Neal Molitor builds volunteer-driven middle school tennis league in Des Moines

Neal Molitor was a two-sport athlete at his high school in Carroll, Iowa. While that’s not unusual, it is less common to play two sports at the same time.

Molitor played tennis and ran track, both of which are spring sports for boys in Iowa. His older brother had played for the tennis team, so the coach was familiar with Neal. But Neal wanted to run track. So the two head coaches came up with a plan.

“My tennis coach, Matt Greteman, was a big promoter of tennis,” Molitor said. “He kept asking me, ‘Do you want to play tennis?’ I said, ‘You know, coach, I run track in the spring.’

“He was very accommodating. He said, ‘Come when you can. If you can make it to some practices and some meets, that’s awesome. You don’t have to leave track.’ So, I gave it a shot. My track coaches were very accommodating as well, so I kind of became a dual spring-sport athlete.”

The fact that Carroll is a small town and not a suburb of a larger community worked in Molitor’s favor.

“Sometimes people will think, ‘Oh, it’s a small town. Maybe there aren’t a lot of opportunities,’” Molitor said. “I kind of push back on that a little because I think there are tons of opportunities. I don’t know if I went to a big school in a big city that the track coach and the tennis coach would have agreed to let me play two sports.

“If I lived in a big city and my friends and I approached the tennis coach and said we want to host a tennis tournament, I’m not sure they would have let me do that. But in Carroll, it was like, ‘Sure, do a tennis tournament.’ Or, ‘Sure, be on the track team and on the tennis team.’ Having those opportunities growing up put into my mind that you can do these things.”

The tennis tournament Molitor was referring to was something he and some friends started when he was a student at the University of Northern Iowa. It’s now in its 20th year.

Creative Mindset

Molitor described himself as “having an artist’s mentality with no artistic ability.”

“An artist sees a blank canvas and they’re like, ‘I must create something,’” he said. “A pianist sees a piano and thinks, ‘I need to play great music.’ I see opportunities and say, ‘Let’s create something.’

“I have been lucky to have been surrounded by people who have supported me in these kind of endeavors.”

His latest endeavor is an after-school tennis program for the parochial middle schools in the Des Moines metro area. It’s for fifth through eighth graders, with participants from multiple schools joining in. And while it’s connected to the schools, it’s not a school-sponsored league.