One day while playing baseball with his friends, Richard Gallien was hit on the nose with a wild ball. The doctor told him he couldn’t play contact sports for the next six weeks while it healed, so the 11-year-old Gallien decided to pick up a tennis racket.
Gallien, the head coach for women’s tennis at Cal State LA, fell in love with the sport, joining various tennis tournaments as a kid. “I really fell in love with tennis and I never looked back,” he said.
He was an “avid practicer,” as he describes, and he was dedicated to improving his skills and being the best player he could be. Gallien played college tennis at Pepperdine University for four years, winning multiple All-American titles. After his time as a player, his career led him to coaching tennis for over 20 years at various universities including Pepperdine, USC, and now Cal State LA.
His most rewarding moments as a coach are when his players, his kids as he calls them, look at him when they achieve something.
“It’s like a twinkle, every now and then there’s these little moment where the kid does something terrific and she looks at you and you look at her, and there’s a nod, not of cockiness or arrogance, but of ‘we got this,’ it’s really a great moment to share,” Gallien said.
He tailors his coaching style to fit the needs of each of his players according to their different levels of skill, but all with the same level of “respect and great reverence.”
“Some players need a little help calming down and others need a little boost of confidence or praise,” he said. “It’s up to me to help them accentuate their strengths and develop their weaknesses.”
While he does not recall major challenges he has faced as a coach, he said, “I’ve been lucky within this program, every day you go out there is a challenge because you want to win. There’s no shortage of competition.”
Over the course of his time as a player and coach, the biggest change he has noticed in tennis is the equipment.
“The rackets are far more powerful,” Gallien said. “Stronger strings create more spin on the ball, the courts are different, they make the ball bounce higher.”
The coach’s main objective for his team is to encourage his players to not only play their best, but to keep fighting through adversity. He understands that players are always their toughest critics, and while they are going to be disappointed when they don’t perform as well or win, he is always there as support.
“It’s imperative to me that my kids know I have their back on their worst day, ” Gallien said. “I want them to enjoy it, the truth is if they compete really well and do their very best and lose at the very end, even in that, when they get a little space from it they can reflect on it and say I really did my very best for me.”
This enables players to go for the next challenge without feeling defeated. Gallien believes that if you have the heart, you can always develop into a great player.
“I take it seriously, not the results as much, but the heart and passion the players have for the sport,” Gallien said. “Because that’s what matters.”
