WEST HARTFORD – In 1992, Jonathan Slifka tried out for the Hall High tennis team and changed the way coach Jim Solomon thought about sports.
Slifka, who has spina bifida, used a wheelchair. Solomon checked with the CIAC. Turns out Slifka was allowed two bounces of the ball instead of one, per wheelchair tennis rules, but he lost all three tryout matches and Solomon had to cut him from the team.
It was the last time Solomon cut anyone from the Hall tennis team.
“That was my epiphany,” Solomon said Friday. “We’ve got courts. I thought, ‘If I can get some help,’ which (the administration) supported … and I hated cutting anyways …
“Of the four captains I have now, two of them probably would have been cut under the old policy.”
In his 50th season as coach, all at Hall, Solomon, 72, has stayed the course. He is the state’s winningest boys tennis coach, with a 631-102 record. Hall has won four state titles and has had six individual singles and two doubles state champions, including two-time State Open champion and All-American Dan Couzens, who graduated in 2007. The Titans had a 57-match win streak from 1987-92 when Slifka, then a freshman, tried out.
Slifka served as a scorekeeper and warmed up players for matches his freshman year, then played the next year for Hall before he transferred to Watkinson and became the team’s captain as a senior.
“If Jim hadn’t made that decision to allow me to try out when I was a freshman, that may never have happened,” said Slifka, who comes to the Hall-Conard match every year to talk to the players. “It’s all connected.
“Jim and I are still in touch all these years later. It’s grown into a very deep and meaningful friendship to me.”
Many of Solomon’s former players are his friends and many echo Slifka’s sentiments about the guy they called “Sol.”
“He’s a special man in my life,” said Quat Vu of Newington, a 2001 Hall High graduate who is the director of tennis at the Hartford Tennis Club. “He’s a father figure to me.”
Vu, who came to West Hartford from Vietnam with his family, hadn’t really played that much tennis before high school but he wanted to play. Another player who benefitted from Solomon’s no-cut policy, Vu came out for the team his sophomore year, worked on his game and improved and played for three years.
“My family is from Vietnam,” Vu said. “We don’t think about college after high school. My parents didn’t plan financially for me to go to college. I was kind of on my own. I didn’t even think I was going to go to college. But (Solomon) talked to a coach at Salve Regina. That summer I was working, and the coach called me, ‘Hey, we’re ready for you. You’re coming to Salve.’ I was like, ‘What? I don’t even know where Salve is.’ I didn’t know where Newport, R.I., was.
“I talked to Sol, he was like, ‘Yep, they got you in, financial aid and everything is all set. I feel confident the coach will take care of you.’”
Vu played for four years at Salve Regina and won the team’s sportsmanship award as a senior. He came home and gave it to Solomon.
“He has done so much for me,” said Vu, who also coaches girls tennis at the Westminster School. “People say, ‘I would never be who I am today …’ but it’s a true statement for me.”
Craig Davidson, who played for Hall from 1994-98, is in his second season as the first men’s tennis coach at the University of St. Joseph.
“With Sol, it’s a lot deeper than forehands and backhands,” said Davidson, who won the Class L singles championship in 1997. “He’s really just part of his players’ lives.”
Solomon, a retired English teacher, started out in 1974 as the freshman baseball coach. Hailing from Wyoming, Ohio, he went to Trinity College and ended up student-teaching at Hall.
“The original principal, Bob Dunn, was interested in what you could coach,” Solomon said Friday before his team took on Hand and won 4-3. “The interview was, ‘Yeah, I see you teach English, but what can you coach?’”
The tennis job opened up in his second year at Hall, 1975, and he took it. Rich Rosenthal, who owned the Max Restaurant Group before retiring, was a member of his first team after playing the year before as a sophomore for the former coach.
“I was probably the first guy to get thrown off his team,” Rosenthal said from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where he lives in the winter. “I was a bit of a wise guy and because I was there first, I thought I was in charge. I kind of thought I knew more than he knew. He was a young guy; he wasn’t much older than us. We didn’t get along that well at first. He did kick me off temporarily. I don’t remember the details.”
Rosenthal was eventually reinstated and played his senior year and went on to play at Bentley.
“I would say it’s extremely impressive (that Solomon is still coaching),” Rosenthal said, who recalled that his team and Solomon had a reunion about 15-20 years ago at one of his restaurants, Max’s Oyster Bar in West Hartford.
Solomon had back surgery last year. He has an artificial hip and a partial knee replacement. He still plays tennis. He has also been a member of the CIAC boys tennis committee for over 30 years and has been the state tournament director for the last 15.
His players – he has 52 on his current team (which is 3-0) this season – were goofing around before the match Friday and Solomon smiled.
“They keep me young,” he said.
He taught for 47 years at Hall. He’s been married to his wife Marjorie for 48 years. He’s lived in the same house for 46 years. Coached for 50 years.
“That’s my Zodiac sign, Cancer,” he said. “We grab onto stuff, and we don’t let go. When I like something, I stick with it.”