By Kent Jarrell
(May 31, 2025) — Rod Pakus of Higganum was named Coach of the Year by the Shoreline Athletic Conference, which represents ten schools in our region. For the past twenty-four years Rod has coached the Haddam-Killingworth High School Boys Tennis Team. With a 14-0 record in conference play this spring, his team was named Shoreline Champions. As he prepared for the Connecticut State competitions, Coach Pakus sat down for an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Kent Jarrell: First of all, why do you coach?
Coach Pakus: I really enjoy athletics. I had kids at HK and I started volunteering coaching for the small kids years ago. I never stopped. I like the newness of every year and every season. People of my own age are kind of set in our own ways. We spend more time with the things we know and understand. But youngsters are always trying and achieving new and different things. That’s an appeal.
Kent Jarrell: And when you start out a season, it’s a blank slate.
Coach Pakus: Yes, yes. New challenges, new personalities, new ideas. And when I’m able to coordinate all these responsibilities and mold them into a competitive team from individuals-that’s a thrill. I enjoy that, and winning helps, too.
Kent Jarrell: I understand you have a no-cut policy. Nobody gets cut?
Coach Pakus: I figure if a parent will loan me a child for four years, I’m not cutting them. Their position is safe. They’re on the team. It’s knowing you have some place to come to for four years to develop at your own speed in your own pace.
Kent Jarrell: How do you get a bunch of individual teenagers to act as a team because the way you compete with other high schools is on a team basis?
Coach Pakus: Yep, it’s hard because you have all these different personalities and to get them to meld sometimes doesn’t work. But sometimes, when it does like this year, it’s amazing. My number two could be my number one. My number one could be my number two, but there’s no animosity, no internal competition. There’s more cooperation.
Kent Jarrell: How do you coach kids to get them to that point?
Coach Pakus: I think they have to bring something. They have to bring a personality as conducive to the kind our style of play. And there are years where it hasn’t happened, and there are years where it amazingly has happened. I look for people who have a kind of quiet confidence, and that’s almost really apparent from day one. And then I look for kids who are not put off by something different. I took a kid I knew was a great singles tennis player and asked him, what about doubles? And I just wanted to see how he would react, and he reacted fine. That’s the kind of person I want. Somebody who is not put off by something new.
Kent Jarrell: What do you do with a kid who’s a challenge?
Coach Pakus: There’s a challenge of skill and there’s a challenge of attitude. I hope I work on both of them, the same way I want to open that person up to different ways of viewing the same situation.
For the kids who are challenged skill-wise, I give them lessons with minimal amounts of work to get them to the point where when I see that big smile on their faces when they hit that forehand, or they hit that overhead.
In terms of leadership, I have to teach them to accept the role of being one of a group. That’s important, not only in tennis but it’s important in life, because many, many times, you’re not going to be the only sled dog around. You’re going to be part of a team, and I want you to be able to understand what the ramifications of that mean.
Kent Jarrell: What skills are transferable from tennis to life?
Coach Pakus: Ha! My goodness. Patience, exuberance, vulnerability, the ability to rebound. How many times have I taken a kid up on the hill after a loss in a tough match and sat and talked with him, and I know what kind of person he is, and I see a different person when the season ends.
Kent Jarrell: You’ve had a very successful season this year. You were named coach of the year. It is all a matter of just winning and not losing?
Coach Pakus: No, I don’t think so. I want my kids to go into the outside world. As a representative of the school and our team. I want them to know that the community is bigger than they are, that they have to contribute to that community. To make this all work, we can’t be isolated, and we can’t all be heroes. And we can’t all win. There are sometimes we have to play a supportive role.
Photos by Krystyna Medina
