My life has never been a straight line. When I began my dental practice after graduating from Tufts Dental School I believed that I would remain in the field of dentistry until retirement. Not only did that not happen, but I also have come to discover a new meaning for the term “retirement”.
In 2017, I had a patient in my chair who was wearing a shirt that said “Gerry Hattricks”, a play on words for the hockey term - hat trick, as it was a military support organization for injured veterans. I asked if there were any groups in the area that did similar support using the game of tennis. He said he didn’t know of any, so in 2018 I incorporated the company “ Wounded Warrior Tennis, Inc” which then changed to Adaptive Tennis US- as I realized that there were so many more people who had various disabilities and could be training in the game of tennis.
After selling my practice, I coached at several small clubs, before teaching at JTCC, a national training center- where I founded their first adaptive tennis program. I became a Wheelchair certified instructor and became a biomechanics trained coach through the iTPA. In 2023, I was fortunate enough to bring two of my players, Ken Rodriguez and Nicky Maxwell to Arthur Ashe stadium for a Parastanding doubles exhibition just before the women’s US Open final between Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka.
I wanted to pursue collegiate level coaching so I left JTCC to coach at Rider University, a D1 college in New Jersey. There, I was the men’s and women’s assistant tennis coach. When I received the position of women’s assistant tennis coach for Whitman College, I knew that this was a position that beckoned me to fulfill.
