Bob Mason touched the lives of many before he died in late March of 2018.
Rachel Roberts is one of those people.
The Gatlinburg-Pittman High School senior spent years around Mason, the school’s longtime tennis coach and math and economics teacher.
Bob Mason
Roberts plays the No. 1 position on G-P’s girls tennis team and spent her first three seasons playing for Mason. She’s been around him even longer.
“I was really close to him,” Roberts said, “especially since I knew him when my brother (Ben, a 2015 graduate of G-P) was playing tennis for him before I got to high school.”
Mason would be proud of his players.
The Lady Highlanders (10-2) won the District 3-Small title last week with a 5-4 victory over L&N STEM Academy, last year’s Division I-Small state runner-up.
L&N STEM’s boys, also state runners-up last year, defeated Gatlinburg-Pittman, 7-2, for the boys’ district title.
Roberts is one of several G-P players who will be playing in the District 3 tournament for individuals and doubles teams on Friday at Pigeon Forge.
They’re being coached by G-P vice principal A.J. Bennett, who took over as head tennis coach this year. The former G-P boys basketball coach decided to take the job when there wasn’t much interest shown in it last fall.
“I just wanted to be fair to the kids,” Bennett said. “This group of seniors is one of the best groups of student-athletes that we’ve had. They’re good students, good kids, and good tennis players.”
Bennett is completing his third year as vice principal, a job that didn’t allow him to be the head basketball coach per rules of the Sevier County Schools System. However, Bennett met with Schools Superintendent Dr. Jack Parton, who allowed Bennett to be G-P’s tennis coach.
Your 2019 District Champs! pic.twitter.com/0kVPP9IZeP
— GPHS Tennis (@GphStennis) April 25, 2019
“He’s done a real good job this season especially preparing us,” Roberts said of Bennett. “He’s really pushed us to test our limits and prepared us, and hopefully it gets us to the state tournament.”
Bennett admits to not being an avid tennis fan before taking the job, so he went after the best qualified assistant coaches he could get with the departure of former tennis assistant/G-P teacher Jennifer Miller, who left for a job in Boone, N.C., last summer.
Bennett’s two assistants are Chris Bowling and G. Webb, who were both high-level tennis players and have remained active in Gatlinburg and Pittman Center tennis throughout the years.
Bowling has two children, Parker and Cait, on G-P’s tennis teams. Parker is a senior and Cait is a sophomore.
“My first thing was finding good help,” Bennett said. “I feel like I’m pretty good at coaching basketball, but not tennis. Chris and G. agreed to do the instructional side. I wasn’t going to offer any instruction, but I can handle the motivation and scheduling, but as far as the instruction, I wanted to make sure I had good help.”
G-P’s boys (11-1) have four seniors: Bowling, Wes Fortner, Brandon Webster, and Parker Riggs.
Bowling and Fortner play the No. 1 and 2 spots, respectively, and both carry 4.4-plus-weighted GPAs and scored 35s on their ACTs.
They’re 10-1 as the Highlanders’ No. 1 doubles team.
Roberts is one of two seniors on the girls’ team along with Mehak Gulrajani. Roberts has a 4.45 weighted GPA and scored a 34 on her ACT.
G-P’s seniors have dedicated the season to Mason.
“I’m telling you, the kids loved him,” Bennett said. “He was such a unique guy. He loved basketball and used to be an assistant (basketball) coach.”
Bennett recalls Mason as being a no-nonsense guy, “a hard-nosed truth teller who didn’t sugar-coat anything.”
Like the morning in the teachers’ lounge after Bennett’s boys basketball team took a beating against Carter.
“Bennett, that’s about as bad a basketball as I’ve seen,” Mason told him. “If you can ever find a way to rebound, you might win a game.”
Mason always took his tennis teams to dinner after road matches, most often to the same places.
After a recent match in Morristown, the G-P teams returned to the local Akita Express Japanese Grill, where Mason traditionally took them.
Roberts felt the memories of Mason stirring that night.
“It was emotional just to remember the good times we had with him and the legacy he left,” Roberts said, her voice cracking with emotion. “He always told us, ‘Hit it where they aren’t.’ ”