News & Features

Donovan Tennis Strategies has been helping prospective college tennis players and their families navigate the recruiting process since 1997. In addition to consulting services DTS runs two College Prospects Showcases to help players get exposure to college coaches.

Here DTS sits down with Milton Academy (Mass.) graduate Andrew Lebovitz. The 2010 graduate is heading to Vermont this fall where he will be a freshman at Middlebury College. Lebovitz, a 3-Star recruit ranked as high as #12 in the USTA New England 18s, sat down to talk with Donovan Tennis Strategies about his recently-completed college tennis recruiting experience - and how he decided on Middlebury. .

Questions and Answers

Donovan Tennis Strategies (DTS): How did you make your decisions regarding which colleges you wanted to pursue? Tennis ranking? Academics? Gut-feeling?

Andrew Lebovitz (AL): My decision was probably based a little more on academics than tennis ranking. I definitely looked at schools where I would not have been recruited just because of their high academic standing. However, tennis did play an important role, and I found myself looking at more schools that both had great academics and a tennis program that was pretty strong and that I could play on.

DTS: When did you contact coaches? How did you contact them?

AL: I started contacting some coaches in the spring of my junior year. I actually think I should have contacted all of them then. I made sure to contact the coaches whose schools I went and visited - I tried to set up face-to-face meetings with those coaches. The rest of the coaches I contacted over the summer. My first contact with all of the coaches was by email, and the correspondence usually continued over email, but occasionally I would talk to a coach over the phone.