By Jimmy Robertson
(The following story was printed in the April issue of Inside Hokie Sports)
Technology affords Tech fans the opportunity to watch many of their favorite program’s Olympic sporting events through live streaming over hokiesports.com. They can sit in their cushy recliners, laptops situated perfectly so, and keep tabs on the action with the click of an electronic mouse.
On one particular Friday afternoon, the Tech men’s tennis squad took on Boston College at the Hokies’ Burrows-Burleson Tennis Center, and a mouse click on a link to court 3 revealed Hunter Koontz methodically destroying Kyle Childree, who fell prey to Koontz’s withering array of ground strokes. Childree didn’t win a game, losing 6-0, 6-0.
Two days later, on court 4, Koontz dusted Clemson’s Austin Ansari 6-0, 6-2. He hardly broke a sweat over that weekend, helping Tech notch two ACC wins.
The Hokies finished the 2015 regular season with a 10-2 record in ACC action – their best season ever. A lot of credit goes to Koontz, a third-team All-ACC choice who is one of just two seniors on Tech’s roster.
Working mostly out of the No. 3 and No. 4 spots in Tech’s lineup, Koontz is 19-4 overall on the season, 9-2 against ACC competition and a huge reason why the Hokies received their ninth consecutive NCAA Championship bid. The event begins on Friday, and Tech won a bid to host one of the four-team regionals. The Hokies open with East Tennessee State on Friday at 2 p.m., while Boise State and South Florida tangle in the first match at 11 a.m.
The intriguing thing about Hunter Koontz isn’t his success on the court this season. It’s this – he plays this sport, one that requires the utmost in power and coordination within a player’s arms and shoulders, and succeeds in it without a pectoral muscle.
“I was born without a right pectoral muscle,” Koontz said. “I never went and saw anyone about it. I was born without it, and my right hand is a lot smaller than my left.
“It hasn’t affected me so far. If anything, maybe I have more rotation on certain things [tennis shots]. I could see where it might affect power on certain shots. But there was never a time when I was bummed out or anything like that.”
Doctors gave no good explanation as to why Koontz was born without a pectoral muscle and a shorter right arm and hand because they really didn’t have a good one to give. Sometimes, such things in life, inexplicable things, tend to occur.
The lack of that muscle never kept Koontz from doing all the things he wanted to do as a kid growing up on the outskirts of Richmond. He played sports, mostly gravitating from soccer to tennis. He never made his differences public either, largely because he never viewed them as a big deal.
He and his parents, Greg and Nancy, talked with him about it when he was an adolescent. But they ended up leaving the decision on possible surgery up to him.
“I had talks with my parents when I was younger about maybe getting plastic surgery when I was older,” Koontz said. “But there’s really no point in that either. It’s not noticeable unless I say something or you look closely. So I didn’t see anybody about it.”
Yes, Tech head coach Jim Thompson knows. So, too, do Koontz’s teammates. Koontz knew he would be participating heavily in Tech’s strength and conditioning program, and the lack of a pectoral muscle obviously would influence the results in certain lifts.
So he was up front about his situation.
“I had to tell him [Thompson] my freshman year just because of the weight room,” Koontz said. “Benching [the bench press] is tough, and push-ups are tough. A few things are tough. It’s not like I can’t do them, but I can’t lift as much weight as everybody else.”
Fortunately, tennis relies more on speed and endurance than brute strength. And while he may not toss barbells in the ilk of football standout Luther Maddy, Koontz certainly does his share of heavy lifting on the court.
He’s been doing that ever since his parents built a clay tennis court in the backyard of their Richmond home. Greg Koontz is a Tech grad and an engineer by trade, and he co-owns his own firm, so he possessed the resources to build the court. He and his wife love tennis, and they got Hunter and his three sisters involved at an early age.
Hunter went on to win two state championships in singles and two in doubles while at Deep Run High School. His team also won the team title twice.
But despite his prep accomplishments, he saw little in the way of attention from college recruiters.
“I didn’t have much of a national ranking at all,” Koontz said. “I didn’t go around playing national tournaments. I played a couple. It’s hard with a lot of sisters, and we didn’t have time to travel.”
Koontz wanted to come to Virginia Tech. After all, his father graduated from Tech, and so, too, did his grandfather. His twin sister, Hannah, was coming to Tech as well.
But Thompson didn’t have a scholarship available, and Koontz wanted to play somewhere.
“I was pretty much set on Tech at a young age,” he said. “I only almost switched right before I got on the tennis team here. I wanted to play tennis, and they didn’t have room for me when I was trying to decide on a college. So I almost went to Mary Washington, which is in Fredericksburg. Then I got the call from Jim asking if I wanted to walk on, and I said, ‘Of course.’”
Koontz spent two years as a walk-on, paying his own way while working and practicing with the team. He saw limited action as a freshman, going 8-7 overall, but he never contemplated giving up the sport. On the contrary, he saw himself getting better in large part because he spent every day in practice working against players a little better than him. As he got better, he started giving the regulars in Tech’s lineup a run for their money.
As a sophomore, he worked his way into the lineup, going 25-15 overall, including a respectable 13-11 in dual competition, with a 4-5 mark against ACC competition.
“I think the main thing was before coming to college, it was a little less structured and I could take days off when I wanted,” he said. “I was mostly playing high school tennis, and the level is definitely not near as high as it is here. Once I came here and had structured practice every day and hit with great players every day, it didn’t take long too improve. That was the main thing – hitting with great players every day.”
The turning point in Koontz’s collegiate career actually happened in Richmond. He played in a local tournament the summer before his junior year, and he found himself matched up against Jamere Jenkins of the University of Virginia. Jenkins, one of the best collegiate players in the nation at the time, had just come off an appearance in the NCAA singles championship match.
But Koontz wasn’t in awe. He took it to Jenkins from the start – and won.
“I beat him pretty easily, actually,” Koontz said. “I think he came out on the court thinking, ‘I’m just going to roll over this guy. My level is a lot better than his.’ – which it is. But I played one of my better matches, and he didn’t expect it. I played well and got him.
“I played him later in the summer, and I thought, ‘He’s going to smoke me because I beat him earlier.’ But I ended up losing 7-6 in the third set. Two close matches against him have shown me that I can play against anyone when I’m on my game.”
Koontz’s sophomore season and the matches against Jenkins certainly caught the eye of Thompson, who obviously noticed the improvement. The summer before Koontz’s junior year, Thompson called Koontz into his office and offered him some scholarship aid.
“I thanked him a lot,” Koontz said. “I called my dad right after that.”
Then Koontz added, laughing, “Who also thanked him a lot. That was definitely a good day.”
Thompson has certainly been getting his money’s worth this season. Seeing action in mostly the No. 3 and No. 4 spots in the lineup, Koontz has only played three sets in a match on six occasions this season, losing just twice. He won his other matches rather handily.
The crowning moment – so far – came on March 8 when the Hokies took on then-No. 2 Duke at the Burrows-Burleson Tennis Center. Tech won all six singles matches over the Blue Devils, a rarity in college tennis, and Koontz’s 7-6 (7-5), 4-6, 6-3 victory over then-No. 99-ranked Raphael Hemmeler aided the cause.
The team’s win, and two subsequent victories after that, propelled the Hokies to the top-15 ranking.
“It was absolutely incredible,” Koontz said of the win over Duke. “There’s still a part of me that almost doesn’t believe it. Just the whole effort our team put into it. We were a man down [Amerigo Contini was hurt], and to beat Duke was incredible. I’m so proud of the guys. It’s great to get this win for the confidence. We’ve had the team, but I don’t know if we believed we could pull off something that big.
“Hopefully we can keep riding the good times. I thanked the guys right afterward for giving me a good senior year so far. It’s been a lot of fun, so I hope we can keep it up. It was unreal, something I’ll never forget.”
Though his eligibility expires at the end of this spring, he plans on being back at Tech next year, working as a volunteer coach and finishing up coursework on dual degrees in accounting and finance – two of the toughest majors at Tech. A summer internship in Richmond with Dixon Hughes Goodman, a national accounting firm headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, will go a long way toward determining his future plans once he graduates.
His tennis future after college is a little murky.
“I’d like to try or play one or two or three Futures [a professional tennis tour] just to say I tried,” he said. “I’d like to get an ATP [Association of Tennis Professionals] point. That would be nice to say. As far as doing that for a living, there’s no chance at that.
“I don’t want to throw away tennis as an option, but playing professionally is not something I really want to do. I don’t think I have the level to keep it up, and I’m not a huge fan of traveling – and that’s all that would entail.”
Certainly he’s traveled a long way to get to this point, and the road at Tech is reaching the end.
But Hunter Koontz has served notice to people who doubt those with physical limitations. You don’t have to be perfect to succeed at this level. Just determined.