The French Flair on UNR’s Tennis Courts
Chase Dulude, Lexi Darcy, and Cameron Perkins report on the men’s and women’s tennis teams at UNR and find out why they primarily consist of French speaking players.
On a sunny April Sunday, the sounds of squeaky tennis shoes and raucous French cheers streamed out from the McArthur Tennis Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.
As the games progressed, the season’s last home stand, with the men’s team playing their in-state rivals UNLV, and the emotions getting higher, communication became increasingly simple and to the point. Thus, most players began to speak to each other in shorter sentences…and in French.
UNR ended up winning the match, avoiding last place in what has been a difficult but full of learning rebuilding season, after winning the conference just two years ago.
The University of Nevada, Reno has two teams which primarily consist of players from outside the US. This phenomenon is not singular to Nevada. Rather, it’s actually the standard in NCAA D1 Tennis.
According to an NCAA Research report published in December 2022, 61% of male D1 tennis players are international, up from 38% in 2007, and 66% of female D1 tennis players are international, up from approximately 38% and 50% reported in 2006–2007.
Nevada stands well above the average in both categories, with only two American players on the women’s team, compared to nine international (82%), whereas all six players on the men’s team are from outside the United States.
The men’s team, in particular, has all six of its players coming from France. This has a lot to do with Nevada’s longtime head coach, Sylvain Malroux, who first started coaching women’s tennis at UNR in 2006, and then later moving on to the men’s team, also hailing from France, more specifically the small town of Aurillac.
“The head coaches have really great connections in France,” said Nevada’s American assistant coach Dann Nelson.
The head women’s coach Guillaume Tonelli has been coaching here for more than a decade as well. “You’re going to get the best player you can. It doesn’t matter where they’re from, as long as they are students first, and they’re at the level that we need here in the Mountain West,” Nelson said.
“I had contact with the coach, who is French,” said men’s team senior Matheo Coupu. “So that helped me in coming here, and the process was easier to speak in French.” Coupu, the lead men’s singles player from Treillières, a small town in the northwest of France, came to UNR during the 2020–2021 season in order to play tennis and pursue his degree in Business at the university.
Coupu’s path is usually one of two paths most aspiring French tennis players take.
“When you turn 18 and you’re playing tennis at a high level in France, you either go pro, or you go to the US, that’s usually the options you have. A lot of French people come to the US to play college tennis because you get really good scholarships to play at a really high level,” said Léa Cakarevic, a women’s team junior from Paris.
Cakarevic has to take a ten-plus hour plane ride every time she wants to go home. She stated that before she came to the United States, she was playing tennis two to three times a week, but being in America has pushed her to play tennis almost every day. “Coming to the USA, I got a scholarship and I got the chance to play at a really high level and practice every single day like a semi-pro,” she said.
Even before coming to play tennis at UNR, Cakarevic already had experience in the U.S. since she played tennis for two years at the University of Indianapolis, a division two school, meaning her experience in Reno is her first time competing in the U.S. at a D1 level.
Tonelli, the women’s coach, blazed a similar trail himself. A native of Valenciennes, in northern France, he played college tennis at Tyler Junior College in Texas where he won nationals in 2003–04 and finished second the following year. He was an Academic All-American both years at Tyler.
One of the bright spots this season for the UNR tennis program was French sophomore Amahée Charrier, who was named to the 2024 All-Mountain West Women’s Tennis Singles Team. Charrier helped the team to an 11–9 overall record. Unfortunately, they lost to UNLV in the quarterfinals of the Mountain West Championship in Las Vegas.
While French players and coaches comprise most of the two teams, there are still two American players on the women’s team who have had their own journeys in order to make the team.
One of them is Kennedy Robinson, a four-star recruit freshman from Henderson, Nevada, who posted a 7–6 singles record in her first year. Tennis wasn’t Robinson’s only sport she could’ve chosen to pursue, as in high school, she also competed in track and field.
Even with the success of American players like Robinson, tennis still remains much less popular than other sports here.
“I’d say tennis is a top two sport in a lot of other countries, whereas in America, there’s a lot of emphasis on basketball, football, and stuff,” Robinson said about the lack of Americans on the tennis teams at UNR.
Even with Robinson being only one of two Americans representing the UNR tennis teams, the popularity of tennis in America has continued to grow in recent years. According to UTSA, there were over 1 million new American tennis players in 2022, bringing the total to about 23.6 million, signaling how there may be more talent from the states coming into collegiate and professional tennis in the near future.
At the highest professional level, the United States already has the most top 100 male players in the world, with 11 currently ranked in the higher echelon, with France having the second highest number with 10 representatives. Neither country though currently has a men’s top 10-player.
For now, the tennis teams at UNR still consist mostly of players from France or those who speak French. All six of the men’s players speak French, while five out of 11 women players, Wiem Boubaker, from Tunisia, Charrier, Lou Anne-Guebert, Mathilde Sacrelet, and Cakarevic all speak it on the women’s team as well.
While it may not officially be French class on UNR tennis courts, for any spectator, coach or player, it’s definitely a slice of French life and tennis technique, with hopes better French touch will help improve upon results next season.
