I don’t write about myself that much. But this year I’m making some exceptions. The AC “A” Board announced that I’ll be inducted into the Austin College Hall of Honor in the summer of 2025. My sport is tennis, and Legends Weekend 2025 is igniting a bunch of Marc tennis stories. Here’s one:
Kalamazoo, Michigan has been on my mind this week. Of course it has been, you’re thinking. Austin College football opens its 2024 season in Michigan against the Hornets of Kalamazoo College. And the Roos will be batting the Hornets 90 miles west of Ann Arbor, MI, where the Texas Longhorns will be doing the same thing at the same time against the Michigan Wolverines.
True that. But there’s more. There is one sport associated with Kalamazoo College more than any other. And it ain’t football. It’s my sport of tennis.
Kalamazoo College hosts the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Junior Boys National Tournament ever year. Why Kalamazoo for the biggest tournament for up-and-coming juniors in American tennis? Well, why does Omaha, Nebraska host baseball’s College World Series? I think Nate Bargatze sums up the answer for most of us in a recent SNL skit: “Nobody knows.” 
The champions of the USTA Junior Boys National Tournament at Kalamazoo College read like a Who’s Who of American tennis. John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Michael Chang, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and current American stars Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe. If there is an American who has won the US Open in New York, he has probably also enjoyed success at Kalamazoo.
My favorite story about Kalamazoo tennis, however, is “the streak.” Kalamazoo College men’s tennis has been a part of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) for over 130 years. Since 1936, the tennis program has won 85 conference titles in a row (interrupted only by war). It’s the longest conference championship streak in any sport at any level in the world. Thankfully for Marc, Austin College tennis in 1990 did not include a non-conference match against Kalamazoo.
Marc’s got personal connections to Kalamazoo tennis. Dennis Ralston, a Wimbledon finalist and former coach of mine in Austin, won a Kalamazoo title in 1959. Charles Emley, a former coach of mine in Bryan/College Station, competed at Kalamazoo with Jimmy Connors in 1968. Larry Gottfried, a FB friend and former Trinity star who has appeared in a Trinity Roo Tale, won the Kalamazoo singles crown in 1976; Gottfried also won the doubles crown with John McEnroe.
And in the 1988 Texas Sectionals, a #73-ranked Marc Parrish lost to #1-ranked Alex O’Brien. Later that summer, O’Brien would advance to the semifinals at the 1988 Kalamazoo Tournament, before falling to the eventual champion. O’Brien finished his career on a high note in 1999 by winning the doubles crown on the grandest stage of all: the US Open.
Saturday for Marc will be all about Kalamazoo football. Like AC, Kalamazoo College has football history. The Hornets are the rare program (est. 1892) older than Austin College. Like AC, Kalamazoo also has history with the big boys. The Hornets have five historic meetings with the Michigan Wolverines; AC has squared off six times with the Texas Longhorns. This Saturday, Kalamazoo will host Austin College at Angell Field, located just a half mile from the Stowe Tennis Stadium that has seen so many tennis greats at the “Nats at the Zoo.”
But Friday and Sunday for Marc will be all about Kalamazoo tennis. No American has won the US Open in more than two decades. But that might end on Sunday. This Friday, American Taylor Fritz (2015 Kalamazoo doubles champion) meets American Francis Tiafoe (2015 Kalamazoo singles champion) in the US Open semifinals; the winner will play on Sunday to become the first American US Open champion since Andy Roddick (1999 Kalamazoo doubles champion).
Yes indeed, you can travel “from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo” for some AC football this weekend. But no matter your sport of choice……whether it be AC football, Marc’s tennis past, or some sport in between……you’ve “got a Roo in Kalamazoo.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys’_Junior_National_Tennis_Championship
