Reconnecting after 22 years

One of the fun things about this job, and this website, is the interaction we get with friends and supporters, including former athletes and coaches.

The pictures above are proof of that.

Earlier this week, we were able to help two former NSU tennis players reconnect via e-mail and put in motion plans for their families to meet this summer.

Graduate N Club Hall of Fame 2005 inductee Shayne Fitzwilliam (her family photo is above) was thrilled when athletic director Greg Burke forwarded her an e-mail that I'd gotten from Martin Aguirre, a member of the last men's tennis team at NSU (1986). Martin and Shayne dated until NSU reluctantly dropped men's tennis. He wound up heading to Iowa State to continue his college career, and in Shayne's words, "we were both heart broken at the time." They lost contact (there was no internet, Facebook, MySpace or cell phones at the time, as hard as that is to imagine for today's college students!) and through the years each had wondered about the other.

Martin and his family were planning a trip to Disney World this summer. He had heard Shayne was in Florida, and after checking our website, he e-mailed me from his home in Ecuador to ask if we could help get him in touch.

We also were able to get Martin in touch with his coach, Johnnie Emmons. Even though he spent only his freshman year here, he was very excited about having the chance to reconnect with his old coach. You can see a nice combined team picture above.

As a sidelight, it was great to hear from Shayne that she stays in touch with one of my favorite Lady Demon tennis players, Vicky Simms Newsom, who married my first fulltime assistant SID, Tommy Newsom. In fact, Shayne and Vicky joined a couple more teammates for a summer holiday in Maine recently to have fun with Jane Paterson, who has been in college coaching at Bowdoin.

The Newsoms are relocating from their McKinney, Texas, home this spring to Austin, where Tommy (or should we say Dr. Newsom) is the new president of the Art Institute of Dallas, a non-traditional but fully accredited university targeted toward commuters and online students. Vicky is continuing work on her doctoral studies and keeping track of their three kids, including pre-school twins.

Current Lady Demon coach Patric Dubois is doubtless hoping that perhaps one of the daughters of Shayne, Vicky or Martin may grow up to follow in their parent's footsteps and attend NSU.

Doug Ireland, SID