While the men's and women's varsity tennis coach resigned last month to pursue other opportunities, including specific openings at Division I schools, many players are saying his departure should have come sooner.They describe a coach whose philosophy was tough love-with an emphasis on tough.Several older members of the team still stand beside John "Rocky" Best-Jarvis, who coached the men and women to respective fourth place and third place UAA finishes. But many younger players say that although Jarvis won games, he did not win their admiration.

Some players said Jarvis was verbally abusive at times to those who were not meeting his expectations. The players also reported that when they were losing he was often un-reachable, frequently canceling meetings and not returning their phone calls.

Sam Jonas '07, last year's UAA rookie of the year, is one of the players who experienced problems playing for Jarvis.

"It was up and down depending on how much I won," Jonas said of their relationship. "When I beat Emory I could have been his adopted son. I lost a few matches and got benched at the UAA's. Then I won couple of matches so I got treated like royalty. I didn't think it was right. Our relationship depended completely on whether I was winning. To verbally abuse the team for losing is wrong."

Jarvis said the team faced challenges off the court and that some players did not respond well to his coaching techniques.

"I think that it became evident last year that there were some huge challenges with the team," Jarvis said in a phone interview on Monday. "We went through some difficult times as far as interpersonal things."

Members of the women's team also voiced complaints about Jarvis' coaching.

"I was a better tennis player before I came to Brandeis," Jennicka Hornung '07 said. "He just wasn't that helpful."

Jordan Bieber '07 expressed dismay at the coach's behavior and lack of support during matches.

"Sometimes he didn't support us during the matches as we would have liked," Bieber said. "He did some things that no other coaches do, like penalize his own players. It's hardly ever used, but a coach is allowed to penalize his own players and take points away from them during a match. Coach Jarvis would actually penalize us for cursing on the court, meanwhile our opponent's doing the same thing and his coach is being supportive."

Adam Sher '07 also observed a lack of support from Jarvis during matches.

"One match he started screaming at [Jaime Metrick '07] from four courts away, and ran up to him and threatened to force him to quit the match."

Instances such as these by Coach Jarvis led to the dissension of many of his younger players, including five sophomores who are friends and live together in a Rosenthal suite. Some of these players along with several others on both the men's and women's teams reportedly lodged complaints with Sousa regarding their discontent with Jarvis' coaching. It was a discontent not shared by Jarvis' older players.

"I don't agree with the [younger] players on the team about how they disapproved with his methods," Tomas Wallenberg '05 said. "I think he was fine as a coach. I think players need to play more and talk less. Not everyone got along with him perfectly, but a lot of times people were worrying about other things not as important as tennis. I have nothing bad to say about coach Jarvis."

"He was a very good coach and he was very dedicated to the players," co-co-captain Rob Friedman '06 said. "He had a lot of knowledge he was readily willing to share. It just reached a point where it seemed he was ready to move on."

"I think he was a good coach," co-captain Seth Green '05 said. "He helped me a lot. He really pushed me to get better and I found it motivating."

While the reasons for Jarvis' resignation are still somewhat open to speculation, younger players say he lost their support well before he resigned. Jarvis also insists that a large reason for his resignation had nothing to do with his players, but more to do with the recent change in the athletic administration and the burnout from trying to coach both the men's and women's teams after the school did not hire an assistant coach. Nevertheless, he acknowledges certain conflicts existed.

"Some of the players felt I was too hard and had my expectations too high," Jarvis said. "Once you've sort of lost the trust of the team, or some portion of the team, it becomes very hard to make it work. I didn't actually change during my time at Brandeis. I think some of the attitudes of some of the athletes are a bit different now than from when I started."

Bieber said that he respected coach Jarvis for his tremendous experience and knowledge of the game, but also said that he felt that Brandeis was not the right environment for Jarvis and that Brandeis athletes were simply unable to live up to his lofty expectations.

"A Division III school is not right for him," Bieber said. "He's used to such a high profile environment. He was a great player and we all respect his abilities, but Brandeis was not the place for him."

Jarvis had a stunning collegiate career at Harvard, where he amassed the highest number of career victories in Harvard history and earned MVP honors his senior year. He was coached by the legendary Jack Barnaby and played matches against such notables as Stan Smith and Bob Lutz. He graduated Harvard in 1969.

Sousa said that the athletics department will begin a nationwide search for Jarvis' replacement beginning in July, and there will be an interim head coach for the upcoming spring season. Although Sousa declined to verify, sources within the men's team reported that Matt Porter, a former assistant, will take over as the interim men's head coach.

Both Bieber and Jonas stressed that they are excited for this upcoming season and about Porter as coach. They said that they have had little contact with Porter to this point, but from what they know about him he is young, energetic and very talented.

It is clear that the new coach will have his work cut out for him, reuniting a team of veterans and young players who were divided under their old coach. Despite these reported conflicts, Sousa insisted that Jarvis left the University on positive grounds, and his older players continue to support him.

"He was a very enthusiastic coach," Sousa said. "He contributed in a lot of ways to our program. We had a very long conversation when he came in to tell me he was resigning, and there were no harsh feelings either way.