Winning Is Elementary for Xanthos

Being a coach at a community college these days is a lot like being an official in the Reagan Administration. No sense in taking your coat off in the morning before you read your messages. You might not be staying.

It sometimes seems every day brings new layoffs, new shifts and new transfers in the ever-changing community college educational scene. “Wait till next year” no longer is a coach’s battle cry for the future but an administrator’s response to cries for funding.

Then there’s Paul Xanthos.

For almost a quarter of a century, he has remained firmly entrenched as the Pierce College men’s tennis coach, weathering storm after storm, calmly going about his business despite the constantly swirling waters around him.

But Xanthos never has been satisfied with mere survival. He almost never has had to yell, “Wait till next year.” The year at hand almost always has been good enough.

Xanthos was a winner when he arrived at Pierce 23 years ago, taking his team to the Western State Conference championship in 1965. And he has continued to win ever since. Pierce won the WSC title in each of Xanthos’ first four years. In 1969, the team was put in the Metro Conference. From 1973 until last season, Xanthos’ Pierce clubs won 13 Metro championships, losing only in 1976.

It was in that 1976 season that Pierce began another impressive streak, winning the first of 97 straight conference matches, a string that finally ended with a 1985 loss to L.A. Harbor College. Pierce also won 50 in a row back in its WSC days under Xanthos.

Those days are back. Pierce has returned to the WSC and--surprise--the school has picked up right where it was 18 years ago, winning its first six conference matches.

Despite being forced to recruit against programs twice and maybe three times its size, Xanthos has produced a dozen players who became All-Americans.

Personal awards? Xanthos, 65, has had them all. He’s been Community College Coach of the Year, Metro Conference Coach of the Year, United States Professional Tennis Assn. Coach of the Year, both nationally and in the California division. Xanthos estimates he’s won 25 such honors, more than one per year.

And another is soon to follow. On April 10, Pierce will bestow its Outstanding Educator Award on Xanthos.

“The tennis coaching awards have been wonderful,” Xanthos said, “but to be honored as an outstanding educator is really something special.”

Football is gone from the Pierce campus. So is men’s basketball. Both were victims of financial belt-tightening. So what’s Xanthos’ secret? How has he managed to keep his head while all about him are losing theirs?

By keeping his nose out of the politics.

“You just have to do with what you’ve got,” he said. “If you have money, great. If not, what good does it do to complain? If the president of the college doesn’t have it to give or the district doesn’t have it to give, you just have to go out and raise it. I just don’t want to get caught up in the politics. When they tell me what I have to work with, I cry a little to see if I can get a little bit more and then I try to raise the rest.

“Our team doesn’t require a big budget. We can furnish a lot of our own equipment. We can borrow balls from tournaments or from the physical education department. Since I’m on the advisory staff of one of the manufacturing companies, we can buy articles of clothing at promotional cost.”

Ironically, the loss of the big sports at Pierce has made additional dollars available to Xanthos.

“We’ve got to make hay while the sun shines,” he said. “We’ve got to take advantage and live it up for a while. Now we are not only going to play like champions. We are going to look like champions.”

Xanthos has had the advantage of being the only Valley-area community college to have an uninterrupted tennis program over the past 23 years. But the success goes beyond that. It is his patience as a teacher, his calm while his players are performing on the court and his demands for proper conditioning (his team is required to work two to 2 1/2 half hours a day, four to five days a week, even in the off-season) that have contributed to so many championships.

Yes, Paul Xanthos is a master at teaching. A master everywhere, that is, except in his own castle. His 8-year-old son, Paul Jr., doesn’t play tennis. Neither do his two stepchildren.

Nor his wife, Kiki. “She came out for a lesson,” the senior Xanthos said, “and I told her she played like a ballet dancer. She never came back.”

Xanthos shrugs his shoulders and laughs as he tells the story. You can’t win them all.

But in the world of Paul Xanthos, you can win nearly all of them.