Medina County Sports Hall of Fame: Competitive fire drove Jacob Dunbar to win

If it were possible for Jacob Dunbar, tennis coach, to be the instructor of Jacob Dunbar, tennis player, at least one person would love to have a courtside seat: Jacob Dunbar. On second thought, Jacob, who will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 16 ceremonies at The Galaxy Conference Center in Wadsworth, also might want to save seats for mother Vicki, father Keith, older brother Ethan, younger sister Emily and wife Emily, who could hold their soon-to-be 2-year-old son, Kal. "I wouldn't have wanted to try to coach me," the 2013 Cloverleaf graduate and current associate head coach for men's and women's tennis at the University of Richmond said with a laugh. "I was a challenge. It would be, 'Do as I say, not as I did.'" Still quiet and reserved as a 27-year-old and very shy when he was in high school — he graduated from Cloverleaf in three years — 6-foot-1, 160-pound Jacob didn't throw temper tantrums or rackets in his playing days. He was polite to opponents and fans, didn't get bent out of shape over a line call and never bragged about any of his tennis accomplishments. The matches were the enjoyable part, the aspect of the game he always loved, and he excelled in them, becoming the first — and still only — county player, male or female, to win a state singles championship in his final year at Cloverleaf. The desire to compete — and to win — was immense. Now practice, that was a different story. So was listening to coaching advice, even when it was coming from someone — his mom Vicki — who won three state singles titles at Wooster High, captured a WTA title in Sao Paulo, Brazil, reached the fourth round of the 1982 U.S. Open and achieved a ranking of 60th in the world in 1984. "I don't know if it's the middle child syndrome or what it is," Jacob said. "I was always trying to be different. I didn't want to listen to anyone. I had to prove it to myself. I was a challenge to coach for anyone." Vicki, whose maiden name was Nelson, can vouch for that, as can Keith and Jacob's siblings, who — lovingly, of course — use words like "stubborn" and "hardheaded" to describe him. When older brother Ethan — the 2010 Cloverleaf grad finished fourth in the state as a senior and went on to a successful career at Richmond before spending some time on the pro circuit — decided to use a semi-Western grip as a youngster, Jacob had to use a Continental grip. Not because it was more suited for his game and certainly not because it generated more topspin, because it actually made it more difficult, but because he felt like he had to do something Ethan wasn't already doing. When Jacob announced he wanted to be the top 12-year-old player in the nation, Vicki didn't tell him that was impossible, but she tried to teach him the real joy was in the pursuit of that goal. Jacob became the No. 1 player in his age group. Then there was the time Jacob wanted to go to a national tournament in Texas, even though he had just recently had a cast removed from his right wrist. Vicki told him he might not be physically ready for such a rigorous event, but Jacob persisted and his parents relented. After struggling through the first few rounds, Jacob started playing better and better and won the tournament. "He was the hardest one to coach," the soft-spoken Vicki said with a slight sigh. "Ethan would listen to everything I said and so would Emily (a 2017 Cloverleaf grad who finished second in the D-II state tournament as a junior and third as a senior before also excelling at Richmond). Jacob didn't listen to anything. He always knew better. "Ethan would practice for four hours and Jacob would be good after 45 minutes. I think he just wanted to be different than Ethan. He wanted to do his own thing. He's just sort of stubborn that way." Vicki and Keith, who has taught tennis in more than two dozen countries, don't like to compare their children, but red-headed Jacob's confidence, tremendous desire to win and ability to find what worked for him, even if it sometimes went against the grain, make that unavoidable. "He was going to do what he wanted, regardless, but if he had a goal in mind, he was determined he was going to do that," Vicki said. "If you gave him an obstacle, that made him better. He has a lot of confidence in himself." QUEST TO BE THE BEST When Ethan was very young, Vicki and Keith weren't sure they wanted to introduce him to tennis. But when they started hitting with their oldest child he quickly fell in love with the game, so they provided as much instruction and as many challenges and opportunities as they thought he could handle while still keeping everything fun. Jacob, four years behind his older brother in school, naturally tagged along, just as Emily, three years behind Jacob, tagged along behind him. When Vicki or Keith was teaching Ethan, Jacob would bring his racket and bang tennis balls off a practice board. When Ethan started playing in tournaments, his parents often signed up Jacob as an on-site alternate in Ethan's age group, in part because those family trips tended to go much smoother when Jacob at least had a chance of competing. Lo and behold, Ethan and Jacob wound up meeting three times in tournaments. Twelve years old to his brother's 8½ or 12½ to his brother's 9, the bigger and stronger Ethan won every meeting, but one thing became clear: Jacob may have shared Allen Iverson's opinion about practice, but start keeping score and he fought for every point. "It's probably not a good thing about me, but I never really enjoyed practicing," Jacob said. "I really didn't. I found it boring. What always pushed me was the feeling of competition. That's what I always enjoyed the most about tennis. I always preferred match play. "As I got older and started to connect the dots, I realized if you practice more, you progress, but when I was younger I just wanted to play in a tournament. I struggled to see the long term. It definitely wasn't my best area." What he lacked in practice motivation — and to be clear, he still practiced much more than the typical high school player — Jacob made up for with speed, power, precision and a tremendous desire to win. Solid in every area of the game, he finished his three-year career at Cloverleaf with a 97-5 record, earned three Gazette MVP awards and was named Gazette Player of the Decade in 2020. Jacob, who finished fourth in the state as a freshman and reached the quarterfinals as a sophomore, might have added a second state title in 2014, but he graduated from high school in three years so he could play with Ethan at Richmond. "It was important and I wanted it, definitely," he said of the state title in 2013, when he finished 36-0 and lost just one set, "but at the same time I had already chosen to skip my last year before I knew what the end result was going to be (as a junior). The state title was important, but it was secondary to other things that were going on in my life." Jacob's success continued at Richmond, where he was a first-team All-Atlantic 10 Conference selection for four straight years and ended his career with a school-record 105 wins in 130 matches. As a senior he set a school record with 32 victories and was named Atlantic 10 Conference Player of the Year, then spent three years playing professionally, which included winning the 2019 ITF Capital City Classic doubles title in East Lansing, Mich., with Great Britain's David Fox. The highlight of his playing career, however, was getting to spend two years on the Richmond team with Ethan, who got a fifth year of eligibility after suffering a knee injury as a freshman. When not playing singles, the Dunbar brothers formed a successful and entertaining doubles team. "I'm sure it was interesting to watch at times," Jacob said. "For the most part we got along, but we're still brothers, so we had our moments where we weren't in agreement. There were plenty of on-court arguments, but it was fun. I enjoyed it a ton. I'm so grateful I got to play with him. That's why I went to Richmond." FROM PLAYER TO COACH As luck — and fate, considering how much he disliked practicing — would have it, the Richmond tennis program was going through a transitional period when Jacob was nearing the end of his college career. Though he played professionally until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Jacob also spent five seasons as an assistant coach for the Richmond women's team, on which younger sister Emily was playing. Jacob was promoted to associate head coach of the men's and women's programs prior to the 2022-23 school year. His main responsibility is to coach the women's team, with his sister serving as an assistant. "He's a very relaxed and easygoing coach," Emily Dunbar said. "He's good talking to the girls and running practices. He does a good job, but he's more quiet than some college coaches that are out there yelling. That's definitely not him. "He is a very laid-back person. He's very quiet and doesn't say a lot. He has a lot to say, but most of the time he keeps it to himself or tells me or his wife. I see the unfiltered version." Emily, who won a pro mixed doubles tournament in West Virginia with her middle brother, can back up many of her mom's stories about Jacob's practice habits, or lack thereof, but she also points out every tennis player is different and must find what suits his or her makeup. "We were all different, but Jacob was definitely the most hardheaded," she said. "He was the hardest to coach because he didn't listen to a lot of things. He was very stubborn." Part of an extremely close family, the incredibly grounded Dunbar children still talk every day. They have to due to their jobs, but they probably would anyway. Emily coaches tennis at Richmond with Jacob, who also works remotely with Ethan at Revisor, a wealth management firm in Solon where Bath Township resident Ethan is the chief investment officer and Jacob is a portfolio manager and trading specialist. "Jacob's always been my best friend, still to this day," Ethan said. "We're really, really close. We always did everything together growing up. Jacob thrived on competition. He wasn't big on practice and he was a little stubborn and hardheaded, but later in his career, he trained hard. "Jacob is very talented. He's one of the best athletes you'll ever find. Early on, it came really easy to him. He was never really challenged, so it was hard for him to get interested in practice because he won no matter what." Married to the former Emily Gitman, a medical school student leaning toward a career in neurosurgery who came from Israel to play on the Richmond women's tennis team when he played on the men's, Jacob now wonders, at least a little bit, how good he might have been had he practiced as much and as hard as Ethan did. At the same time, he realizes all that practice might have caused him to grow tired of tennis, and he's extremely grateful he still has the desire to stay involved in the game. "Ethan is the opposite of me in some ways because he really worked hard," Jacob said. "There's definitely a part of me that wonders. It's one of my bigger regrets because those years in high school there was a lot of development, but there could have been more. "But a lot of people burn out. Tennis is a mental game, so if you're not in the right head space, there's not any benefit to practicing anyway." Still extremely competitive and quietly confident, Jacob loves his coaching job at Richmond because it provides the adrenaline rush he craves and affords him the opportunity to help others improve through, of all things, practice. "After all those years, you get so used to playing at a high level and competing," he said. "That was always what I loved about tennis, just fighting something out. "There's very few things in the real world that are like that, and that's what was so attractive about coaching at the beginning. I still get to feel the nerves and the competitiveness, but I've also matured and grown into appreciating practice for what it is. In that maturity and growth, you see how you can help take somebody to new heights." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.