Now in his 11th year at the helm of the University of Portland men’s tennis team, Aaron Gross continues to build a solid program at The Bluff. He consistently fields a talented team filled with some of the best players the Northwest and the world has to offer.
Gross and the Pilots were ranked three weeks in the spring of 2007 and finished with a 13-8 overall record. Portland went 2-3 against ranked competition and finished 3-1 against West Coast Conference schools during the regular season. The doubles tandem of Filip Zivkovic and Colby Jager also earned All-WCC First Team honors.
The Pilots finished the 2006 season with an 11-14 overall record and had three players earn All-West Coast Conference recognition. Senior Matt Loucks earned first team singles recognition after posting a13-9 record. The doubles tandem of junior Scott Kennel and senior James Redpath earned second team honors. The duo reached the finals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association West Regional Championships in the fall and ended the season with an 8-6 record.
Gross enjoyed a banner year during the 2005 season as the Pilots went 18-6 during the season, including an 11-match winning streak that stretched from January to late March. For the first time in school history, the Pilots enjoyed a midseason national ranking, entering the polls at No. 73 and reaching as high as No. 70 later in the year. The team ended the season ranked No. 13 in the difficult West Region. The Pilots had a fourth-place finish at the WCC Championships.
In 2004, Portland went 9-12 overall, securing a fifth-place finish for the third consecutive year at the WCC Championships. Roman Borvanov ended the season with a No. 29 singles ranking in the West Region. The team went 13-9 in 2000-01, its most wins since the 1996-97 season.
Throughout his tenure, Gross has coached one All-American (Travis Parrott, 2002), 11 All-WCC selections in singles (Jeff Nunnenkamp, 1999; Parrott, 2002; Peter Malacek, 2002; Borvanov, 2005; Loucks, 2006) and doubles (Joe Tostenrude and Nick Tostenrude, 1999; Loucks and James Redpath, 2005; Redpath and Scott Kennel, 2006; Zivkovic and Jager, 2007), and has seen three of his players ranked in the ITA's Top 100 (Malacek, Nunnenkamp, and Parrott).
Prior to his work with the Portland program, Gross established The Academy, the first junior tennis program of its kind in the state of Oregon. He has directed The Academy, based at Portland’s Eastmoreland Racquet Club, since its inception in 1994. The Academy consists of regionally and nationally ranked juniors. His students claimed eight consecutive (1994-2001) Oregon 4A High School Boys Championships and three others have gone on to claim three USTA national titles.
As a player, Gross was the Pacific Northwest’s top-ranked junior in 1986 and won two Oregon prep singles state championships, while competing for Lincoln High School in 1985 and 1987. He went on to play No. 4 singles at the University of Texas from 1987-89 and then transferred to the University of Washington where he played No. 1 singles for the Huskies from 1990-92. Gross also competed on the ATP satellite tour in Canada in 1991 and participated in the ATP Challenger qualifying tournaments from 1988-90. He was the Pacific Northwest’s No. 2-ranked men’s open player in 1989.
Gross is married to Portland’s women’s head tennis coach Susie Campbell-Gross. They have two daughters, Jasmine (9) and Mackenzie (5), and a son, Gavin (1).