Lehman Tennis Coach Wins Fight with
Cancer and Coach of the Year
Greg Van Voorhis
Bronx Journal Staff Reporter
Scott
Blumberg’s professional tennis career may have ended just as he was
getting his second wind, but the game is still in his blood.
Blumberg, the head coach of the Lehman
tennis teams for the past three years, has seen it all, lived it
all, and lived through it all. Start with the fact that shortly after
his birth, Blumberg was adopted right out of the hospital and has no
brothers or sisters. He started playing tennis and clarinet when he was
seven years old. He went to the High School of Music & Art in New
York, where he played tennis and was ranked 16th in the country by the
time he graduated. He was offered a scholarship to play tennis at the
University of South Florida, and a scholarship to play clarinet at
Julliard. He opted to play tennis, and by the time he was 20, began
playing professionally.
He
has played in the U.S. Open, and won a myriad of professional
tournaments (never a Grand Slam.) He worked for Ivan Lendl’s tennis
club in Connecticut, and he
played such greats as Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulitas and
Guillermo Vilas (he defeated none.) He’s got four great kids and a
lovely wife.
But
at the age of 39, this one-time passenger in the international sports
fast lane is perfectly content coaching the Lightning at Lehman College.
“Toward
the end of ’92, I was coughing a lot, and I didn’t know why,”
Blumberg explains. After months of putting a trip to the doctor aside,
he decided to go on New Year’s Eve, because he could barely breathe.
‘The doctors found these bumps on my chest and under my arms, and I
could tell by their expressions that things weren’t good. I was real
scared.” After numerous examinations, the doctors found that Scott had
cancer of the right lung, and for at least a year.
Blumberg
began chemotherapy treatments to rid himself of the disease. Originally,
doctors were pessimistic. “I thought I was dead, and so did the
doctors; I guess we were both wrong.” Although chemotherapy was
working, and it seemed as if he had beaten the odds, the doctors did not
believe he would ever be able to play tennis competitively again. “I
remember this one doctor said I wouldn’t even be able to play at
all,” he says. He had something to prove, that he was stronger than
the doctors said. “After 14 of the 21 radiation treatments, I played
in a tournament,” he says. “I made it all the way to the finals,
where I lost in the last set after playing for three whole hours.”
Don’t
let sympathy for Coach Blumberg get the best of you, especially on the
court. He stands a mere 5’8”, but he’s as quick as the name of the
team he coaches: “Lightning.” At a recent women’s practice, the
coach showed no effects of the disease that eventually cost him his
career. To see him across the net is to see serves whizzing by at over
100 miles per hour, clocked;
crosscourt backhand winners from the baseline; drop shots that seem to
stop dead after touching the ground on the first bounce; and overhead
slams that sail over the fences behind his opponent. No, this is not a
man to feel sorry for. This is a man who you pray will not make a fool
of you on the court.
During
one game of a match between himself and an assistant coach, former
men’s Lightning player Juan Carlos, the coach served up a second serve
that popped the strings of Juan’s racket. “That’s another thirty
bucks you owe me,” Juan says to Scott as he went over to grab another
racket to finish his match. “Just put it on my tab. Let’s see;
that’s 10 popped strings this month, at thirty bucks a pop. Ha! pop!.
Get it Juan? I guess I owe you about as much as a t-shirt at Abercrombie
and Fitch,” jokes the coach.
Everything
he got he had to get for himself. “I never really had any real
lessons, but everything I’ve learned has been from the senior citizens
I used to play with as a kid,” Blumberg recalls. “They saw a little
kid trying to learn the sport they enjoyed playing, and they sometimes
needed an extra body, so they let me in. I think we all got something
out of it.”
After
graduating from college, he begged his parents to let him go to
California to try and make it on his own as a professional tennis
player. They paid for his plane ticket and gave him two weeks worth of
cash. It was up to Scott to do the rest for himself. He stayed with a
friend of his from college, and the two played in money tournaments to
make ends meet. He had to scrap for $100 here, $200 there. At least, he
says, it was a living. “Lots of guys were doing this [playing in money
tournaments to make ends meet.] and $200 a week isn’t half bad when
you’re 20 years old, and living basically by yourself,” he says.
“I was happy.”
Scouts
watched him play, and he was quickly sponsored by Dunlop, a tennis ball
manufacturer. With the sponsorship, Blumberg was able to play in
tournaments all around the world. “It was great, I got to see the
world and play the sport I loved. You can’t beat that,” explains
Scott. “I actually remember my first pro tournament. I played
[Martina] Navratilova’s coach at the time, Mike Estep; I was so
nervous.” He lost the match (6-4) (6-2), but that match made him
realize that he belonged on the court with pro athletes.
“The
highlight of his career was his one U.S. Open appearance in ’81,”
says Charlie Greenberg, Scott’s childhood tennis coach. “He got
ousted early, but I will never forget how proud him I was. It was his
dream come true.”
Scott
has never forgotten the people who made him who he is today. “Hey,
without them, I wouldn’t be here talking to you today.” He believes
the one problem with tennis players these days is that they have
forgotten where they came from. “I see guys who I used to play with
when I was younger, who are grown up now, who couldn’t care less for
the senior citizens that taught us when we were kids. I hate that.”
A
good number of Blumberg’s peers might say that’s why the Lehman
coach hasn’t won a major tournament in his career.
“People
used to always say, ‘Man you’re too nice, you’ve got no killer
instinct; you’ll never get anywhere in this sport being like that.’
I guess they’re right, because I never did win that one big
tournament, or that one big match that would have propelled my career to
the next level.”
But
he did win a more important battle. Scott eventually decided to stop
playing professionally very soon after the match he played during his
chemotherapy treatments.
He
realized that although he was fine after playing that long on the court,
it did take its toll. By the last set he was running on “pure fumes
and grit,” more so than when he was healthy. He knew that it would
take too long to get back to the player he was before the treatments,
and he felt that it was time to dedicate more of his time to coaching
tennis players, rather than playing himself. He still plays in a number
of tournaments every year, but they’re just for fun. “Coaching is
where my heart is right now. I love to teach and discipline these kids
[his college players]. I even work at a day camp over the summers,
because I want to teach smaller kids as well, and I like to be out in
the sun.”
“Scott’s
a great guy to be around, and I love working with him,” says Nicole
Buckley, a co-worker at Mount Tom Day Camp, where Scott works his
summers. “Although not many of the kids are old enough to understand
who or what he really is, they get a sense that he really knows what
he’s doing, and that he’s got a lot to teach them, if they want to
learn.”
Coach
Scott Blumberg is an inspiration. He has gone through good and bad
times, and lived to talk about them. When asked whether, if he had
chosen music over tennis, he would have regretted his decision, he
replies, “I would’ve traded my right lung for tennis.” He smiles
as he said it.
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