Jorge Capestany, manager of the DeWitt Tennis Center at Hope College and assistant Hope women’s tennis coach, has been named the 2015 recipient of the Karen Page Distinguished Service Award by the Michigan High School Tennis Coaches Association.
The award will be presented on Friday, Jan. 30, during the association’s annual workshop, being held in Troy. The recognition carries extra meaning for Capestany: the award is named in memory of a former colleague.
1Karen Page, who died of cancer in July 2009, was director of the college’s DeWitt Tennis Center and had coached the Hope women’s tennis team for 12 years. The MHSTeCA renamed the award for Page, who had previously coached at West Ottawa and was a past president of the association, in 2013.
“This is a great honor, and to have it be an award named after our own Karen Page makes it even more special,” Capestany said.
Manager of the six-court DeWitt Tennis Center since the fall of 2003, Capestany is a 32-year veteran of the tennis industry. He is one of only 10 people world-wide that is a Master Professional with both the United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) and the Professional Tennis Registry (PTR).
Capestany has coached hundreds of ranked juniors, including three national champions. In his career, at Hope and previously, his programs have developed more than 180 high school state champions in Michigan.
He has been published in several industry publications and has been a frequent speaker at professional conferences all over the world, including the PTR International Tennis Symposium; the USPTA World Conference on Tennis; the USTA’s Tennis Teachers Conference at the US Open in New York; the PTR Asia Tennis Symposium in Shanghai, China; the ITF worldwide Coaches Conference in Cancun, Mexico; the Norwegian Tennis Conference in Oslo, Norway; the Canadian Tennis Federation Coaches Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; and many regional and national conferences around the United States. He is also the founder of two prominent tennis industry websites: a coach’s website, www.TennisDrills.tv, which features more than 1,000 tennis drills and has subscribers in more than 65 countries; and a player’s website, www.JorgeCapestany.com, which features free tennis instruction.
He has been named the “Michigan Pro of the Year” six times by either USPTA or PTR. The Midwest Division of the USPTA has honored him multiple times through the years, including with induction into its Hall of Fame in 2012, twice as “Midwest Professional of the Year,” twice as “Facility Manager of the Year” and with its “Outstanding Education of the Year” award. In February 2012 he was named the PTR Member of the Year by “Racquet Sports Industry” magazine.
As manager of the DeWitt Tennis Center, Capestany also manages the college’s outdoor Vande Poel-Heeringa Stadium Courts, which since opening in 2012 have received national awards from both the United States Tennis Association and the American Sports Builders Association. He also serves as an assistant coach for the Hope women’s tennis team and directs the college’s Summer Tennis Academy.