HighFIVE: Mia Settlemire

On this beautiful Friday, let's celebrate by sending a big HighFIVE to Mia Settlemire, South Suburban Parks and Recreation Tennis Coordinator who was one of the first to run a tournament in Colorado in 2021!

A late comer to tennis, Mia grew up on a ranch in Wyoming and moved to Denver in 1993. She first picked up a racquet in 2008 and grew from a 2.5 player to a 4.0 and has played on numerous teams that have advanced to Districts, Sectionals and Nationals.

Mia’s passion for the game did not go unnoticed by South Suburban Parks and Recreation when they asked her to help run tournaments almost 6 years ago. Two years later, she became the full-time Tennis Coordinator. She is involved with adult and junior programming, tournaments, leagues, permanent court time, special events and coordinating with the tennis pros. Mia says “I am so lucky to work in something I love! I think it helps to essentially be the adult target market for what South Suburban offers to the tennis community.”

Brad Stafford, South Suburban Parks and Recreation Athletics Manager, couldn’t agree more. 

“Mia brings a unique prospective as both a player and a program coordinator—she can see the entire piece of the pie from both sides when it comes to programming. Since 2017, there has been an increase in both youth and adult participation by over 500% at South Suburban. We continue to be one of the largest providers for tennis in the state and a lot of that credit is due to Mia and her dedication,” says Brad.

The growing interest in tennis combined with the new tournament Serve Tennis platform did provide challenges for Mia this spring. 

“The timing was not ideal for the debut of a new platform in conjunction with a global pandemic. Everyone wanted and needed to be back on the court and roadblocks kept getting in the way. Luckily, over the years I created a variety of internal tools when developing draws, working with avoidances and communicating with players. These tools were critical when the platform proved to have limited resources in those areas.”

Mia’s commitment to working through such challenges were recognized by people throughout the Colorado tennis community. 

Stafford says, “Many players and staff from USTA Colorado have commented on her willingness to work through these recent changes and the impact she had during the rollout. She is passionate to help tennis grow not only in South Suburban, but literally everywhere.”

These challenges with tournaments were not a first for Mia. Her most memorable job moment was also her most painful. In 2019, she tried her first attempt at “director approval” entry to limit draw sizes. TennisLink crashed, went offline and when Mia logged back in, her tournament had at least 100 registrants over what they could handle! “I clearly had done something very wrong. I cried for 10 minutes and then began calling every player based on their time-stamp of entry and removing them from the tournament with a full refund.”

It is this dedication to tennis and the people who play it, along with Mia’s roll with the punches attitude, that have earned her a reputation in the tennis community as a leader in promoting tennis. 

Mia summarizes Colorado’s love for tennis simply.

“People play tennis for escape, enjoyment, friendship, and many for re-engagement with competition. Any reason is a good reason, and the goal is to provide opportunities in all of those areas.”