1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Brett Forman - Nebraska Top 25 Tennis Class: May 26th, 2026, 11:25am

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

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Back to one-on-one with D.P. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7 the ticket. Welcome back, Brenda Meyer, the wires from Nebraska Children and Families. Give the Lincoln Day. And again, it's a special day, and I just want folks from Lincoln to be proud of himself. I've lived all over the country. There aren't always things like this. And it's good to remind yourself of how good you are and how good you can be.

We are joined. Normally, we're joined by Peter Kobo from the Huskman's tennis program. He sent one today. Let's bring in assistant coach Matt Foreman, Nebraska tennis coach. Good to have you. Let's pull that microphone close to you. Yeah, swing it. There we go.

Get it close to you. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's good. It's good to see you in, man. I can see it matches and see you around practice. But it's good to see. Let the folks know your history. You're a D1 tennis player. You're now a coach. Where'd you play? Yeah. So I played at Michigan State University from 2013 to 2018. And then I've had kind of a wild journey with my coaching career. I've been people, people stay it a lot. Joke around. I've been every school, coached at every school in Division I.

But my first year coaching was a year after college. So after I finished my coaching career, I'd coached out like a private club for a year and then I coached at Michigan State University so my alma mater for a year as the volunteer assistant coach and then our season got shortened by COVID so that was the COVID year so

that following fall I signed on to be the second coach at Princeton University but that first fall it was a weird time so some schools were having kids back on campus some weren't Yeah.

Princeton was one. Especially in the Ivy League. Yes. Yeah. So Princeton did not have kids come back on campus. So that fall, I was in Princeton, just teaching lessons waiting for, we were kind of just waiting on pins and heels of what was going to happen. Wisconsin's assistant coach, University of Wisconsin's coach happened to take the Brownhead coaching job that fall. And so Wisconsin was on a bit of a hiring freeze.

So they needed someone temporary for the. spring season. So I went to Princeton to Madison, Wisconsin, was the assistant coach for just that spring. And then after that spring, I went to Wichita State for a year. I was assistant there for a year and then University of North Carolina, Charlotte in the AAC. You lived? I lived in Matthews, bro. Oh, really? Okay. I know exactly. Yeah. Okay. So we're close. Oh, my goodness. And then, so I was there for two years. And then now this will be my third year for for Nebraska describe yourself as a player because I always find it interesting that before you find out what kind of coach somebody is you have to find out what kind of player

they were yeah I was uh I like to uh I would be considered like I called a grinder like I didn't have any massive weapons but like I competed really well um I was very consistent made a lot of balls ran down a lot of balls my serve was good enough um but I was like just somebody that was tricky to play like if you weren't playing your best tennis on a certain day I could be kind of a kind of a headache to play. But I didn't have any massive weapons like, like Pete, he has with his serve being 6-6. Yeah. But I didn't have any huge holes in my game either.

When you see, when you see players like, like Peter, and you just go winning the genetic lottery, man. Yeah, there's not much you can do about it. Yeah, yeah. He did the most with it, though. You know, you give them credit. Like there are there are guys that are that size, but maybe their serve wasn't quite as good,

but I think he obviously was tall, but, you know, he still had to work on a serve and he still had to work on the other parts of his game. Is that contrasting player and personality type why you work as a team? I think a little bit. I think, to be honest, like, we don't recruit, like, a certain type of player.

I think it is nice, like, from a recruiting standpoint, if we have, like, if we're recruiting a tall guy, it's easy for me, like, in the recruiting pitch of like, look, our head coach, the same size, so he knows, like, the, you know, how to play that type of style that he needs to play. So, like, where we are currently recruiting a kid in Germany, I sat down, I was in Germany a couple weeks ago, and I sat down with his father and was about the same size as Pete. And I was like, look, like, want to, you know, really be like a great player, want to be,

like a professional player. There's need to have somebody that understands your game and, you know, what you need to work on to play the way you need to play at six feet, you know, six inches. And like, you can't play the way that I played. You shouldn't play the way I played at least, but you should be playing the way that Pete played when he was, you know, the best college player and really successful professional tennis player. You mentioned recruiting and being on the road. Most sports, there's a mileage counter for where you're going to get your place. Tennis, both men's and women's, it's an international deal on the college levels, especially currently.

Do you know how many miles you traveled recruiting this year? I have no idea. Do you know, tell me what countries have you been to? I have been to Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Romania, Romania, Finland, Norway, Sweden, England, and Serbia, probably missing one or two, but probably 10 to 12th.

That is crazy. Yeah. Bach. Please tell me. How many of those places have you been to? Not one yet. Like, I just, when you think about the crazy time

that is the transfer portal in NIL and trying to reach student athletes, the right student athletes for your program, for your community, your style of coaching, et cetera. You just signed, you guys have a full roster. You know who's going to play on your program next year. Give the folks a little bit through all these travels, who the new additions to the program

will be. Yeah, yeah. So I'll go with the freshman coming in first. So I think our first commit was a boy from not too far from Lincoln. His name is Michael Ward, the five-star recruit signed pretty early in his junior of high school, which with tennis, that's not very common. So we're really lucky to get him in the door early. His grandfather played tennis at Nebraska, which is pretty neat. So, you know, for us, like those types of guys, I think you get a little bit extra something.

You have some type of family lineage or connection. And a five-star. Yes. Like just passing, that doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we actually just, it puts part of this freshman recruiting class, but the recruiting rankings came out yesterday, actually. And we, for the first time in program history,

we have a top 25 recruiting class. So he's part of that. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Man, that changing the culture in the program. Okay, so a great number one attitude. Who else? And then we have a boy from Germany.

His name is Vincent Gollinger. He's going to be coming in the spring, actually. So he's going to play a little bit professionally for this first semester and then go come join us in January. But he was another guy that we recruited really early on. I saw him play very early in his junior high school when I was in Germany. I thought he was a little bit under the radar compared to some other of his peers. but I could like pretty quickly he was very very good. So he's one.

He's also, he grew up also in the United States a little bit. So he's been living in Germany, but he's technically also American, which is nice. And then we also have a French boy that we signed a couple, couple months, about a month ago, actually. He's, that's exactly what we're trying to do. He's got one of the top French players, which is exciting. And we had him on a visit a couple months ago. and I saw him play last summer in France, actually. And now it's like we were watching.

I was watching a bunch of these kids, one of these college showcases. So all these kids want to go to college. And the thing that's to me was how passionate he was. Like all these kids, but it seems like we're a little bit quiet and to themselves. And I mean, you've seen us practice. Like those guys don't fit,

but the guys that bring a lot of energy and bring a lot of passion, which this boy's name's Enzo, champion champinguel is he's going to be very popular yes let me just tell you that about itzo yeah yeah he's going to be very popular so those are the guys we're looking for honestly i think it's really hard easy to find good players um it's hard to find good players that would fit what we're trying to do so like when i'm recruiting or we watch these guys we try to put them into like what they would look like in a practice session. Which, you know, it's funny because I was listening to.

I read like an article about, Sam Presti, Oklahoma City, Thunder, and said the same thing. Like when I'm like drafting or looking guys, how would they fit into our facility? So I thought that was kind of cool and as the best chance. Okay, so those guys are the three incoming freshmen and then we have four transfers.

One of them's, two of them are division two transfers. So one of them was, his name's Kelly Geis. He's one of our, the other American. He's from California from San Diego. So he knew Henry Belisich. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just finished up with us. So we had that connection. He was one of the top B2 players, college tennis. Division two is really strong. I think it's something that's not quite as known. I think it's maybe a little bit different in other sports, but, you know, football or basketball or basketball, maybe just the size and both tennis, that's not a lot of much of a thing size and athleticism or just

a penises or a skill base. Division two is really strong. So he was one of the top, I think he may be fished two or three in Division II. So he's coming and then Anise Rafiq, who's from Morocco and he actually two days ago won the Division II National Championship. Yeah, I saw that clip and there was some video attached to it

that explosive, maybe the right way to describe him. Yes, explosive and he's another guy that brings a lot of energy. And he beats in the championship match. The player he played was the number two player in college tennis and in Division two once. So, you know, for me, that's exciting because sometimes you either, you know, get small in the big moment or you can get big in the big moment and show that he

could get big in the big moment. That's amazing. And then we signed two guys. So we signed those guys. This was before the Division II, the transfer portal window is different. So we signed both those guys a little bit early on. And then we had two more spots to fill when the transfer portal opened up. So when I was in Europe early May, the transfer portal had just opened up.

So a boy from Florida State went on the transfer portal lives in Switzerland. So his name is Jan Sebasta. He was ranked nationally in doubles. He has a professional an ATP ranking. Yeah, I thought he was. There's a coaching forum that discussed his stuff. style of play and his progression, which is always interesting. So he's got a lot of upside.

I think he played at Floresstay, who won an ACC championship for the first year, so not the easiest place to play at. But he's hungry, you know, when he went into the portal, his main thing is I just want to go somewhere where I feel like I have a chance to go and eat. And so for us, it's like, all right, well, we'll be seven new guys. So, you know, have at it. So we're really excited.

He fits exactly what we're looking for as well. And then the last guy we brought in is a guy from LSU. His name's Callan Sturbu. And he's got a lot of upside. He's 6-4, bigger guy. Just loves to compete, loves the team. So the head coach at LSU was the head coach at Wichita State when I was there. So we had a little bit of a connection.

So we really got all the information on Callan. Yeah. Make sure he's, we knew from the tennis standpoint, he would be more than good enough, but just also character's standpoint. and the head coach at all great things to say about him. I also see was top 10 this past year, and he wanted to go somewhere. We felt had a, you know,

a better chance to play a little bit quicker. So he was a top who's 80 in the world as a junior. Right now he's playing tournament staying. Brett, that's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. All right, here's Brett, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back.

I do want to talk about the change of culture. Yeah. Because what you just described is, if you described this four years ago, I probably would have shook my head and said, no, not really. But this is everything that this program has talked about, changing of the guard, changing a standard. This is pretty exciting times to pull in this type of change in the program. Brett Foreman, assistant coach, Hustker Tennis.

We'll come back to that final segment before we hand it over to Adam Care. Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to One-on-One with DP on 937 The Ticket and The Ticketfm.com.