CLEMSON — The only sense of order around Chuck Kriese’s office is just outside the door, where three storage boxes await scanning.
More than three decades of keepsakes and instructional material — including the complete VHS set of motivational “Rocky” movies — have spread like kudzu across the furniture as Clemson’s retiring men’s tennis coach packs for his departure.
There is the black-and-white photo from the December day the 1985 team practiced topless in a wind chill of minus-3 degrees — the rare instance Kriese overlooked his rule prohibiting playing without a shirt.
Close by is a snapshot of a chiseled late-1990s squad posing by a weightlifting machine, triggering the memory of an NFL scout mistaking the Tigers for the football’s teams defensive backs.
Kriese then searches for the framed picture of former standout Cris Robinson (1992-95), a 5-foot-8 talent who was not allowed to practice one fall because he had failed eight consecutive times to run the mile in Kriese’s mandatory time of 5 minutes, 15 seconds.
So Kriese tied one end of a 20-foot kite string around a team captain, knotted the other end to Robinson and instructed him not to let go.
The team’s two captains each paced Robinson for two laps around the track, and Robinson made it in 5:11, yielding one of the grandest team celebrations of Kriese’s career.
“I’m lucky I have a few months to process it all,” Kriese said. “If it gets to be too much, I just leave (the office), go home for a few hours, then start over. You have an emotional attachment as if it were yesterday.
“Everything has a story.”
Perhaps none of the stories carry as much depth as that of a 33-year college coach shunning retirement to uproot his family and become Thailand’s national coach.
A TASTE OF THAI
Kriese, 58, informed athletics director Terry Don Phillips in November that this past season would be his last.
As Clemson’s coach, anyhow.
Kriese, an accomplished instructor and author of five tennis books, planned to continue his summer camps then spend the rest of the year working with a handful of local juniors as well as pros playing in countries such as Turkey.
But a former pupil, Robert Davis — briefly a Clemson JV player and traveling tour pro — set up Kriese with the Southeast Asia Tennis Federation to spend December teaching a clinic in Thailand.
Next thing Kriese knew, he was offered and accepted two jobs.
First and foremost, Kriese will take over as Thailand’s national coach, grooming players for Davis Cup competition as well as major individual tournaments. If its No. 42-ranked doubles team qualifies for the Olympics, Kriese might be headed to Beijing in August.
He also will serve in the new position of technical director for Southeast Asia tennis, creating an infrastructure to coordinate training and group travel for top players from nine additional countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Brunei.
Kriese believes the region is comparable to Russia and Eastern Europe a decade ago in terms of its untapped tennis potential.
“This is something that, as a man, I have to dive into,” Kriese said. “If I don’t do this, I would regret it always. It’s too big of a challenge, too big of an opportunity. It’s tough and it’s scary, but that’s what you do.”
Assuming one gets approval from his wife, of course.
Kriese and wife Claire have three children: Lillian, 4; Paul, 2; and Adeline, 7 months.
The tennis federation will be furnishing an apartment for the family in downtown Bangkok, which it hopes to develop as the hub for regional tennis.
Once Claire ensured a list of stipulations were met, she felt she needed to support the move because she had pushed for his retirement in the first place.
Relocating to a home without grass or a garden will take getting used to, so they must find a safe neighborhood near parks and playgrounds.
Because such services are relatively cheap there, the family also will have a maid and a driver to help ease the transition.
There is also the small matter of learning Thai, a challenging language to pick up because of its stress on tones. Claire has purchased computer software to learn the basics.
“There are some sacrifices, but there are just so many pros, so many good things that can happen from this,” Claire said.
“We basically just prayed God would close doors where he didn’t want us to go and open them where he did. This one just kept opening and opening. There was just a peace in our hearts about going.”
The Krieses will move in late September or early October and annually spend seven months in Thailand before leaving for the summer.
The family will return to its current home while Kriese travels to the three remaining professional tennis major tournaments and works his camps in Charleston, Sumter and Brevard, N.C.
Their ideal scenario is to try the situation for three years and then assess whether it is working.
“The schedule never ends, that’s the thing I have to get a grasp on,” Kriese said.
“I promised Claire it would not be (as) taxing as the college season. I’ve got to be able to get a handle on that, or all will be for naught.”
GAME, SET, MATCH
As Kriese suggests, coaches and anyone else can devote so much of their lives climbing the professional ladder that they eventually figure out the ladder is leaning against the wrong house.
Kriese, who has three grown sons from a previous marriage, said he does not want to go another four months with just one free weekend for his family, as he did this season.
His three-year contract with Clemson expires in August, and Kriese figured it would be his last contract when it was agreed upon.
But he got cold feet about moving to Thailand and considering seeking another extension.
“He was scared to death,” Claire said. “I said, you can do that, but I’m going to be really disappointed in you for not facing the challenge (of retirement). This year, he said he was going to step out on that limb and try it. And I think he’s glad he did.
“There are just so many people there he might get to influence how they think. This is kind of a stepping stone into the pro arena, which is a dream job he’s always wanted.”
Kriese remembers thinking the same thing in 1975, when as a Tennessee Tech graduate student, the school’s athletics director — former Tigers standout football player Don Wade — recommended him for the Clemson job.
In 33 seasons, Kriese guided the team to 24 NCAA tournaments and set the ACC records for career wins (685) and conference wins (166).
He owns the second-longest tenure of a coach in Clemson history behind former baseball coach Bill Wilhelm (36 years).
Yet the changes in the college tennis landscape have admittedly dampened the second half of his career.
Kriese made his name running a tennis academy of sorts, bringing herds of developmental players into his boot-camp environment to breed a number of success stories. Clemson fielded three teams — varsity, JV and practice squad — that each played as many as 70 matches annually.
When the NCAA legislated restrictions on practice times and the number of matches teams could play each season, Kriese viewed it as a crushing constraint to his principle of out-working opponents.
He reluctantly adjusted his philosophy and recruited late-blooming, multisport players in order to bridge the growing athletic gap.
But he never fully bought into devoting all his time and energies almost exclusively to recruiting international players, the lifeblood of today’s elite programs.
“I had a friend tell me his AD told him 70 percent of his job is recruiting, and the other 30 percent is recruiting,” Kriese said. “If you can’t outwork people, you have to outrecruit people or give them better opportunities.”
“This job is about you needing talent, opportunities and development. The teaching part is the one I love, but I don’t feel it’s a teaching arena anymore. The other thing is I’ve come to understand that some of the lessons I’m trying to teach aren’t gaining traction anymore.”
Which might have been the most attractive selling point to his new job.
Kriese was taken aback by the modesty and respect for authority of the Asian culture, likening it to the 1950s and ’60s because families hang out together and grant their elders instant credibility.
It seems a fitting place for a coach who had begun feeling he was spinning his wheels at the college level because of rules that limit what he does best.
“I was thinking earlier about what I should do to go through decompression and re-acclimate during retirement,” Kriese said. “Should I go hike the Appalachian Trail six months with my dog?
“A 50-year-old is going to do what he wants to do, but he’s not going to do what he doesn’t have to do. This is a big undertaking, and I’m hoping 33 years here has prepared me for something (like this).”
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