St. Louis tennis roots unite Vanderbilt head coaches Scott Brown and Aleke Tsoubanos

When Scott Brown and Aleke Tsoubanos get together, they talk tennis. That’s quite natural since Brown is the men’s tennis head coach at Vanderbilt University and Tsoubanos is the women’s tennis head coach for the Commodores.

Tsoubanos believes she and Brown are the only duo in Division I tennis to be the head coaches of their gender’s teams at their shared alma mater. Both Tsoubanos and Brown were standout players for Vanderbilt.

But when not discussing groundstrokes and set points, they likely will be talking about all things St. Louis — like Cardinals baseball or bantering about who attended the superior high school.

The two Vanderbilt coaches trace their tennis roots back to the courts of St. Louis, where they were high-level juniors and only a year apart in high school. Tsoubanos played for the Parkway Central Colts, while Brown graduated the next year and competed for the Parkway West Longhorns.

They’ve known each other since Tsoubanos was 13 and Brown was 12. He remembers her as “a phenomenal junior player.” Tsoubanos said Brown was “very friendly with all the players.”

Brown's Coaching Calling

Brown and Tsoubanos knew each other, but they took different paths to their tennis success.

Brown was a good baseball, basketball and soccer player who discovered tennis at age 11. His mother started playing in USTA leagues. She didn’t want to pay a babysitter for Brown and his younger brother, so she brought them to her matches. Brown was intrigued by the sport.

He picked it up quickly and started dropping his other sports. Before his freshman year of high school he dropped baseball, which was probably his best sport. But he liked the fact that success in tennis depended solely on his play.

When Brown turned 13 he started working with coach Cameron Thomas, and his career took off. He started playing in tournaments all over St. Louis. Thomas was not affiliated with any of the local clubs, so he found tournaments and opponents wherever he could.

Thomas changed Brown’s approach. Instead of relying on his athleticism and waiting for the opponent to make mistakes, Thomas convinced him to be more aggressive. He knew it would take a while, but it eventually paid off.

Brown lost 6-0, 6-0 to a player he had defeated weeks earlier. But Thomas had him stick with the plan. By the end of the season, Brown defeated that same player 6-0, 6-0.

Brown gradually moved up the regional rankings before being ranked highly nationwide. At age 16, he moved to Newcombe’s Tennis Academy in New Braunfels, Texas.

Tsoubanos' Standout Career

While Brown had multiple options with sports, Tsoubanos was all about tennis. She not only played throughout high school and in college but professionally as well for the St. Louis Aces.

She also stayed at Vanderbilt as an assistant coach under her former head coach, Geoff Macdonald. Tsoubanos was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame in 2024.

Now that Tsoubanos and Brown are both head coaches at Vanderbilt, Tsoubanos said they help each other with their teams while also learning from each other.

“He and I have both been coaching for quite a while,” Tsoubanos said. “But we don’t know everything, and we don’t presume to. I think the more you can learn from other people’s experiences and add to your own is always helpful.”

When they do find time to chat away from the courts, they still talk mostly about tennis. But their shared St. Louis roots come up, too. They’ll talk about their latest trips to see family back in St. Louis.

Tsoubanos said they talk about Cardinals baseball “all the time,” while Brown said it’s not that frequent.

“When we were at school here I remember Aleke and I going to the bar, sharing a bowl of peanuts and watching Cardinals-Red Sox World Series,” Brown said. “I don’t want to remember that World Series too much because we didn’t do well.”

Tsoubanos said she’s more obsessed with baseball than Brown is, which is ironic considering his past.