The Hawkeyes have picked up former SEC Player of the Year Greg Ouellette to assist with the program.

By Blake Dowson
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The youth movement in the Iowa men’s tennis program has continued with the hiring of new assistant coach Greg Ouellette.

Ouellette graduated from the University of Florida in 2008, where he starred on the tennis courts. The new Hawkeye assistant was a five-time All-American, while earning the Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Year honor in 2005 and SEC Player of the Year in 2008.

After Ouellette left Gainesville, he competed on the professional tour for six years, accumulating five singles titles and eight doubles titles. He also climbed as high as No. 269 in the singles rankings.

“We had a lot of great candidates,” head coach Ross Wilson said. “We had a lot of guys who had played in grand slams and guys with college coaching experience. But at the end, it was pretty clear on how bad Greg wanted to be here, and how good his credentials were, and how good of a fit he was for me and the program.”

Wilson emphasized that he wanted to hire someone who wanted to be at Iowa and would bring passion to the job.

Ouellette, not yet 30, has brought another level of energy and motivation to the Iowa program in his first week in Iowa City.

“Iowa has always in my mind been a very big sports school in a huge conference,” Ouellette said. “That immediately attracted me to the job. And then when the job opened up, Ross contacted me. I knew him from the college days, and I knew how well he played at Ohio State, and I knew he had been around some great coaches. So he knows how to run a program.”

Wilson and Ouellette never competed against each other during their college playing days, but they were on each other’s radars.

Both competed for national powers, Wilson at Ohio State and Ouellette at Florida, with hopes of being crowned NCAA champs, a goal they now have on at Iowa.

Ouellette, who had never been to Iowa before he was hired last week, said he is excited about the opportunity in his new city.

“I like it,” he said. “It’s a nice city. You can tell everybody is close-knit, wholesome, and homegrown people. I’m really feeling good about it.”

Wilson said one of the biggest effects his new assistant will make would be on the recruiting trail.

With so much success in college and time on the professional tour under his belt, Ouellette will bring to the table a wealth of experience that recruits can aspire to.

“His knowledge of ‘How do I go from being a top junior to being a top college player to being a professional’ is going to be great for the guys on our team,” Wilson said. “When we recruit top players, he’s going to be able to tell them, ‘This is how you do it.’ That’s something that not a lot of people can bring to the table.”

The Hawkeye players have already felt that with Ouellette at practice.

With both Wilson and Ouellette being so young, it has made it easy for the coaches and players to relate to one another.

“Having young coaches is really invigorating this program,” sophomore Jake Jacoby said. “They were great players in college and in the pro tour. And they’re not that far out from the pro tour. They know how to get us pumped up for matches, and the way they communicate to us on the court during matches is easy to understand because they were just in our shoes.”

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