By Nicholas Moreano
Drew Lied was Sasha Schmid’s first hiring after she was named head women’s tennis coach in July.
Lied played his college tennis at Michigan State, where he was a four-year letterwinner and two-year captain for the Spartans. He finished his college career with 73 singles victories and 86 doubles victories.
The former Spartan earned first-team All-Big Ten honors his senior year and earned second-team All-Big Ten honors his junior year. During his junior season, Lied helped the Spartans reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the school’s history.
After college, Lied joined the Marquette tennis team as an assistant coach. With Lied’s help, the Golden Eagles were runners-up at the Big East Tournament.
Following his time at Marquette, Lied decided to join the JMG Tennis Academy in Sacramento, California, as a tennis professional. Then for a brief amount of time, he joined the Washington & Lee staff as an assistant men’s tennis coach.
Lied interviewed with Iowa men’s tennis coach Ross Wilson last year to be his assistant but didn’t get the job. He made a good impression on Wilson, however, and he mentioned Lied’s name to Schmid, who gave him a call and the opportunity to be an assistant coach for the women.
“Being in the Big Ten is awesome,” Lied said. “I thought it was a really good opportunity for myself and to come in and help this program.”
Schmid was excited to bring in Lied, who has plenty of experience in coaching.
“Drew brings great experience and knowledge to our team as a former Big Ten student-athlete with coaching experience at Marquette and Washington and Lee,” Schmid said in a release. “He is going to be an asset to our program because he is hard working and passionate about coaching Iowa tennis.”
Despite all of Lied’s coaching experience, he has never coached women before. But he said there’s not much of a difference from coaching men and women. He did say he was hesitant at first getting to know the team because he has always been a part of men’s teams.
Now, after getting to know the team, Lied is thankful that he got that call from Schmid.
“I really do like the team a lot,” Lied said. “So far, it’s worked out really well, and I feel like I mesh well with Coach Sasha.”
When asked what Lied brings to the team, he said the experience of being in a similar situation. Lied’s Spartans struggled to beat teams in the conference, similar to what the Hawkeyes have gone through in the past few seasons. The Hawkeyes went 0-11 last season against Big Ten opponents.
With hard work, Lied’s Spartans built up the program and turned things around, and he hopes the same can be down with the Hawkeyes.
That’s what has Lied excited about the rest of the season — to see how the team mentally grows and how that transitions on the court.
“I think we are really skilled, but we need to learn how to win,” Lied said. “Once we can do that we can have some really good results this year.”