Brenton Kuchera, new USTA Iowa executive director, focused on building the game

If you build it, they will come.

If you’ve ever watched the iconic 1989 movie “Field of Dreams,” you can almost hear the voice whispering even now. For Brenton Kuchera, who started as the new executive director of USTA Iowa on May 1, it’s more than just a great line from a movie.

Kuchera has been to Dyersville, Iowa — the location of the baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield central to the plot of “Field of Dreams” — a couple times. Dyersville is about an hour’s drive from his hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. Kuchera said there are similarities between the movie and his own life story, including Iowa pride and the motif of building.

In a way, he’s playing on his own “court of dreams.”

“I’ve gotten a lot of benefit from tennis from a young age,” he said. “It’s always been a safe place where you could meet people. You can go out and play, and you can create little narratives. Every facet of my life has had some form of tennis in it, from junior lessons to competitive tennis to leagues to administrative roles. It’s been a good ride. It’s been fun.”

From Player to Leader

Kuchera attended Waterloo Columbus High School, and he now teaches English as a second language and coaches tennis at cross-town West High School. Waterloo has a large contingent of immigrants from Bosnia, Burma, the Congo and the Marshall Islands, so ESL training is greatly needed.

Kuchera played on the high school tennis team, and he had the opportunity to play at the NCAA Division III level. Instead, he chose to attend the University of Northern Iowa, which didn’t have a men’s tennis team. He played in the Tennis On Campus program.

As an adult, he has served in multiple roles in the Iowa tennis community. He got his start as a committee chair for the Collegiate Committee. In 2016, he was asked to become USTA Iowa vice president. And then in 2022, he took over as president.

He was mentored by his former coach, Dave Will, and his executive director predecessor, Mark Blume. Will introduced Kuchera to tennis when he was in third grade. Will came to gym class and demonstrated hitting the ball hard.

“He hit a ball so hard that it broke in half,” Kuchera said. “I was amazed by that. I signed up for his summer lessons. I would go out there with a hopper of balls and hit them as hard as I could. Andy Roddick was just crushing the fuzz off the ball at the time, so I tried to do that as well. I never broke a ball in half, but I developed a pretty good serve from that.”