STILLWATER, Okla. (Oct. 14, 2016) – Chris Young was walking across a parking lot at Oklahoma Christian in the summer of 2000 when then-OC tennis coach Kris Miller saw him and told Young, "Hey, I want to talk to you about something."
That something ended up being Miller offering Young a spot on the OC staff as an assistant coach. To this day, Young isn't quite sure what Miller saw in him, but whatever it was, Miller proved prescient in his assessment of Young.
Young has become one of the hottest young collegiate tennis coaches in the U.S., first playing a key part in OC's first national championship, then turning around a mid-major NCAA Division I program at Wichita State and finally guiding Oklahoma State – never before known as a women's tennis power – to a national runner-up finish this past spring.
Young will be honored during OC's Homecoming festivities in November as the university's Distinguished Alumnus, one which longtime OC men's basketball coach Dan Hays – who was the university's athletic director during Young's tenure as an OC player and coach – said the OC community should be "very proud of. He's always been such a good representative of the school."
"His demeanor was outstanding," Hays said. "I know he appreciated the opportunity to coach our teams. Am I surprised that he's gone on and been so successful? Absolutely not. He got a great start and was a student of the game and was smart and skilled. He caught a break at OSU and the rest is history."
Young has been a regional coach of the year four times – in 2004 at OC (for both the men's and women's teams) and in 2007 at Wichita State and 2015 at OSU. But as with a lot of success stories, it didn't come in a straight line.
As a freshman out of Norman High School, Young certainly was aware of OC in the mid-1990s, but he initially attended Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. A year later, he transferred and joined an OC program that had developed into one of the NAIA's best.
During his three seasons at OC, he competed alongside some of the best players in OC history, including OC Athletic Hall of Famer Sam Winterbotham (now the head men's tennis coach at Tennessee), and helped the Eagles to three straight top-five NAIA finishes.
At OC, he also came under the influence of coaches like Hays and Miller, professors such as current Oklahoma State Treasurer Ken Miller, Philip Patterson, Larry Jurney, Jim Baird and peers like baseball star Clint Vaughn and basketball standouts Jay Mauck and Rob Seat. Young said he treasures the relationships from his time at OC.
"Guys like Clint and Jay and Rob were excelling at a very high level in their sports and that brought out the best in a lot of us," Young said. "They're great friends that I still have today. Coach Hays is somebody that always inspired a lot of people. He took an interest in me and I always had a great relationship with him and (former OC Athletic Director) Curtis (Janz). All of the coaches, I had good relationships with.
"When I was at Lipscomb, Ken (Miller) was the coach at Freed-Hardeman, so we both came to OC at the same time and he helped me. In my major, I spent a lot of time with Dr. Jurney and Dr. Patterson. Those guys are really good at what they do and I learned a lot from them. The education I got from Oklahoma Christian has really served me well moving forward, whether it was communications or the media part. My whole experience at OC was great."
While still a student and a collegiate player, Young began working as a youth minister for a church in Ardmore and soon after that became an assistant coach at Ardmore High School in 1999. He joined the OC staff for the 2001 season as Kris Miller's top assistant. Then, in 2002, Kris Miller had to briefly step aside from his coaching position due to health issues, and Young became the interim head coach for both the Eagles and Lady Eagles.
In 2003, Young remained as the OC women's head coach and went back to assisting Kris Miller with the men's team, which ended up winning OC's first team title in any sport. That NAIA championship remains a highlight of Young's coaching career.
"That group, more than any other group up until that time that I had ever been a part of, they did extra," Young said. "They were always doing extra. At the end of practice, they were always pushing. We could never work those guys hard enough. They were very focused, very driven, very goal-oriented. We just had a lot of good leadership on that team. That group taught me a lot as a coach about what it was like to have really good leaders. That team really ran itself in a lot of ways."
Miller stepped down again after the 2003 season and Young again became the head coach for both of OC's tennis programs. But after the 2004 season, Wichita State approached Young and he didn't want to miss an opportunity to see what he could do as a NCAA Division I coach.
In his five years as the Shockers' women's coach, he was named as the Missouri Valley Conference's coach of the year three times and in 2007, he guided WSU to a No. 16 national ranking, a 27-3 record and a win over South Carolina in the NCAA tournament. To this day, it remains the only NCAA tournament match ever won by a MVC program.
Oklahoma State contacted him, and Young took the chance to return to coaching in his home state starting with the 2010 season because he "wanted to come back and do some things for the state of tennis in Oklahoma, to make an impact."
As he did at Wichita State, he rebuilt a program nearly from the ground up, and one of his top priorities was raising the funds to build a tennis facility so his team wouldn't need to travel to Oklahoma City or Tulsa just to practice. So, using the "blue collar" work ethic he'd learned from Kris Miller at OC, Young set to work.
"You had to find ways to win," Young said. "That was the great thing about Kris Miller. We weren't going to make excuses for what we had or didn't have. We didn't talk about other teams having more. We didn't complain about anything like that. It was, 'We're happy with what we have, we're proud of who we are and we're going to go out and we're going to win.'
"I saw (OSU) as just a blank canvas. It was an opportunity. Not many coaches get to come in and start from scratch and get to build things and design things and lay things out exactly the way you want it. From the very beginning, that was my mission. A lot of people said, 'Don't take the job at Oklahoma State, because they don't care about tennis,' but for me it was just a challenge to make them care and make them see a vision about what it could become."
After much planning, the Michael and Anne Greenwood Tennis Center opened in 2014 and this year received an Outstanding Facility Award from the U.S. Tennis Association, the only college facility to be so honored for 2016. The facility has allowed OSU to host major events including the 2014 Intercollegiate Tennis Association Central Region Championships and the 2016 Big 12 Conference Championship.
"Chris is a multi-talented young coach," said Mike Holder, OSU's vice president for intercollegiate athletics. "He's shown the ability to coach at the highest level and fundraise in his spare time. His fundraising skills resulted in the construction of the Michael and Anne Greenwood Tennis Center, which has been a game-changer for our tennis program. Chris has his team positioned to win the first NCAA championship for a women's sport at OSU."
That's no exaggeration. Young was named as the Big 12 Coach of the Year in 2016 after guiding the Cowgirls to their first league title in 13 seasons and a surprise run to the NCAA team final in Tulsa. No. 12 seed OSU knocked off No. 5 Georgia, No. 4 Ohio State and No. 1 California to reach the title match. In the final, OSU had a match point before falling 4-3 to longtime NCAA tennis power Stanford.
The NCAA runner-up trophy now sits in Young's office, waiting for a more permanent home.
"It was very rewarding to be in that position and to represent a lot of things, to represent a lot of people," Young said. "I was excited for the team, for the program, for Oklahoma State, for Oklahoma Christian, for a lot of people that were able to be there in that moment and to celebrate it with us, together. That was a great day for the state of tennis in Oklahoma and it was the reason why I came back."
Throughout all his success, Young has remained steadfastly loyal to his alma mater. At the start of the 2015-16 academic year, he visited OC to speak to current student-athletes at the annual all-athlete meeting, encouraging them to take advantage of the opportunities OC would afford them to be successful.
He and his wife, Sarah, still enjoy visiting the campus, bringing their children to events like Spring Sing or athletic events and telling them stories about the "good times" at OC.
"OC has been a part of my family for a long time," Young said. "Just being a part of OC, it's what my wife and I have known growing up. To go to OC then and represent OC in athletics and coach there, that was a big goal for us and for me. OC has impacted my life in a lot of ways, with mentors and people that have inspired me.
"I feel like loyalty is something I pride myself on and I feel like I owe a lot to the people that are there and the education that I received from there."
