EWING – You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one over on Scott Dicheck. And that’s not belaboring an old and out-dated cliche. You literally have to get up really early in the morning if you want the jump on The College of New Jersey’s men’s and women’s tennis coach.
The Lions’ head man hasn’t set an alarm to wake up in the morning in 15 years, and he routinely pops out of bed for coffee and a protein bar before 5 a.m.
“During the season I generally go to sleep around midnight and I get tw too four hours of sleep a night so I am up from anywhere from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.,” Dicheck said. “I wake up refreshed, wide awake, and the night before when I go to bed I am thinking about tennis and the team. So when I wake up I clear my head with a coffee and a protein bar.”
You’d think with the sparkling record that Dicheck’s teams have produced in his decade-and-a-half long tenure at TCNJ that he’s up before the sun scheming ways to out-smart the competition.
In reality, in his early daily rise, he is constantly choosing the best ways to attack his opponent – as he plays Playstation.
Unlike the ruthless President Frank Underwood’s character in Netflix’s wildly popular series House of Cards, Dicheck prefers sports games to Underwood’s Call of Duty.
“I only play the sports games,” Dicheck said. “I like the competition. I usually put it on dynasty mode. It’s like the season. As soon as I get up it’s competition and I like the sports games because it’s competition.”
Beating the roosters out of bed wasn’t always the way for Dicheck. Before coming to TCNJ, he was a teaching pro and head coach at Allentown College (now DeSales), and his night-owl schedule lent itself to 2 a.m. bedtimes and 11 a.m. wake ups.
“I used to sleep in and needed a lot of sleep when I was teaching tennis,” Dicheck said. “But when I started coaching, that was a career. Once that switched my body clock switched and I went from needing nine hours of sleep back then and now, in season, only two to four hours. I don’t know.”
If you think that because Dicheck enjoys a good Madden Dynasty Mode using his beloved Oakland Raiders it makes him somehow an easier mark for teams that stand across the net, think again.
Combining both the men’s and women’s tennis teams, Dicheck’s squads are 354-125, an astounding 73.9% winning percentage. That includes continuing what is now a 159 match winning streak in the New Jersey Athletic Conference on the women’s side (77 of those wins belong to Dicheck) dating back to 1982.
“We are obviously excited to continue the tradition of winning the conference,” Dicheck said. “It’s great when you hear past players talking about the streak still being alive. One of the things every year is that when we win the conference, we are the first team in college sports in Division I, II or III that qualifies for the NCAA Tournament in any sport. That’s a cool statistic. That’s our goal every year: make it to the NCAA tournament and make a run.”
The 2015 season looks to be a bright one as well, possibly the best in several seasons. The women’s team returned to campus for preseason in the second week of August, and has added a strong freshman class to buttress seniors Emma Allen, Anna Prestera, Katie Buchbinder and Jasmine Muniz-Cadorette and underclassmen Maddie Stoner and Brittany Reedman.
Look for newcomers Sneha Rangu and Grace Minassian to contribute right away.
“We are very optimistic this season,” Dicheck said. “We feel like we can win the conference again and work hard in the winter and get to the tournament and make a deeper run with the mixture of returning starters and a really talented freshman class.”
On the men’s side, the team is as deep as Dicheck has had since 2006, when players like Ryan Carty, Mike Klimchak, Corey Ball, Eric Ferriere and Roger Mosteller rounded out what, to date, was arguably the strongest men’s tennis team TCNJ has had.
“The men’s team finished last year nationally ranked,” Dicheck continued. “All the starters are back and we bring in a nationally ranked recruiting class. We expect big things this spring.”
With the talent on both the men’s and women’s teams in 2015-2016, though Dicheck may be early to rise, it might be well into the night come May before TCNJ’s season gets put to bed.
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