TUCSON - Head Men's Tennis Coach Clancy Shields has announced the hiring of Alexander Free as Associate Head Coach for the 2023-2024 season.
Free returns to the Wildcats after a successful stint as an assistant coach at Boise State University where he helped lead the Broncos to their first Mountain West Conference championship and NCAA tournament berth since 2015. During the 2023 campaign, Free helped lead Simon Arca Costas to a 23-0 regular season record and First Team All-MWC Conference honors in both singles and doubles.
"I'm excited to welcome Alex home and back to the program he helped build for two years," said Shields. "He is going to have a big impact on our program, and I know our team will benefit tremendously from his experience. Great coaches have the ability to connect with people, and Alex does this as well as any coach I have been around. I'm thrilled to work alongside Alex and to continue to push this program to new heights!"
Prior to Boise State, Free was the head coach at Idaho State University, turning around a program that had typically been at the bottom of the Big Sky Conference. In his first season as head coach, Free led the Bengals to the Big Sky Conference championship match for the first time since 2003. In his second season, Free guided the Bengals back to the Big Sky Conference tournament and the most team wins (12) since 2013. In addition, the Bengals doubles team of Patrik Trhac & Aleksandar Petrovic were ranking as high as No. 33 in the country. During his tenure at Idaho State, his team had six student-athletes earn a combined eight All-BSC honors and two honorable-mention accolades. Academically, Idaho State was named an ITA All-Academic Team in 2021 while four Bengals earned ITA Scholar-Athlete recognition.
"There is truly no place like the University of Arizona," Free said. "I could not be more excited for the opportunity to return to Tucson and work alongside Coach Shields in building this extremely special program. Coach Shields has built an elite culture and the best match environment in college tennis. I look forward to working with the world's best student-athletes to develop on and off the court and to continue to compete for championships here in the desert. Bear Down!"
Free previously spent two seasons at Arizona as the program's volunteer assistant coach from 2018-2020. During this time, the Wildcats launched into the top 25 after winning the 2019 Blue Gray Championships with wins over Auburn, Texas Tech and Ole Miss. In 2019, Arizona returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010, and Jonas Ziverts became the first Wildcat to compete in the NCAA Singles Championship since 2006.
Widely regarded as one of the top recruiters in college tennis, Free has put together a litany of ranked recruiting classes, including the seventh-ranked mid-major recruiting class for Boise State in 2022 and the No. 22 mid-major recruiting class for Idaho State in 2021, the highest-ranked recruiting class in Idaho State history. During his time at Arizona, the Wildcats secured the No. 6 recruiting class in 2020 and the 25th-ranked recruiting class in 2019.
Free graduated from Appalachian State in 2018 with a master's degree in higher education administration with a specialization in university and community college leadership. In 2016, he graduated Magna Cum Laude from UT Tyler in political science.
