, I can still remember that, it's about this high," Heideman said, spreading his hand far apart. "And he said, 'Here are all the people who applied for the job that you are going for.'"
"Then he had another stack about this high," Heideman said, again spreading his hands apart but not quite as far as before. "He said, 'Here are all the people who will coach.' And then he had another stack which was, 'Here are all the people will coach more than one sport,' and that stack was very thin. We had already talked about basketball, but I had some interest in tennis. I kind of figured if it was going to help me get the job, I'll do it."
The rest, as they say, is history.
Heideman served as the boys' JV coach under Jeff Scandin in 1985, before taking over as head coach in 1986. In Heideman's initial tenure as boys' head coach from 1986-1992, the Hodags won three team sectional championships and qualified for the WIAA team state tournament in 1989. Heideman served as the JV coach in 1993, before returning to the head position in 1994.
In the fall of 1989, Heideman added the girls' head coaching position to his resume, a position he held until 1996.
The next chapter
Daryl Youngstrum held the girls' coaching position from 1997 to 2006. Heideman returned to the helm in 2007 and the Hodag girls' program has experienced unprecedented success during that run. The Hodags have gone 203-50 in dual meets in that time and have never finished worse than fourth in conference play. 2007-2009 were the final three years for the Hodags in the Wisconsin Valley Conference, and they finished fourth, third and second, respectively in the WVC those seasons. Rhinelander joined the GNC in 2010 and has won nine of the last 10 conference titles, only getting edged out by Antigo for the championship in 2017.
When Heideman returned to the helm of the girls' program, his daughter, Emily, was a sophomore and the team had a pair of freshmen - Priyanka Sikka and Alleigh Fralick - who were set to embark on storied careers at RHS. Sikka finished as a four-time state qualifier, including three times as a singles player. Emily Heideman and Fralick made it to the round of 16 in doubles in 2008 and to the round of eight in doubles in 2009. Sikka and Fralick teamed up in doubles in 2010, their senior season, and made it all the way to the state semifinals - the furthest any Rhinelander entry has advanced in the state tournament during Heideman's tenure.
"When I look at that, so many things changed and so many things just worked out," coach Heideman reflected. "It starts with Em, and she, of course, was the main reason. But then Em's gone, I've retired (as a guidance counselor at RHS) and we've moved in the GNC. It couldn't have worked out any better."
The GNC also breathed fresh life into the RHS boys' program. The Hodags went from 3-15 in the spring of 2010, their last year in the Valley, to 14-5 in 2011, their first year in the Great Northern. The Hodags won the GNC title that year, won it again in 2012 and have won eight of the last nine conference titles overall.
Getting the hall call
Heideman might have found out sooner about his impending induction into the WHSTCA hall of fame if not for a hectic travel schedule earlier this year.
He said he got the call Jan. 13 from the WHSTCA while at the Miami International Airport. He had just returned stateside from a vacation in Cuba where he had little to no cellphone connectivity. He noticed that an unusual number had attempted to contact him several times when he was outside cell range and, once in Miami, the number called again.
"There was this guy with 10 calls and, when we got there, it was the same number, and bango," he said. "It was really a pleasant, huge surprise. It was a little hard to hear and there was a lot of commotion going on, but it was kind of neat.
"It's an honor to be selected. There's just no doubt about that. It's a little bit, I think, of an affirmation that you've done things right. I think you get that from your athletes, you get that from your record and this is that thought from a little different source, you know, fellow coaches. From that perspective, I think it means a lot - especially being up in Rhinelander."
The speech
Heideman will have more time now to think about what he's going to say once he's finally inducted into the hall of fame. The induction ceremony, which was supposed to held in conjunction with the WHSTCA's annual coaching clinic, was canceled and details of rescheduling the event were still undetermined as of this writing.
Still Heideman, when speaking with the River News last month, already had a good idea of what his speech will entail.
"I wanted to give the group a sense of the tradition of tennis in Rhinelander, so I'm going to talk a little about Rhinelander taking second in 1967, their stretch of I don't know how many conference titles in the late 60s, early 70s, a little sense of how things have changed since I got in," he said. "What I mean by that is that when I first started, in terms of learning tennis, there was basically two things - books and going to clinics. Like some many things, that's just blown into on YouTube, you can get anything you want as far as instruction."
That will be followed by a multitude of stories and thank yous, saving the last for his wife, Kathy, who has been there every step of the way.
"There's going to be a lot of thanks, because it takes a lot of people," he said.
The stories
After the Hodags won the Great Northern Conference girls' tennis championship in dramatic fashion in 2018 - with Emma Roberts winning a final-set tiebreaker over Antigo's Ellie Kelly in the final match of the conference tournament to determine the outcome of the GNC title - Heideman said, "As I get older, I do this to have stories and this is a great story." Heideman's collected plenty of stories over his 36-year coaching career.
He recalled his first year with the boys' program, serving as Scandin's assistant, as Scandin came to practice still seething over a meeting he had just had with school administration regarding the program's budget.
"He taught me what the phrase 'purple with rage' means," Heideman said. "About the second practice, I'm on the courts with the kids and he comes out of the high school and I mean he was purple. The athletic director, due to budget cuts, had just cut the tennis balls. He didn't know if he had enough balls to run the meets. I've never seen Jeff like that."
Heideman recalled a story from 1989. Coming off conference, subsectional and sectional titles the year before, the program got a jolt when David Mira, a Columbian foreign exchange student and highly-ranked tennis player in the South American country, joined the program and became the team's No. 1 singles player. However, Mira soon found out that tennis in the Northwoods was a little different than what he was accustomed to.
"We go to Marshfield and David comes up to me and says, 'Coach, I can't play here.' I said, 'Why not, David?' He said, 'Well, these cracks and stuff on the court, you can't play tennis.' He was not used to this type of winter courts. He was very nice about it, and I said, 'David, you've got to play,' and he played. Afterward, on the ride home, I was like, 'David, what other things are different from where you play tennis.' He says, 'Where I play tennis, we have little kids who pick up the balls.'"
Then there was 1996, when the Hodags nearly upset Manitowoc for the sectional title. During that meet Rhinelander's Teague Orgeman upset a top-seed from Manitowoc.
Heideman remembers that match as "one of the biggest upset there ever was" in his 36 years coaching tennis.
However, how Heideman came to learn of the feat, was a bit unusual.
"Teague has a so-so year, and we're in Green Bay (at sectionals). He's going to play a guy from Manitowoc. He's the four seed and he's playing the one seed. The upset in that (match) hardly ever happens, so I'm with the doubles at a different site. So I call over to where Teague's playing and I get Dave Denis, he was our four player and Dave was real flighty. And he goes, 'Coach, Teague won!' I go, 'Dave, what are you saying?' He said 'No, no, no coach, Teag won. He beat the guy.' I go, 'Dave, I don't want to be yanked around by you. Tell me the truth.' He goes, 'No, coach. Teag won.' I go, 'Dave, I'm coming over there and if Teag lost, I don't know what I'm going to do to you.'"
Heideman recalled two memories from the girls' tennis team's deep runs at state. In 2009, when Emily Heideman and Fralick made the state quarterfinals, the fifth-seeded pair received a bye into the second round where they faced the Madison La Follette pair of Rebecca Mixtacki and Renee Nelson. After winning the first set 6-3, Emily Heideman and Fralick lost the second 3-6 and went into a tiebreaker with the third set knotted a six games a piece.
"We're down match point, Alleigh is serving. Alleigh Fralick didn't have a great serve, but boom, ace," coach Heideman said. "Alright, we'll take it. They set up, boom, ace. We've now got match point. They serve to Em, Em cracks a winner. Boom, match done. We came from the brink of defeat. Alleigh Fralick never hit two aces in her life and then cracked that winner. That was a neat moment."
One year later, it again came down to a big serve for the Hodags. This time Sikka was playing with Fralick in a quarterfinal match against Green Bay Southwest's Paige Keepers and Justine Daane. Sikka's serve was equally effective in that situation, though much less aesthetically pleasing.
"It's the point before match point and Pri is serving. Pri's always been a nervous server," Heideman explained. "Pri shanks her first serve out, paddy cakes her second serve in and we win the point. It's now match point. She shanks her first serve out and then shanks a horrible shot, except for the fact that it loops back, head-height on the service line and the Southwest player can't get out of the way, and it whiffs her head ... What a way to win. I can still see that coming off her (racket), just a framer. You could just tell the ball's going in a crazy direction and it just loops back at this person."
On the horizon
Heideman could earn his 600th career win this spring, assuming there is some sort of spring sports season to be had in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Otherwise win No. 600 would likely come this fall with the RHS girls' staff.
As for how long Heideman will continue to coach, he said he reevaluates on a year-by-year basis. Heideman has twice in the last 11 years tried to step back as the head boys' coach - with Ken George at the helm in 2009 and Mike Messerli the coach of record for the Hodags' 2015 conference title. Employment forced Messerli to relocate outside the area following the 2015 season and, with no other known applicants at the time, Heideman threw his hat back into the ring to retake the reins of the program.
Heideman admitted the long-term future of the program weighs heavily on his mind as he contemplates when to hang up his racket and tennis shoes for good.
"The program means a lot to me and I've put my life, blood and time into it," he said. "It is just hard to just let it go, not knowing it's in good hands. That's a factor. The other thing is, but I never envisioned being in it this long and I don't want it to have to end with someone going like this to me and saying, 'It's really time that you let it go.'"
Apart from the stability of the program and the tennis facilities - Heideman helped spearhead fundraising for tennis court improvements and renovations at RHS in 1990 and again 2013 - Heideman said the passion to coach still burns deep.
"I still really enjoy the athletes and there's that coach-athlete relationship where there's a love for tennis and, together, we can cultivate that. There's still that there with a number of athletes," he said. "That's a very powerful drug to me."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
Comments:
You must login to comment.