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Background Info: Sewickley Academy tennis coach Whitney Snyder has built one of the great dynasties in WPIAL sports history.
A graduate of the school, Snyder is the boys and girls tennis coach and has guided the Panthers girls to six WPIAL Class 2A team titles and seven runner-up finishes since 2000. He is also the only WPIAL coach to own a PIAA crown after the team brought home the trophy in 2011. More impressive is what he has done on the boys side. Sewickley Academy has been the WPIAL champion or runner up every year since the Class 2A team tournament began in 1993. Since that time the Panthers have brought home 23 championships in 26 years.
If that weren’t enough, Sewickley Academy has the longest active championship streak of any team in any sport in the WPIAL with 15 consecutive team titles (2004-18). It is also the second-longest run in any sport in WPIAL history behind the Bethel Park boys swimming team, which won 20 in a row from 1981-2000. His boys teams have also won three PIAA Class 2A titles (2006, 2016-17) and been runner-up on five other occasions including earlier this year. Whitney Snyder on his approach to coaching. "I think it’s fun to build a team and I think that’s kind of the biggest enjoyment is you get a bunch of kids with different backgrounds, different priorities etcetera and you’re going to try to put a team together. There’s always going to be a better player or a better coach, but if the focus is always on how I build a better team -- and sometimes you’re able to reach kids and sometimes you’re not – but if you can, it makes it a lot of fun." Whitney Snyder on what he tries to instill in his team. "It’s all about being unselfish and it’s a long process, but you’re kind of planting seeds that will benefit kids later in life, whether it’s getting along well in college, getting along with people on their first job and that’s kind of the excitement. Nobody’s going to win everything all the time and if that’s your focus, you’ve got your priorities straight." Whitney Snyder on tennis players and private coaches. "A lot of the better top high school players, in order to get to where they want to go, which is play college tennis at the highest level, they have to have a private coach and play in a lot of tournaments and play and you have to really pour into them that it’s important to be on a team and here’s why and hopefully the private pro respects the program you’re coming from and you can kind of work together for the good of the student-athlete. It’s a lot different than it used to be because there’s a higher premium on what your Middle States ranking is, do you have a national ranking and did you put a video together for the college coaches and how many tournaments have you played and none of that has anything to do with high school tennis." Whitney Snyder on coaching boys and girls. "I like both because it’s totally different. You have to be flexible enough to deal with the different genders. You can’t just boss people around in one. You have to be willing to listen to your players as a coach and get to know them and then kind of go from there. F you’re so demanding, kids are going to tune you out. It ttakes a lot of patience, but the reward is worth it when they know you genuinely appreciate what you’re doing. Those things come back years later when they ask you to be an usher in their wedding or write you a nice card and you know you’ve made a difference in their life." |