Jarod Camerota begins his second year as head coach of the Panthers’ men’s tennis team. Camerota, the 2007 Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year, came to Georgia State from Jacksonville University, where he served as head men’s and women’s tennis coach for two seasons.
In his first season with the Panthers his team posted a 1-15 record with one of the toughest schedules to date. The Panthers competed against against nine opponents ranked in the top 75 and individually collected impressive wins. Nejc Podkrajsek was named CAA Men’s Tennis Player of the Year and CAA Men’s Tennis Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Podkrajsek also earned first-team honors for singles and second-team honors for doubles with former Panther, Anze Cevka.
He followed a team that ended the 2007 season ranked No. 36 in the nation, won its first league title in the Colonial Athletic Association, clinched an automatic NCAA Tournament berth, and set a Georgia State record for season victories (19). The Panthers returned only a pair of all-conference players in senior Anze Cevka and junior Nejc Podkrajsek while Camerota recruited four newcomers to balance the roster- Aleksandar Elezovic, Trenton Spinks, William Adeimy and Ross Hopper.
Before joining the Panthers, Camerota spent two seasons at Jacksonville where he turned both the men’s and women’s programs around by recruiting 16 new student-athletes in less than two years. In 2007, he led the women’s program to an Atlantic Sun regular-season title and its first NCAA Tournament appearance while coaching three all-conference players.
The men’s team also improved drastically under Camerota, posting a 14-7 record in 2006-07 including its first trip to the conference semifinals, after finishing 1-15 in the previous season.
Before joining Jacksonville, Camerota served as an assistant coach for one year (2004-05) at Northern Illinois and helped direct the men’s and women’s squads to the Mid-American Conference Tournament and had two players earn All-MAC accolades. On the men’s side, Willy Gali earned first-team All-MAC accolades and became the first Husky to be named MAC Player of the Year since 1993-94. On the women’s side, Cassie Drake was named second-team All-MAC.
Prior to Northern Illinois, Camerota began his collegiate coaching career at Ball State University. In two years (2002-04) as a volunteer assistant for the men’s squad, he helped a pair of Cardinals achieve first-team All-MAC status. One of those first team honorees, Matt Baccarani, finished the year ranked No. 30 in the ITA Midwest Regional singles rankings. Camerota was also the assistant boys’ tennis coach at Newport Harbor (Calif.) High School during the 2003 season.
Camerota also served as a tennis camp instructor at Kenosha (Wis.) Athletic Center from 2001-03 and at Robert Van’t Hof Pacific Coast Tennis Academy in Newport Beach, Calif., from 2002-03.
In his playing career, Camerota competed for Wisconsin-LaCrosse. The Kenosha, Wis., native earned his bachelor’s degree in business education from Arizona State University in 2002.
