FORT SMITH, Ark. - University of Arkansas - Fort Smith Athletics has announced that Mike Phillips has joined the Lions' staff as Head Tennis Coach. Phillips comes to UAFS after coaching at the Walton Family Whole Health and Fitness Center in Bentonville and Kingsdale Tennis Center in Bella Vista, Arkansas. 

"I want to thank Athletic Director Curtis Janz, previous coach Ben Anderson and the University for hiring me and welcoming to the Fort Smith community," Phillips said. "I am blessed to be able to coach these teams."

Phillips has been an industry leader in multiple fields of the tennis-industry, starting grassroots tennis programs in underserved communities with the USTA and USPTA Eastern Division and managing USTA adult and junior competitive teams in Florida and New York.  

Before relocating to northwest Arkansas, Phillips managed tennis programs in Los Angeles where he coached both high school and college players for his local tennis club.  In addition to his tennis certification, he is a certified Tennis Performance Specialist with the ITPA, training tennis athletes with tennis specific conditioning exercises, such as movement, resistance training, and explosiveness among many performance strategies. 

Mike previously coached at the NCAA level for the Brooklyn College men's and women's tennis teams in 2015-2016.

Recently, Phillips participated in the USTA Men's 4.5 league match play in Bentonville and has competed actively throughout his tennis career.  He was a member of the Indian River Community College tennis program in 1990.

Phillips' approach to this season is for the Lions to band together and fight for each other to make the season a team success and individual success for the future.

"My favorite part of coaching college tennis is the brotherhood and sisterhood of the athletes leaning on one another and supporting each other through pressure and competitions" Phillips added. "One of my jobs is to instill in our teams a culture of success by accepting the challenge of competing at your best regardless of circumstances. These traits carry over into our players' future academic, business and tennis careers. We want to be a part of that positive development and journey with them."

As a youth, Mike lived in Springdale in 1986 and took lessons from longtime tennis coach Adelaide Shaeffer at the Springdale Recreation Center. He has family members in Bella Vista and Fayetteville including his dad, sister, brother, niece, nephew and grandniece.  His favorite career moment as a player was playing a charity exhibition set of doubles with former No. 5 Tim Henman against John McEnroe.