Meet The Neighbors introduces you to some of the remarkable people who live and work in the Baton Rouge area. Do you know someone we should meet? E-mail us at news@wrkf.org and keep up with Meet The Neighbors, follow us on Tumblr.
Carlos Roldan came to Baton Rouge from Argentina more than ten years ago. He started playing tennis at the age of nine, and started competing by age 13. By the time he was 18 he was competing semi-pro and coaching on the side, which took away from his training time. He loved to coach so much that he decided to stop competing and coach full time. In 1998, after coaching for many years, it turns out he had something new to learn.
"By accident I received a flier for something called wheelchair tennis that I’ve never seen before, even though I’ve played tennis all my life, never seen before. So I approached the person who gave me the flier and that’s how it started," Roldan says. "I went there one time to see their practice and I really was impressed with what they do and how they do it, and the coach told me 'Would you be interested in coaching some players?' and I said 'Well, absolutely, but I don’t know much about this, and he told me 'If you know how to coach tennis you can start' and that’s how it started."
Now, Roldan coaches wheelchair tennis every Saturday at BREC’s Highland Park. He’s also helped kickstart similar programs elsewhere in the state. He teaches beginners, intermediate and advanced, with students as young as six, and as old as 65.
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Basically it’s the same game, we just need to adjust to the disability of everyone of your clients or players or trying to help them out to [make] the best out of their disability in favor of the sport.
I take pride [in] my players, I think I call them my players because they’re kind of part of my life. I always see them as athletes, I don’t give them any privileges, I don’t do anything for them, I just show them what they need to do and they need to go with it.
One of the players that I work with for many years, his name is Shane Theriot. He was from Lafayette and he was in a clinic I was giving to get a program started there, and after we became friends he worked really hard, he became one of my players and from the area, he became 100 in the world.
My very first wheelchair tennis student, his name was Landon Maher, he was Smiley Anders’ grandson. And I didn’t know that, I didn’t know who Smiley Anders was, and he came or the first time to tennis lesson. He never knew he could play wheelchair tennis and we started playing tennis.
The following week, he showed up with sunglasses. Which was very unusual for me. And I looked at him and I said “Landon, what’s going on with you?” And he looked at me and he said “What do you mean?” and I said “You’re wearing sunglasses” and he said “I’m wearing sunglasses like you, I’m a tennis player now.”
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Getting to know Carlos Roldan, wheelchair tennis coach at BREC’s Highland Park. This has been Meet the Neighbors. Tell us who we should meet next. e-mail us at news@wrkf.org or go to meettheneighbors.wrkf.org.
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