Elliott brings world of experience to his first collegiate coaching job

~ The new coach directed the Chinese team and worked several years with a pro tour player.

Mark Elliott has an extensive resume of coaching tennis, but one thing had been missing.

Not any longer, however, as Elliott on Wednesday was announced as Southeast Missouri State's new women's coach.

"I've wanted to get into college coaching for a while but nothing in the past ever seemed to come up at the right time," Elliott said. "I'm very excited about this opportunity."

The 60-year-old Elliott, a former coach of the Chinese national team, was most recently director of the Spare Time Junior Tennis Academy in Roseville, Calif.

Elliott served a three-year stint as China's men's and women's head coach. He helped coach Tian Tian Sun and Ting Li, who won the women's doubles gold medal in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Elliott also spent six years as a Junior Wimbledon coach for the United States Tennis Association. Some of the players he tutored during that time included future top professionals Matt Anger, Patrick McEnroe and Luke Jensen.

Elliott served as Anger's coach on the ATP Tour from 1984 to 1989. Anger was at one time ranked No. 23 in the world, along with being the top-ranked junior player in the world.

A former collegiate player at San Jose State, Elliott competed as a professional for 10 years, during which time he played in the Australian Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.

"I feel very fortunate we found someone of his caliber as far as experience," said Southeast assistant athletic director Cindy Gannon, who headed up the search committee for a new coach. "I believe he will bring some very good recruiting to our program."

Elliott said recruiting should be one of his strengths with the Redhawks.

"I have a lot of friends who are coaches around the United States and overseas," he said. "Most of the kids I've coached at the junior level have gone on to play college tennis."

In fact, it was two of Elliott's former junior players who actually helped steer him to Southeast.

As a junior coach in northern California about a decade ago, Elliott worked with twin sisters Bryce and Drew Kristal -- who have been the Redhawks' top two singles players the past two years and are now juniors at Southeast.

In addition, Elliott worked with the Kristals' mother when she was in high school.

"Over the summer I worked with the Kristal sisters when they were back home and they told me the tennis job [at Southeast] was open," Elliott said. "I had always had in the back of my mind to get involved in NCAA tennis, and this worked out great."

Elliott takes over for Jay Pacelli, who spent three seasons as the Redhawks' coach before leaving during the summer for a position at a private club in Jackson, Miss.

Pacelli directed the Redhawks to a 12-11 record last year for the program's first winning season since 1997. Most of the top players off that squad return, led by the Kristal twins.

"The program has been developing and hopefully we can carry on and keep building it," Elliott said. "I've been impressed with how the girls have stayed in shape after our first meeting, even though they haven't had a coach for a while.

"We have all agreed that our goal for this season is to qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference Championships and our long term goal is to qualify for the NCAA Championships."

Added Gannon: "Our former coach did a great job of recruiting and we want somebody to build on what Jay started. We want somebody who will maybe be here for a while and take the program where we hope it can go in the OVC. We think Mark is that person."