Coach Marcus Is Again Seeing the Horizon
The travesty that was the Riverbend High School swim program carried down, but couldn't drown, Theo Marcus. At Fredericksburg Christian School, he is preparing for a new day.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
— From “If,” by Rudyard Kipling
In the span of less than a month, Theodore Marcus watched as the Riverbend Swim team went from zenith to nadir in the late fall of 2023.
The collapse of that program brought Marcus to some challenging times, but he has held on.
And now, he is again staring at a horizon, ready to build a new pathway for young people to stretch themselves athletically, learn to play collectively, and grow religiously.
This week, Fredericksburg Christian School announced that Marcus will be the school’s new tennis coach.
The challenge before him at FCS, however, is about far more than the game of tennis.
It’s about preparing young athletes to lift up humanity and embrace the struggles that life will bring through the Christian faith that is the burning heart of Marcus’ life.
Tennis is the tool he will use.
A ‘Protective Halo’
When Marcus first got into the game, his family was “very much on hard times,” he told the Advance.
“My father, a WWII vet, was in the hard part of alcoholism. We were on food stamps, and public assistance, and everything else.”
His sister’s boyfriend gave Marcus and his brother two wooden rackets for Christmas one year. They went to a local court with broken glass on the surface, and no ball to hit — just the rocks they found lying on the ground.
Eventually, they discovered a ball in a trash can, fished it out — an old, bald ball, he told the Advance, and in the twilight of its usefulness — and started hitting it “as if we were hitting rocks.
“I’ve been hitting that ball with that spirit for 48 years.”
The game of tennis, Marcus said, was the one thing he and his brother did that “didn’t involve having to run from people or fights” in his DC neighborhood.
“There was some kind of protective halo over that that I didn’t recognize at the time. I absolutely knew that it was a gift, and I’ve only come into great understanding of that with time.”
Becoming ‘Coach’
Playing tennis would be a constant in his life; coaching was not.
The seeds that led him to become a coach, however, were planted early in life by his mother.
Marcus told the Advance that “In the last couple of weeks of her life, she said, ‘Beaver,’” calling him by his nickname, “stay connected to your church, and always make a contribution to your community.”
He has done both. But giving back through coaching is a recent change.
“The coaching piece wasn’t part of the deal,” Marcus said.
However, in 2019 his son Noah died unexpectedly, and coaching became the integrator that brought “all of those elements … together.”
Marcus says in the weeks and months following his son’s death, “I could feel the despair. I remember when I was at home and the pandemic was starting. … I was on … the edge of a pit,” working to make sure “I didn’t fall in.”
He went on, saying: “I just started crying, and cried out to the Lord and said you’ve got to give me something to do for you.”
Shortly thereafter, he learned that there would be no tennis program at Riverbend because there would be no coach. He called the school, and “that’s how I got into it.”
Marcus says that he “applied [himself] to that mission with all of the energy that [he has] for my son. People don’t get it,” he continued, “and I’m glad they don’t. I don’t want anyone to know what this feels like.”
The situation that unfolded in late 2023 at Riverbend took coaching away from him. Marcus, however, needed to carry on.
“The joy I bring to coaching is in two parts,” he told the Advance. “First: The love that I have for my son. Second: The love I have for the Lord who loves me back.”
What the Game Teaches
Life, as Marcus well knows, can be trying in the extreme. Tennis, he says, is a game that imparts the wisdom young people will need to face, and rise above, those challenges.
“In tennis,” he says, “each person has to carry their own load. And to do that, players quickly learn there are no shortcuts.”
The game is “thoroughly undermined by cheating,” Marcus said. “You know you’re not getting better if you cheat. There’s a gravitational pull toward doing it the right way. You don’t have referees to regulate your cheating.”
And the game itself is a struggle.
“There’s nobility in the struggle,” he said, “and all that it takes to struggle correctly. Good foot work, good racket preparation, hit the ball in the strike zone, and have a proper swing path, and impart good spin. That’s called shot-making.”
One also doesn’t undertake the game alone. In team tennis, it’s critical that all players support one another. And learning to lift up your teammates delivers its own critical lesson. It’s a course in how to encourage humanity within your own struggles.
“You’re going to have forced and unforced errors [in life],” Marcus said, “but in the end, humanity is lifted up. And that’s what tennis is about. It’s an ideal template for a young person walking in Christ’s way.”
Ready to Fly
Marcus is ready for this new beginning. The girls season begins in the fall, and the boys in spring 2026. But the work begins now.
FCS, Marcus says, has what it needs to fly — “Plenty of young people who want to get into the game and play at the varsity level.” It also has a coach who is confident in the discipline but is also a Christian disciple.
There’ll be no shortcuts for this program. And results will not be the goal. Rather, the attention, now and as long as Marcus is there, will be on the process — of proper strokes, positioning, shot-making, and supporting and building up one another.
“If the focus is on the results,” Marcus says, “you lose the process. But if you focus on the process and it’s a good process, you get good results.”
Marcus has known struggle, and loss, and love. And he will use tennis to teach a group of young Eagles to begin to fly and stay aloft as they navigate their own challenges in the years ahead.
It’s a good process.
Marcus’ life is evidence of that.
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Aquila Victor! Let's go Eagles. Let's go FCS!