Matt L. Stephens

matthewstephens@coloradoan.com

Jon Messick climbed into his silver Toyota Prius and drove home to Boulder following a CSU tennis match for the final time Thursday night.

Home to a basement apartment in a house he owns with his daughter and her husband.

Messick has always erred on the side of practical.

A career that spanned across four decades as Colorado State University’s tennis coach came to an end with a 4-0 defeat at the hands of Wyoming in the opening round of the Mountain West tennis tournament at the Fort Collins Country Club.

The loss was one of many in Messick’s career. There were no conference championships during his reign. Upsets over ranked opponents were rare. His response Wednesday when asked if he had any regrets: “I wish we would have won more.”

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But here’s the kicker: The lack of victories in the grand scheme of his career don’t mean a lot. Everyone wants to win — Messick is no exception — but more important to him was the love of tennis. CSU fulfilled that.

“Coach was the most caring person, on the court and off. He was always there for us when we needed him, and you could tell he loved the game and that he loved Colorado State more than anything,” said Laura Neal, an Oregon native who turned down more high-profile offers to play at CSU from 2007-2010. “I looked at a lot of other schools and their coaches changed all the time. It seemed like at Colorado State, people stayed for a long period of time, and, on top of that, (Messick) had been there for a long time. Choosing CSU let me commit to a coach I knew was going to be there.”

Thirty one years have passed since Messick, 66, walked into former CSU athletic director Thurman “Fum” McGraw’s office for the first time. Shortly after earning an accounting degree from Metro State, and while serving as the club pro at the old Tennis Center in Fort Collins, Messick stopped in one afternoon to ask if CSU needed any help with its program.

The Rams did.

“Oh, and by the way,” McGraw said. “We don’t have a coach. The job is yours.”

Surprised by the offer, Messick asked to see the team’s files. McGraw handed him a shoe box of unopened envelopes and told him to get to work.

The Rams didn’t have uniforms. No equipment. Players bought their own t-shirts and rackets. The impromptu head coaching job Messick had just accepted was a mess, and it soon consumed his life. Within four years of assuming the role of men’s coach, he took over the women’s program and finally became a full-time employee of the university. In 1994, his program was able to offer scholarships for women’s players for the first time rather than field a varsity team of walk-ons.

“If you want to talk about athletic directors, Fum was the greatest. He was such a genuine guy,” Messick said. “I don’t think he knew me from Adam. A couple thousand bucks a year was all I was making; it was less than part time. But when I think back, it’s kind of neat that that is how I got my start here.”

The athletic department at CSU today looks nothing like it did when Messick arrived in 1985. Three sports programs have disappeared (baseball, 1992; men’s tennis, 1996; women’s water polo, 2012), softball and women’s soccer have emerged. Tennis has moved off campus to a state-of-the-art facility near the vet school, and football is returning to campus with a $220 million stadium. Athletics have evolved in the past 30 years from a quaint piece of CSU’s makeup into a bustling, interwoven element of the campus’ infrastructure working as a marketing arm of the university.

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Messick was the lone constant, public face to witness these changes, most of which never affected him or his program.

CSU has never devoted many resources to tennis. Because of budgetary restrictions, Messick has always taken it upon himself to string his team’s rackets. He wasn’t allowed to hire a full-time assistant coach until his 30th year on the job. They share what’s maybe a 12-by-12-foot office; Messick gets the desk, assistant Jarod Camerota sits at a small metal table in the corner with a laptop.

The 12-court University Tennis Complex that opened in 2011 only exists because former CSU president Larry Penley didn’t want the Rams to be homeless when the old courts were bulldozed in the late 2000s to make room for the expanded rec center.

The lack of funding didn’t matter to Messick. Any dollar the program received was more than what it started with. The office, while small, is a step up from its original location that was no larger but had four coaches across three sports sharing two desks.

His compensation hasn’t been on par with other head coaches at the school, and still, he’s never cared.

He loves tennis.As he stalked the sideline for the final time Thursday, the reality of being at his last match sank in. Tears seeped out. When it was over, he wept, hugging his players, current and former, who were more emotional than he. Thirty one years is a long time, but there's nothing he would have traded them for.

The grunting. The stringing. The squeaking.

The winning and all of the losing. Everything.

"I was feeling it in the middle of the match. Every once in a while, I would just feel it. I'd have to try to control myself. This is the part of the coaching that's most enjoyable. Being out here with the players, the emotions," Messick said. "This is the right time for me to do something else, but I'll never forget this. This has been an amazing part of my life."

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports coach and columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.