The AlumniIssue No. 14 | thealumninews.org | Colorado’s Authority for High School Academics, Activities and Athletics News

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE: IS THERE AN UNLEVEL PLAYING FIELD? p.10

Kingof theCourt

“One-on-One” with former Colorado prep great Jeff Salzenstein

PublisherMatthew A. Castilleja, Standley Lake H.S.

Vice President of OperationsJoe Ybarra Jr.

Editor-in-ChiefDon CameronCopy Editor

Ryan Russo, Fairview H.S.Web Site/Art Design Focal55 Communications

Staff WritersDan Adkins, Palmer H.S.

Mike Carrasco, Eaton H.S.David Connelly, Skyview H.S.Kyle Garratt, Estes Park H.S.Renee Torres, Thornton H.S.

PhotographersLuke Gonzalez

Marsha Green, Loveland H.S. Advertising

Trevor Allen, Haxtun H.S.Rodney Lucero

Jason Smith, Eaton H.S.Accounting

Margaret Cathey, Erie H.S.DistributionRocky Madrid

Web Sitethealumninews.org

Contact InformationGeneral: 303-478-2952

Advertising: 303-547-6030advertising@thealumninews.org or

thealumninews.org/advertiseIssue No. 14 cover photo by the alumni illustration

thealumninews.org | 3twitter@thealumni The Alumni

PhotostoreBETA

4 | THE ALUMNI

At the CSAP press conference, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter Jr. and Colorado Depart-ment of Education Commissioner Dwight D. Jones share some laughs after Jones joked, “I wonder how white the governor’s hair is going to turn after his term is up.”

Photo by Luke Gonzalez, The Alumni

PhotostoreBETA

6 | THE ALUMNI

From left, Jeff Loehr, Ryan Lutz, Jeff Salzenstein and Chris Jenkins have some fun before a few matches at Gates Tennis Center in south Denver. In this edition, Jeff Salzenstein talks about his prep and pro career, the state of tennis and the sport’s popularity in Colorado. See Page 20.

Photo by Marsha Green, The Alumni

FACTS&FIGURES ...

Results on the overall ACT composite score increased to 19.6, up .2 points from 2008. All content areas showed increases

except English, which stayed the same at 18.6.

For more information, go to www.cde.state.co.us

RANKINGSCRITERIA1. Academics2. Activities3. Athletics4. Spirit 5. Sportsmanship

Go online at thealumninews.org and view the rankings criteria in full and tell us why your school should be on the list.

... WHO’SNEXT16. CSCS17. Denver School of Science and Tech18. Cheyenne Mountain19. Holy Family20. Boulder21. Air Academy22. Broomfi eld23. The Classical Academy24. Niwot25. Grandview26. Legacy27. Fort Collins28. Heritage29. Bear Creek30. Mountain Vista31. Akron32. Erie33. Wheat Ridge 34. Pine Creek35. Eaglecrest36. Cherokee Trail37. Peetz38. Longmont39. Fossil Ridge40. Pueblo Tech41. Rampart42. Lewis-Palmer43. Rocky Mountain44. Denver East45. Aspen46. Conifer47. Chatfi eld48. Highlands Ranch49. Fleming50. Merino

RANK LAST HIGH SCHOOL COMMENTS

1 1 Cherry Creek In 2008, 986 students took 2,240 AP exams with 88 percent scoring 3 or better.

2 3 LakewoodIn the past 10 years, out of 700 diploma candidates, an average of 90 percent of the LHS International Baccalaureate graduates earned IB diplomas.

3 9 ArapahoeAHS was the top placing team from Colorado at the National Technology Student Association conference in June.

4 2 Ralston ValleyFive Steinmark Awards, the top overall athletic honor in the state, have been awarded to Mustang athletes since 2000.

5 5 Monarch Based on CSAP and ACT scores, MHS ranks among the top 8 percent across the state.

6 7 FairviewMore than 900 of the Knights’ 1,900-plus students have participated in theater, music and graphic arts classes.

7 4 Regis-JesuitIn recent years, more than 98 percent of RJHS graduates have been accepted at colleges and universities throughout the country.

8 12 D’EvelynFrom 2001-08, DHS recorded the highest scores of any public high school in Colorado on the state-mandated ACT.

9 24 Rock Canyon Ninety-two percent of Jaguars teachers teach the subject in which they received their degree.

10 10 Faith ChristianNearly 80 percent of FCA students who take Advanced Placement classes earn college credit by virtue of their scores on AP fi nal exams.

11 16 Peak to PeakThe Character Education Partnership named Peak to Peak one of 25 national fi nalist schools in the National Schools of Character awards program.

12 33 Eaton Ninety-one percent of Reds teachers teach the subject in which they received their degree.

13 6 Kent DenverSenior Will Miller placed fi rst in the editorial category and senior Cody Autterson placed third in cartooning in the National Federation of Press Women High School Communication Contest.

14 19 Eads Fifty percent of Eagles teachers teach the subject in which they received their degree.

15 22 MullenPaige Higgins, class of 2000, ran the marathon at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany, fi nishing 13th.

POWERRANKINGS

thealumninews.org | 9

10 | THE ALUMNI

T EXAS and South Carolina have separate leagues for public and private high school athletics. Tennessee has separate playoffs and Alabama uses a 1.35 enrollment multiplier for private schools to make competi-tion more equitable because a higher percentage of student-athletes at-

tend private schools. These are some of the more extreme solutions taken by high school athletic

administrations to solve the issues created when public and private schools compete against each other. It would be an understatement to say high school athletics don’t carry the same weight in Colorado that they do in Texas or Ala-bama. It would also be an understatement to say the public vs. private debate isn’t relevant in Colorado. But just how relevant depends on whom you ask.

“Some schools were able to set their enrollment and are able to say no to certain students. At the same time Colorado is a choice state and you see some public schools

promoting their test scores and those kinds of things, and not recruiting

athletically. We really haven’t had any issues with private schools

recruiting athletically. Some people didn’t think

everyone was on the same playing fi eld. After the discussion was on the fl oor and people talked

about it, we really haven’t heard a lot about it.”

BERTBORGMANN

CHSAA assistant commissioner

Competition inequity, recruiting and transfer rules are common arguing points for those whose blood boils over the issue. Results from the 2009 Colorado High School Activities Association Vision Committee Survey of 181 athletic directors reveals a cloudy picture.

The state’s transfer rule incites as much furor as any topic, but most administrators seem fine with it. If a student transfers during the summer, that student is ineligible for varsity participation in any sport that he or she participated in during the previous 12 months for the first 50 percent of each season. If a student transfers after the first 15 days of the school year, he or she would be eligible only at the JV level for the remainder of the school year and then 50 per-cent the next school year until the anniversary date of the transfer, at which point the student could compete on varsity teams.

Almost 73 percent of athletic directors surveyed believe the rule fits the needs of CHSAA. Those who don’t believe the rule is ad-equate seem to think it is too lenient or can be sidestepped if a stu-dent makes a bona fide move to the area the school is located. Only 3 percent of athletic directors said the rule is too strict while 75 per-cent said it is appropriately enforced, and 21 percent said it is not strict enough. On a scale of one to five, with five representing no problem and one a serious problem, nearly 42 percent rated the rule a three, while one and five each received 6.7 percent of the vote.

When asked to identify bylaws that need to be restructured and issues they want discussed at the next All-School Summit, athletic directors mentioned the transfer rule and recruiting more frequently than other issues. Seeking input from all sides of the debate, The Alumni spoke to Bert Borgmann, CHSAA assistant commissioner; Tony Schenbeck, athletic director at private Mullen High School; and Wes Ashley, athletic director and assistant principal at public Denver East High School.

Bert Borgmann, CHSAA assistant commissionerThe Alumni: Do you hear a lot of debate on this topic?Bert Borgmann: At one point, up until about two years ago, we

were hearing a lot about it. And then we had an All-School Sum-mit where we discussed it. We had issues on the table for the entire membership and this was one of them. People talked about it on the floor and we really haven’t heard a lot about it since then.

TA: What were the concerns?BB: Some schools were able to set their enrollment and are able

to say no to certain students. At the same time Colorado is a choice state and you see some public schools promoting their test scores and those kinds of things, and not recruiting athletically. We really haven’t had any issues with private schools recruiting athletically. Some people didn’t think everyone was on the same playing field. After the discussion was on the floor and people talked about it, we really haven’t heard a lot about it.

TA: What came from the meeting?BB: No bylaws were passed. It gave people a chance to hear

perspectives from everyone who is involved in the discussion. The reality is that, at least in Colorado, much of what we’re discussing might very well be classified as urban vs. rural rather than private vs. public. Most private schools are located in larger metropolitan areas, and if they are a midrange school like they are in Colorado, then they are typically competing against public schools typically located more in the rural areas.

TA: Do you receive a lot of complaints about recruiting?BB: Every now and then we will get recruiting charges against a

school and you would probably get as many against public schools as you do private schools.

TA: What is the process for filing that charge?BB: You have to provide the details of the situation you are

discussing. Who, what, when, why and how. Once we have the op-portunity to investigate it, then we ask the parties to sit across the table from each other and they can talk about what the issues are. If any recruiting is found to have occurred, we have substantial penal-ties. They can run anywhere from banning them from the playoffs to suspension of membership if it ever got to that point.

TA: When have you handed out penalties?BB: We really haven’t. It’s very difficult to prove recruiting.

Most people will say, ‘These guys are recruiting,’ but they don’t provide you with the information. It’s a difficult task to investigate and come up with a clear-cut, black-and-white answer.

TA: How do you monitor recruiting?BB: If we hear about anything we discuss it with the school

that’s involved. We might hear that a school has been accused of re-cruiting and we call the athletic director at that school and say, ‘We have an issue here that’s not reflecting well on your school.’ We’re like every other state association in that we are a self-reporting as-

12 | THE ALUMNI

sociation. Your responsibility as a member school is to self-report. If you are breaking the rules we ask you to investigate and we ask you to come back with a report on it and then we will proceed from there.

TA: Have you ever considered separate leagues or a multiplier?BB: We’ve actually had private school membership in the high

school activities association since the mid-1960s. I think that says a lot that we have been able to last as long as we have with that. With the multiplier, we looked at that at one point just to get a feel. Most private schools can set their enrollment at whatever they want. So if they really wanted to do it for athletic purposes they could say, ‘We really want to be in 3A, so we’re going to set our enrollment to stay in 3A.’ But, what do you do with Mullen and Regis, who are in the highest classification? The vast majority of our private schools haven’t been the most successful athletic schools. So putting a mul-tiplier on them forces them into a higher classification, when they weren’t even successful in their lower classification. So there is a lot of uncertainty anytime you start to look that direction.

TA: Do you feel the debate will gain steam?

BB: I’m not anticipating a lot of discussion in that direction. Part of our luxury is that we are a small state with 330 schools. We don’t have that many large private schools. It’s one of those issues where you want to make sure you’re always having conversations and that people feel like they are being heard on issues that affect them.

Tony Schenbeck, athletic director, Mullen High SchoolThe Alumni: Do you hear a lot of debate about the public vs.

private issue?Tony Schenbeck: We’re a school of virtually 1,000 students

and the only league that would let us in was the Centennial League, which is a 5A league, and we are a 4A school. The schools in our league are all much, much larger than we are in terms of student

population. Yes, we get an awful lot of guff be-cause in a lot of our sports, we stay and play in the playoffs in 4A, which is actually what we are number-wise. In football, baseball, boys basketball, girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, we play up at the 5A level. We are constantly accused of recruit-ing athletes and CHSAA, I think, watches us very closely. I watch my coaches very closely because we don’t need them out encouraging kids to come to our school. We’ve had a good athletic program, which has the opportunity to attract students. So it attracts students and yes, some of the other schools — none of the schools in our league — accuse us of being able to go out and get the athletes we want. It costs $9,000 a year in tuition to come here. We have an aid fund in which all of our students may apply for

tuition assistance. We do not have a student here that is on 100 per-cent aid. We have maybe 20 percent of our students who get some kind of financial aid and they get that by applying for assistance.

TA: Has CHSAA ever investigated your school for recruiting?TS: I’ve been here the last 10 years and during that time

CHSAA has never come in to check us on an accusation of recruit-ment.

TA: How do you monitor your coaches to make sure they are not recruiting?

TS: You don’t think that there aren’t a thousand other coaches out there watching our coaches to make sure there isn’t anything going on? I can’t tell you that I have 100 percent proof that I never had a coach who talked to an athlete. It happens at so many other schools. I will hear a rumor of somebody calling and saying, ‘We know that your particular coach talked to so and so at a Little League athletic game.’ When I talk to my coaches about it they say, ‘We were just one of many coaches there. There were coaches from this school and that school.’ I have had students that have told me that individuals from other schools have talked to them about com-ing over there. So I think that most schools are trying to attract the best students they can. We try to monitor and make sure our coach-es are not talking to other students, but it’s something that is going on with more than just the private schools. I’m sure that Regis and Kent Denver and Colorado Academy and Holy Family would tell you the very same thing.

TA: Do you think it needs to be more closely regulated?TS: The only way you regulate that is if a student is willing to

come forward and say that has happened to them. I think CHSAA does the very best job they can, but until a student just flat comes forward and says, ‘This person approached me and tried to get me

“ I’ve been here the last 10 years and during that time

CHSAA has never come in to check us on an accusation of

recruitment.”

TONYSCHENBECKMullen athletic director

thealumninews.org | 13

“ ... the playing fi eld is not equal. It hasn’t been for some time. Someone needs to step

up and say either there are no scholarships if they come on their own free will or call

it what it is — athletically motivated transfers.”

WESASHLEYDenver East athletic director

to come to their school,’ that’s the only way that you’re going to be able to monitor that. We might have parents at other schools that are telling kids, ‘Come to our school. I’d like you to be on the same team my son is.’ There’s open enrollment out there all over the place. Public schools have open enrollment the same way we do. I hear as many stories about kids being recruited by public schools as I do about kids being talked to by private schools.

TA: What is your view on open enrollment?TS: I hate it. I wish that kids would just go to their neighbor-

hood schools and play at their neighborhood schools. I don’t like it when kids transfer here. We have kids that will come here as fresh-men and pay their tuition and work their tails off to be a Mullen student, and those are the students that we need to be loyal to. We want our kids to be loyal to us. Of course, by the time that happens you get a student who wants to transfer in because he’s had prob-lems at another school and doesn’t get along with a coach or what-ever. He transfers in and our coaches want him to play for them. It makes it a difficult balance.

TA: What is your view on the transfer rule?TS: When I was first an athletic director, and I have been doing

it for 30 years now, if you transferred to a school without a family move you sat for one year. You didn’t play JV, you didn’t partici-pate at all. You sat for a year. I was fine with that. You didn’t have many transfers at that point. I know that CHSAA gets tired of being taken to court and it becomes an expensive thing, but now you get kids that transfer all over for various reasons. They can transfer into

a school and play on the junior varsity. They sit for 50 percent of the scheduled games and then they play at the varsity level. I don’t think that’s severe enough, but you try to get it more severe and all of the sudden you’re in court.

TA: Do you see competition inequity between public and pri-vate schools?

TS: In terms of us having better athletes or them having better athletes, I’ve been an athletic director at a public school — I was at Overland for 20 years — and I would notice that the more students we got, the more good athletes we got. We’re blessed with some good athletes here at Mullen and the other thing we are blessed with are athletes who absolutely work themselves. When you know that you’re going to pay $9,000, they want something for that $9,000, and they’re not going to put their son or daughter here if their son or daughter isn’t willing to spend the time in the offseason and in the weight room. Our kids are extremely, extremely committed to their sports. When I was an athletic director at a public school, I noticed my coaches running as many out-of-season camps and be-ing as much of the 365-days-a-year type of coach, and I notice that with our kids and coaches here.

TA: Have you considered separate leagues or playoffs for pub-lic and private schools?

TS: If you aren’t a member of CHSAA, then you can’t play their high schools. So if you were going to be in strictly a private school league, the whole league would have to a part of the as-sociation or you couldn’t play other schools. We can’t go out and

14 | THE ALUMNI

Photo by Paul Spruce, The Alumni

play club teams and other organizations that are not a member of CHSAA. In some states they have a separate Catholic league or pri-vate school league, and I would hate to see that come to Colorado.

TA: What are some steps to help eliminate recruiting?TS: As long as I have been involved in education, and this is my

43rd year, it has been the same debate year after year. I really don’t know that there are a lot of steps. Trust and integrity — that’s about the only way to pursue it. I don’t think you’re going to be able to legislate ethics so that everybody feels that everything is totally fair.

Wes Ashley, athletic director, Denver East High SchoolThe Alumni: What are the major issues for athletic competition

between public and private schools?Wes Ashley: The recruiting of athletes from public schools to

private schools. Everybody knows that as public schools, all we can do is offer a good program. We can’t offer a scholarship, and that’s where equity comes in. They say you can’t recruit kids, but to us it’s recruiting if you offer a kid a scholarship. How they get around it is by offering an academic scholarship or a financial needs schol-arship. That’s fine, but where you find out that it’s not really based on academics and that it’s based on athletics is when you have a student-athlete who happens to be a star running back gets a full-ride scholarship to Mullen — or some place like that — [and] they don’t take the rest of the family members. The little brother and sister who might not be as athletically inclined, they’re not getting a scholarship to go to that school. How can you call it a financial needs scholarship if you’re not taking care of the whole family?

TA: Is competition becoming less balanced in recent years?WA: Let’s take, for example, the two state championship teams

from basketball last year. They were both from Regis. Obviously Regis can offer more than anyone else can offer. I think there’s a little bit of a change in some of that this year, not so much in the scholarships, but we’ve been enrolling kids in the last few days and I have talked to more people from the private schools like Colo-rado Academy, Regis, Kent that are actually coming back to public school. These weren’t scholarship kids, these were kids who were going there because their parents could afford it, but now with the financial crisis that the state’s in, and their parents lost their 401K, they’re actually coming back to the public schools because they can’t afford the private schools anymore. With the recruiting thing, a lot of people feel there is an inequity there. It’s very unfair that you can offer kids [a scholarship] and they steal your best athletes from the inner city.

TA: What is the solution to recruiting since it’s so hard to prove?

WA: I’m not the only one who feels this way, but make the pri-vate schools and the public schools have two different state leagues. Let the Mullens and the Regises have their own state championship and let the public schools have their state championship.

TA: How do athletes get around the transfer rule?WA: All it says is you have to have a bona fide move. I know

some examples of some great basketball players who have moved three times in their high school career all in suburban schools and their parents had the money to go out and rent or buy them a house to live in while they maintain their same residence in Boulder. Their parents took us [CHSAA] to court and they have more money than we do. The court sided with them because their parents own a house right there and they can play. Inner-city kids or kids that don’t have the means to go out and buy a residence can’t get around it by hav-ing their parents go and lease out a place.

TA: Is that very common?

WA: Yeah, very common. It’s a pain in the butt for athletic directors. I almost cringe when school begins because I know that, especially when you have a high-profile team, you are going to at-tract high-profile players, so for instance, my coach came in this year and said, ‘We’ve got two kids from Texas and one from Mul-len coming in to play basketball.’ That means I have to do paper-work, follow up on them, and do house visits to make sure they are actually living where they say there are. I have to send paperwork to their former schools.

TA: What is your view on open enrollment?WA: Open enrollment has its merits. You should have the

right to send your kid to the best school you can find as long as it’s academically based. I just don’t care for it when people use it for athletics, to move their kids around. We’re fortunate here at East because I think we’re the number one choice school in Colorado. We end up having more kids than we can allow in to the school. We have to put a cap on it with 200 to 300 kids waiting trying to get in.

TA: How has your job changed as this has become a bigger is-sue?

WA: I just have to do more paperwork. Every time you change your transfer rule there’s 100 people out there trying to figure out how to circumvent it. If you don’t follow up on everything, if some-one slips through, then it’s all on you and you jeopardize your pro-gram and put it on probation because you missed something or the parents lied to you and said, ‘We’re living here.’ Last year I started going to athletes’ houses and knocking on the door to make sure a parent answered and the kid was there because I had a problem a few years ago with a transfer from Eagle Crest who CHSAA said didn’t live in our attendance area and never made a move. He was one of their star basketball players, so Eagle Crest told CHSAA he never made a move and made some accusations that there might have been some recruiting. I had to go down to CHSAA with all the documentation to prove that he lived in Denver, where the parents worked, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. So now when I get these high-profile players I go knock on their door with a witness to verify they were there.

TA: How plausible would separate leagues be in the near fu-ture?

WA: It’s probably not likely because our rules are state con-trolled through CHSAA. It takes a movement of legislation for this stuff to happen. The problem with CHSAA rules is that if it is a major rule like the transfer rule, it usually happens because some legislator’s nephew or son or daughter didn’t get to play somewhere for some reason so they introduce some legislation and everyone votes on it and that’s how rules come about. I don’t see any major change going on in the next five years.

TA: How can CHSAA get better control of the situation?WA: I really don’t know. The fact is we are CHSAA because

it represents all the athletic directors of all the high schools. Until people get totally fed up with it I don’t think anything is going to happen.

TA: Are both sides upset about the situation?WA: Private schools never complain about it. They love it, and

why shouldn’t they? They’re able to build programs with the best athletes in the state.

TA: What is most important for people to know about the pub-lic vs. private debate?

WA: Just that the playing field is not equal. It hasn’t been for some time. Someone needs to step up and say either there are no scholarships if they come on their own free will or call it what it is — athletically motivated transfers. u

thealumninews.org | 15

THE good news is schools are sustaining proficiency for stu-dents who are already performing at grade level. The chal-lenge remains to increase the aptitude of students who are at-risk or falling behind.

In August, the Colorado Department of Education released the results for the 2008-09 Colorado Student Assessment Program. Results showed that 82 percent of students are growing fast enough to keep up in reading and 74 percent of students are keeping pace in writing. Sixty-three percent of students showed that they are growing fast enough to keep up in mathematics and 26 percent who rated proficient in mathematics are improving well enough to move up to advanced levels. Commissioner of Education Dwight D. Jones vowed more than two years ago that “No Child Left Behind” would be the initiative that the department would render as its top priority to close the achievement gap. Since, Jones has visited nearly all 178 school districts in Colo-rado, hearing the voices of those urban, rural, low-performing and outstanding. Recently, the commissioner outlined two key themes to help close the achievement gap, one being to partner with higher education. “We want to continue to create a sense of urgency,” Jones said. “This is a joint effort because Colorado schools continue to produce some of the brightest minds and best young thinkers.” In a new attempt to partner with higher education, Jones also wants the public to push the education envelope now to help iden-tify the workforce skills needed for students in the 21st century. Associate Commissioner Richard Wenning elaborated on Jones’ comments. “Beginning today, we are changing conversations to

focus on the progress that each of our students needs to reach post-secondary and workforce readiness,” Wenning said. “The growth model provides a way of gauging whether students are reaching postsecondary and workforce readiness.” In the spring of 2008, the department released a Web tool called the Colorado Growth Model to guide the education system and the public to understand school performance and encourage an urgency for improvement. The growth model answers two questions: How much growth are we making? Is it good enough? Last year nearly 1.6 million tests were given, with 98.9 percent of students completing the CSAP tests. In 2009, 63 percent of third-grade students scored in the proficient and advanced categories on the Spanish reading test Lectura. The results were up from 2008. The number of third-grade students taking the third-grade Lectura declined by 131 students, from 1,498 in 2008 to 1,367 in 2009. Results on the overall composite ACT score increased to 19.6, up .2 points from 2008. All content areas showed increases except English, which stayed the same at 18.6. “Together these pictures of individual student, school and district performance provide a multi-dimensional portrait for parents, teach-ers, principals and the broader community to view the effectiveness of our schools,” Jones said. “The good news is that the growth model reveals that schools are doing a good job at sustaining proficiency for students who are al-ready performing at grade level. The Department of Education published a list of 161 schools that demonstrated the highest sustained rates of student academic prog-ress over three consecutive years in Colorado. Among these 161 schools, 24 percent were in rural areas and 28 had percentages of low-income students of 40 percent or higher. u

RENEETORRES | The Alumni

CDE: We need a sense of urgency

Colorado schoolsset accountability,priorities straightChuck Soper and Jane Newman of Park County RE-2 are recognized at the Colorado Department of Education’s news conference for CSAP achievement results.

thealumninews.org | 17

Photo by Luke Gonzalez, The Alumni

20 | THE ALUMNI

PROFESSIONAL tennis players have to get the most out of their careers in their youth. Tennis is a sport for life, but competitively a player’s prime is the early 20s, when a body’s reaction time to a

100 mph serve is split-second and can endure the stress of constant lateral movement. Not many get better with age, especially in the professional ranks. But for former Cherry Creek standout Jeff Salzenstein, his golden years arrived late. A prodigy as a youngster, Salzenstein was ranked No. 1 in the state at age 9 in the 10-and-unders. And at age 12, he was ranked No. 1 nationally. For a boy from Colorado — a state not known for tennis ― that was making a statement. His ranking dropped significantly during his junior career because he lacked the size and strength other players were developing. “I was very small in those years,” Salzenstein said. “I stuck with it, and by the time I was 16 was one of the better players in the country again.” In 1990, Salzenstein was a quarterfinalist in the USTAs Under-16 Championships and placed third in the clay court event. And at the end of 1992, he was ranked second in the boys’ 18s. “I never had pressure from my parents to play,” Salzenstein said. “There was just a passion that started at a young age.” Salzenstein went on to play at Stanford University on a half scholarship and played No. 5 singles his freshman year and No. 2 his sophomore year. As a junior, he was playing No. 1 singles again.

At Stanford, he was named a two-time All-American and two-time team captain ― helping the Cardinal win national team titles twice. “My goal starting at age 12 was to go to Stanford,” Salzenstein said. Playing professional tennis was still an afterthought for the Colorado prep star. “I had no aspirations of playing professional tennis,” Salzenstein said. “I kept growing and kept improving and I finally decided to give it a shot.” In 1996, Salzenstein turned pro and won his first USTA event, capturing the Daytona Beach doubles event. Salzenstein played in all four grand slams and in 1997 played Michael Chang in the U.S. Open when Chang was ranked No. 2 in the world. The match was played in prime time at Arthur Ashe Stadium and televised on the USA Network. The match was called by John McEnroe, another Stanford great. Salzenstein lost in four sets but relished his moment in the spotlight. “For a guy who doesn’t get on TV every day and for a guy who was never in the limelight, that was special,” Salzenstein said. He was forced to sit out most of 1998 after ankle surgery and all of 1999 with knee injuries. Salzenstein concentrated on finishing his studies, earning a degree in economics from Stanford. “I was able to have breaks to revitalize me and re-energize me,” Salzenstein said. “I took a lot of time between those injures to learn how the body works, about nutrition, about the mind, studied tennis and studied performance.” The American left-hander finally broke the pro tennis top

DAVIDCONNELLY | The Alumni

Colorado prep star shares thoughts on career, tennis

Net Profi tsFormer pro, Cherry Creek star Salzenstein aims for tennis surge in state

Photo by Marsha Green, The Alumni

100 in June 2004. He attributed this ranking to persistence and determination. “One of the unique things about my pro career is that at age 30 I broke the top 100 for the first time,” Salzenstein said. “Most of the time you have your best results in your 20s and you are just hanging on in your 30s, and I happened to improve. I was playing better tennis at 30 than ever before.” During his career, Salzenstein practiced and played with some of the best in the world, most notably Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, Andy Roddick, Pat Rafter and Peter Corda. In 2007, Salzenstein decided to call it a career and returned home. “I thought I would play for three years then get a real job, but I had some success early, then I had some injuries and I kept coming back from these injuries, and before I knew it I had played 11 years on the tour,” Salzenstein said. “I spent enough time on the tour to know what it was like. It was fun to be up there and hang out with those guys.” Today, Salzenstein spends his time as a coach and started JS Performance, a world-class tennis experience giving back to Denver and the community, providing cutting edge-techniques, fitness, nutrition and mental training. “We have to come together as coaches and raise the standards of coaching [in Colorado],” Salzenstein said. “We need kids learning the right techniques and learning to play the game the right way.” With the right coaches, the right facilities and the right atmosphere, Colorado can produce national champions, he said. “If you live in California [in the L.A. area] and you want to get motivated, you go to a UCLA match or a USC match. If you live in the Bay Area you go see Stanford,” Salzenstein said. “In Colorado you have DU and maybe just DU. If DU or CU had an indoor tennis facility, you would have droves of kids looking up to these programs.” Salzenstein is also promoting QuickStart, a program initiated by the USTA to promote youth playing tennis by shortening the length of tennis courts, shortening nets and using compression balls. “You will never have a 6-year-old on a basketball court playing with a 10-foot basketball hoop or playing on a full-length soccer field,” Salzenstein said. “The same goes for tennis. If you had kids playing on a full-length tennis courts, you would have balls jumping over their heads. Kids would get frustrated because they can’t get topspin. Nobody wants to play a sport that is hard, and that is not how tennis is played.” The former pro is using QuickStart to bring kids into the game. “When you are 8 years old and you win a trophy, it’s real easy to start to love the game,” Salzenstein said. “I know what it takes. My theme is constant improvement.” Salzenstein believes that with the proper instruction, the retention rate for tennis will be more than 80 percent, and he thinks that now is the time for tennis in Colorado. “This downturn in the economy has helped tennis,” Salzenstein said. “Golf was kind of the sport for nine or 10 years. But to pay for one round is expensive. Tennis has become the inexpensive sport. You can rent a racket and court and play for a relatively cheap price. The challenge for tennis in my opinion is that it is the most difficult sport to learn.” Two years after returning home, Salzenstein still loves the sport that has given him his livelihood and is focused on sharing his ex-periences with the community. “I just want to teach kids the right techniques,” he said. “They just need to go and play, and I want to be the one upfront pushing the issue.” u

In the Community

The Alumni supports the

Wheat Ridge Rackets booster club

Under fire for baptismFootball coach’s religious excursion draws ire

by Kyle GarrattI’M NOT RELIGIOUS, but I don’t care if you are. Religion can be a great tool for teaching life lessons, and if you feel it helps shape you into a better person, good. I’m not emotional about religion, but I’m not naive. I realize most people are far more sensitive and have much stronger opinions about religion than I do. That’s why I was slightly shocked when I heard a voluntary team trip led by head football coach Scott Mooney at Breckinridge High School in Kentucky ended with eight or nine players being baptized. I was equally shocked to learn the school’s superin-tendent attended the ceremony and saw no problem with it. I was in no way surprised that one of the baptized player’s parents was upset when she learned her son took a plunge in holy water. Mooney took about 20 play-ers to his church on a school bus in late August. Michelle Ammons, mother of 16-year-old player Robert Coffey, objected because a school bus was used and she had no prior knowledge of the religious nature of the trip. Coffey said his coach told him the trip would include only a motiva-tional speaker and a free steak dinner. Parents of two other players said Mooney told them the trip would include a reli-gious revival. Superintendent Janet Meeks is a member of the church and believes the trip was in good taste because it was not mandatory and a different coach paid for the gas. She also said parents knew the players were attending a church service, if not necessarily a baptism. If you are an employee at a public school, let alone in a position as influential as coach or superintendent, and you plan on baptizing teenagers, make all possibly involved parties aware. Apparently, neither Mooney nor Meeks felt permission slips were necessary because the trip was voluntary. Given the legal separation of church and state and the general tension that can arise over religious issues, would it have been too much trouble to print a formal notification that Mooney planned on taking the players to church? I’m sure he

wished he had taken 10 minutes to do so, now that the story has been featured in USA Today. A general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ken-tucky said the trip would appear to violate Supreme Court edicts on the separation of church and state. On the other hand, Matt Staver, founder and general counsel for Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based group that provides free legal assistance in religious liberty cases, said there was nothing wrong with the trip because it was voluntary

and no public funds were used. Either way, neither organiza-tion would have been asked to comment had Mooney used foresight. Coaches, by nature of the position, demand a lot of trust from parents. Parents hand their kids over to high school coaches with an agreement that coaches will keep them safe, teach them how to play a sport, and hopefully, help them grow as people. The moment a coach exploits that trust in any way, he or she should expect backlash. I’m sure Mooney thought he was helping these young men by taking them to church, and he might have accomplished that. But by not making it abundantly clear that willing members of the team would be baptized, it’s easy for Mooney to appear he is trying to impart his beliefs on his players.

Coaches are incredibly influential over their players. In the right hands, and with the right message, that is very beneficial. And whether Mooney was trying to be religiously persuasive or not is ir-relevant. He has a legal obligation to remain neutral on the subject, and he can teach his players lessons through many other means. In this case, religion adds conflict to a situation that doesn’t need it, and both Mooney and Meeks made their good intentions seem slightly shady when they failed to clarify their plans. Even to me, a nonreligious person, a coach taking some players on a voluntary trip to church sounds like a good idea — as long as no one can in-terpret it as unwanted influence. u

in the dugout

22 | THE ALUMNI