From the Newsstands: This story appeared in The Eagle's April 2025 print edition. You can find the digital version here.
Anyone who visits American University’s Athletics office has to first walk through the trophy room. The entryway highlights the American Eagles’ achievements and shows off the various Patriot League trophies teams have won. What you won’t find are any tennis trophies.
Twenty years ago, the athletics department cut the men’s and women’s tennis programs for the first time. After student outrage and protest, the University gave the programs — with five Patriot League titles between them — one more season before being shut down permanently. Then, in March 2024, the tennis courts were demolished for the construction of the Meltzer Center, definitively ending tennis on American’s campus.
“[Being cut] was surprising, but it’s all down to economics,” said Juancarlo Vazquez, who graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2006 and played on the tennis team for four years.
Vazquez, along with the rest of the men’s tennis team, was successful in his tennis career — especially by American’s standards. He and the team were nationally ranked and earned multiple trips to the NCAA Tournament. American is not a school known for its athletic prowess — no team has won a national championship, and wrestler Josh Glenn is the only Eagle to win a NCAA Division I title.
While the student body is seldom sports-crazy, athletes and non-athletes alike rallied together for the teams in 2005. Students joined together in matching t-shirts, which Vazquez credits for getting them one more year to play.
There is an online version of the trophy room, too. It details the championship histories of each team currently operating at the school, without any mention of tennis.
“I understand cutting [the team], but then going back, I want to show my children, ‘oh, this was us. This was our team. We won in X year and Y year.’ But no, all the trophies were eliminated,” Vazquez said.
Members of the program have been very successful in the tennis world. Former coaches Martin Blackman and Elissa Hill have held high-level positions with the U.S. Tennis Association, and former coach Katie Dougherty is the University of Maryland’s head women’s coach. Three-year team captain Kyle Bailey is the University of North Carolina at Charlotte men’s head coach.
“It always miffed me as well, because it costs a relatively small amount of money to run a tennis team,” said Andrew Singer, a 2007 School of Communication graduate.
Singer played on the tennis team for three years, but stayed at the school for his senior year without playing. Vazquez got lucky — he graduated in 2006 and played tennis at American all four years. But athletes like Singer were faced with a choice: stay at American without tennis, or transfer away from all of their friends. He stayed, but some, like Rachael Honig Schnell, made the choice to transfer.
“It was not a hard decision. I wanted to keep playing tennis, and that’s what I decided to do,” Honig Schnell said.
While all expressed sadness about the program’s cancellation, there were silver linings. Singer studied abroad during his senior year, which he couldn’t have done if he was still on the team. Honig Schnell transferred to George Washington University to keep playing tennis, but she maintained relationships with friends from American, including her future husband, Jeffrey Schnell.
Vazquez added that all the hardship the program went through actually brought them closer together, and that almost all of his closest friends at American were from the tennis team.
One reason Singer was disappointed by the recent court demolition was that he and other friends who have stayed in the area would come by campus and play on the courts.
Still, all of this happened nearly 20 years ago. The student-athletes are now spouses, parents and adults with careers, both within and beyond the tennis world.
“I kind of came to terms with it a long, long time ago. So I don’t have any hard feelings anymore against American University,” Singer said. “I’ve been able to move on. I still have lots of good memories about the school itself.”
But the thing that still irks them is the missing trophies. There is no legacy of tennis at American. While other teams and athletes are featured on the walls of Bender Arena, tennis is entirely absent, as if there were never a team. And now, with the demolition of the courts for the construction of the Meltzer Center, there’s nothing on campus that might make a current student wonder if there was once a team. Even the club tennis team has been pushed off campus.
American tennis alumni don’t know what happened to their trophies — some think they were just thrown away, others thought they were offered to a teammate. Representatives of the Athletic Department weren’t sure about their whereabouts, either.
“That’s one thing that’s kind of broken me up, is that they kind of have erased the program. And I know they have trophy chests and things like that, and they hang banners at the basketball arena. There should be something celebrating our team as well, at least in a trophy or a banner, just kind of promoting the memory of our team, rather than sweeping under the rug, which is exactly what it felt like,” Singer said. “There was no sign that we had been there.”
This article was edited by Connor Sturniolo, Jack Stashower and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Olivia Citarella, Jaden Anderson, Emma Brown, Sabine Kanter-Huchting, Hannah Langenfeld and Nicole Kariuki.
