When you spend 13 years coaching at the same school, you must be doing something right.

N.C. State’s women’s tennis head coach Hans Olsen and his team are coming off of their second NCAA Tournament appearance in three years and is 3-0 so far this season with wins over North Carolina Central, East Carolina and Missouri.

Olsen is a native of Atlanta, but moved to Washington, D.C. as a youth, where he played tennis at Woodrow Wilson High School. From there, he went on to Charleston Southern University, where he played for four years before graduating in 1992 with a degree in political science and a business minor.

Olsen said he began his coaching career by serving as an assistant at Coastal Carolina University alongside a well-known former professional player.

“I was teaching tennis at Kingston Plantation in Myrtle Beach, and John McEnroe was the head coach at Coastal,” Olsen said. “He asked me to help with the team, and that’s how I got my start.”

Olsen took another assistant position at his alma mater in 1995. One year later, he moved up the ranks and became the head coach for the Buccaneers’ men’s and women’s teams, with his men’s teams making three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances from 1999 to 2001. 

After the 2001 season, Olsen came to Raleigh to coach the Wolfpack and has stayed ever since.

During the years, as an avid tennis player and fan, Olsen had the chance to see many legendary players in action. He certainly had his favorites, rooting for Swedish players such as Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg. 

While living in the nation’s capital, he said he worked as a ball boy at the Sovran Bank Classic, now known as the Citi Open, which has long attracted some of the best professional players from around the world.

“When I was a ball boy in D.C., Ivan Lendl came and played there a lot,” Olsen said. “I started rooting for him at that time.”

As far as recruiting goes, college tennis has perhaps one of the most international recruiting bases in all of collegiate sports. Out of nine players on State’s roster, three are from outside of the United States. That means Olsen and his staff log significant travel miles to find the best players for the Wolfpack.

“[Assistant coach] Suzanne [Depka] was in Australia a year ago, and we have two players coming from there next year,” Olsen said. “The summer before that I was at the European Championships. But we’ve also been recruiting in the States. All of the big tournaments in America happen in the summertime. We also have done home visits and visited academies.”

Though tennis at its highest level is an individual sport, college competition is team-based, meaning as many as six different matches could be on court at once. Olsen said he sometimes finds it a bit challenging to keep track of so many of his players at once.

“Sometimes I have to take a step back and see it from a different perspective,” Olsen said. “I have to realize the most important thing for one player to be doing, and that it’s different from the player on the next court. It’s an interesting team sport.” 

While coaching, Olsen said he is a proponent of not only having his team learning from him, but also the other way around.

“The other day our captains called me for a meeting and they had some things to talk about from a leadership program they’re doing,” Olsen said. “We had a great discussion and I really learned some stuff from my players.”