Fall Q&A With Jaron Maestas

Cyclones.com: Catch us up on your busy offseason heading into the fall tournament season?

Jaron Maestas: It's been a little bit slower because we are still in our eight-hour work weeks right now because the tournament in Waco is one week later for individuals. So, we've been in our eight hours, this week we will finally get in our full swing, into our 20-hour week, into the meat of practice, be ready to see how we compete this weekend. Navigating a little bit on their own on top of what we can provide in our eight-hour weeks, but we will be ready to see what we have and know that it's a building process with younger kids and the returners having to learn a whole new system.

Cyclones.com: What is your philosophy on player development, and how do you try to get the best out of your players?

JM: I think player development is going to be huge, especially for this first year. My mentality has always been that you have to believe in the player and you have to get the player to have belief in what the system is. That will be important when we get into more individuals and practices and know why we are pushing certain skills. A lot of kids come in and they have it figured out because they have played at a high level, but a lot of the time it's very individualized so getting them to learn what college tennis is like, especially at a Big 12 level. For a lot of these freshmen kids, I don't think they realize what the levels going to beg to be and what it's going to take when we talk about physicality and things like that. So, this first week, this first push is on those type of things.

Cyclones.com: What are you seeing from the team in practice so far?

JM: Anna has done a really good job as a returner of buying into the new system. That's a tough one because she came from an Elite Eight team and a very strong program. I think she's going to have a ton of growing to do, being the only person returning from an individual standpoint and taking more of a leadership role than she's had in the past. So I've been excited about that, she's done a good job.

Juliette Nask played at Michigan State last year. We're getting her up to speed with what our expectations are. She's got the ability, she's got the talent, she's got the upside. She's just going to have learn to be more disciplined and why that's important.

Caroline Nichols is a freshman and she's going to go through freshman growing pains. I think she has an ideology of what it is, but I think she'll have a very quick introduction to what college tennis is about. I think all freshmen struggle with it until they know and it's not their fault they don't know until they know. So we're very interested to see how she competes going into this weekend at Virginia, which will be a very tough tournament. I'm excited to see what she does from a competition standpoint. First practice going on she's got to be a little more consistent. Right now she's giving us something but we're trying to make it every day with the same intensity level.

Isabella Dunlap, I've known her for a long time. She's brought a sense of maturity. She's been very responsible. She's a little older than the rest of the girls. For her, doubles and singles All-American at the Division II level, a 5-time All-American. She has the level, it's just going to be can she have the level on a consistent basis. Doing things to be a little bit more professional in what she does on a daily basis. And as the speed picks up realizing it's not going to be that big of a difference from what she knows and accepting and living in that life a bit more, not being starstruck or in that position. It's a little awkward having only four girls this fall, but I think they are going to have more of an opportunity to grow. This week will be a turning week of starting to take that first step.

Cyclones.com: Adding an experienced head coach like Yair Banuelos as an assistant seems like a huge positive for the program. What impressed you about Yair when you were hiring an assistant?

JM: He was exactly what we needed. Somebody who could handle all the situations thrown at us. The thing with him was he's experienced a lot of it from building a team culture from ground zero and up he's learned to deal with adversity. He knows all the little things that will go on in a college tennis team that a lot of younger coaches may not know yet, having already handled it. He's had to recruit mass numbers, having to recruit both men's and women's teams, so you're talking a roster size of 20 to 30, within one or two years and managing that. He's also a good balance to me and he's very knowledgeable about the sport so it's going to really help us get to that level quicker. So, we will see, I think the girls trust him, he's really been able to bond with the girls and really connect and there wasn't anything that was one way or another, since they were kids that I really recruited at the time because I had to hire him in the process, but things are going great right now.

Assistant Coach Yair Banuelos coaches freshman Caroline Nicholls

Cyclones.com: What does having Anna return from last year's team mean to the program?

JM: You can't compare last year's team to this year's team, having her come back is great but it's just a matter of Anna's mindset. We're not Elite Eight. It's not the same coaching staff, it's something new. I know the level that she is at because we competed a lot against her where I was previously, I know the level she can play at and what she can bring to practice. I think coming back will also have some challenges because she's taking on a completely different role than she's ever had. She's having to learn a whole new staff, a whole new team but still feels like it's her house, which it is. She's been here the longest. I think that it's going to be really good to have her on our side to progress forward and she's done a tremendous job of that I give her a lot of credit, but she will be very, very important for us.

Cyclones.com: The new facility is currently being constructed. Where are we at with that process?

JM: I've been told we are in a very good spot to continue to move forward, I know we will not be in our indoor this year, we'll continue to train at our current facility. But I've been told our courts will be done this fall, as far as on the outdoor and the court structure but the facility will not be finished till the spring. So right now, we will be transitioning through, it's a vision, right now the vision a little bit closer to the finish line than it ever has been, and ground has broken, and a lot of things are going on. We're excited about that. Yes, it is going to be nice to have that facility but I also want these kids to grow through it. I didn't recruit these kids here to just come into a Taj Mahal. I kind of want these kids to go through the growing pains of learning what it's like no matter where we play, if it's out in a dark alley or in the most beautiful facility in the world, we have the same mentality.

Cyclones.com: What do you want the identity of Iowa State Tennis to be under your direction?

JM: I want kids to represent Iowa State the way I see Iowa State. I think we've got to be gritty, we've got to be tough, we've got to kind of embrace the fact that we are taking on a challenging situation as far as this year's build goes, but that it going to be a long-term effect if they embrace it early. A lot of people want to come into a situation where everything is put in place or at least you have some time to catch your breath. I think for me, I want these kids to feel the heat right away, let's not be comfortable because we have a ranking. Let's not be comfortable because of what someone else did. Let's make our own stamp right away and they got to really embrace that. Me as a coach, I'm pretty confident and I try to portray that. Some people may not take that the right way, but that's just who I am, and I think the players kind of need to accept that confidence as well.

Cyclones.com: What are you looking forward to most heading into the fall season?

JM: I want to see how our kids handle the competition side of it. We can practice, talk about training, do all that, and now we see how these kids go out there. They have a unique situation, it's a 2:1 ratio, they have a coach and then two players. I want to see how they embrace that. When I brought them in here I told them it was about the tennis. I want to see if they really are about what they said they were when they came in. I feel like we can get there, so I'm excited about that, but I really want to see them embrace what we're trying to achieve.

Cyclones.com: What is one thing you want Cyclone fans to know going into this season?

JM: I think what everybody's got to understand is when something new happens everybody has an idea they can try to stick at the wall or have an ideology of what's right and what's wrong. Especially coming off the success they had last season, coming off the success that Boomer, Kenna and Colt put together the last two to three years. We're different and we're new. I do things differently, I think the way they did it was their way and we may take pages from their playbooks but we're not running the same plays. We're going to do things a bit different, my personality is different and something to be excited about is yes, it was it one of the coolest stories in college tennis that they made the Elite Eight and made their run last year. But to take a team that had zero players technically on the roster three weeks before the season started and we're at four and we have our fifth, but having a season put together, they could be the story everybody's talking about. If we make some headlines and still do well and we still find some success, these kids might do something that's even harder to be done on some standpoints. Coming in at four weeks, coming in on short notice, putting a team together with all these uncertainties and seeing what we can do, I think for the fans to watch, don't get caught up in the number next to our name, get caught up in our progression from August 15 to when they finish and watch us play in May. Really be excited about where these kids go to and how the team progresses.

Players Mentioned

Isabella Dunlap

Juliette Nask

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