Beyond the Baseline: Andrea and Ed Krass, College Tennis Exposure Camps and One-On-One Doubles

They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. And that has a lot of truth to it. So what if you not only love what you do for a living, but you also love who you do it with?

Well, for more than four decades, that has been the case for Andrea and Ed Krass, the powerhouse couple behind the College Tennis Exposure Camps, and the unrivaled One-On-One Doubles tournaments. The two have forged both a work and personal relationship which has allowed them to have not only a successful business operation, but also a thriving and loving marriage.

“I think it takes guts, and the belief in yourself as a partnership,” says Ed. “A lot of couples, for whatever reason, can’t work together; they can never imagine working together. So it’s not the norm, or everyone’s cup of tea, but for us it has always come naturally. We have the same mindset, the same goals, and the desire to roll up your sleeves and work together.”

Andrea added:

“It just clicked from the very start. There are of course challenges that we faced, ones that every entrepreneur and self-employed faces, but we learned how things work just by doing them. Ed had some great mentors in the tennis world, but we learned how to run this business on the fly.”

That start began back in the late 80s while Ed was the head coach of the women’s tennis team at Harvard University. At a local bar & restaurant in Quincy, a Boston suburb, Ed was there to enjoy some live music when a girl across the room caught his eye.

“I saw her sitting there, and asked if she wanted to have a dance,” he recalls. “We then went across the street to a different place so we could have a meal and talk more.”

Andrea was a New England native who had a successful marketing career, and can remember being intrigued by Ed’s southern accent as he had just come up to Harvard after spending time coaching at both Clemson University and the University of Central Florida.

“But at times, a New York accent would come out of his mouth,” Andrea said. “It was just interesting talking and listening to him.”

And from that point forward, the two have become inseparable. Andrea was integral from the very beginning. Ed launched the Harvard Tennis Academy, a summer camp that would become the precursor to what is now the College Tennis Exposure Camps, while Andrea was working her marketing job at a Fortune 500 company. Andrea would work her full-time job during the day, and then take the train to Cambridge and assist Ed in answering phone calls, organizing the accounting, creating promotional materials and more. It established a working relationship that sustains to this day, with Ed being the enthusiastic and energetic face of the operation, while Andrea was the anchor behind the scenes.

The Krass’ continued to be pioneers in the college tennis landscape by launching the College Tennis Scoreline Service, the nation’s only scoreline service at the time.

“Coaches would call us and submit their scores, and we would input it into the computer program at night,” said Ed. “I was essentially a National Sports Information Director. We would get maybe 60-70 scores a night, and submit them into our program that would get sent to the wire for the Associated Press and USA Today who would then print them in the next day’s newspaper.”

The couple would spend hours taking phone calls, even ones from the west coast where scores would not be reported to them until close to midnight on the east coast. While it was a lot of work, the two were spending time together and creating something special.

“It was exciting,” Ed recalls.

Ed’s infectious personality turned Andrea, who had never played or followed tennis, into a fan of the sport, and together the two were creating something that would help grow college tennis. The two were growing their own relationship while expanding the business, and while that could have an adverse affect on many couples, it only strengthened their bond.

The Harvard Tennis Academy would be rebranded to the College Tennis Exposure Camps when they expanded it nationally, and the Krass’ moved down to Florida, where the couple still calls home today. Together they have grown the College Tennis Exposure Camps to become the standard for similar types of college recruiting events, bridging the gap between college tennis coaches and aspiring players. It remains the only camp of its kind run entirely by head college coaches which is what makes it stand out to this day.

In addition, together the couple launched the One-On-One Doubles tournament series, which was started in 2004, the crosscourt serve-and-volley singles game including the doubles alley. Players are required to serve-and-volley on both first and second serves or there is a loss of point. Krass learned the drill at Clemson, during his stint as an Assistant Men’s Coach, and adopted it during his college coaching career. What Krass did, almost two decades later, was make the drill into an official tournament that was first sanctioned by the USTA, and recently by UTR.

In doing so, they were able to combine their passions: live music and tennis. The One-On-One Doubles tournaments feature intense competition between former collegiate and professional players with live music being played to create a one-of-a-kind tennis experience. And for the last 20 years, that is exactly what they have been doing, and the next event will be held this September in New Jersey.

It’s been more than 40 years since the most consequential night of Andrea and Ed Krass’ life. The two have come a long way over that time, but their bond remains the same. Like every relationship, there have been ebbs and flows along the way, but their foundation has never shaken. And in the business sense, their two skill sets and strengths align perfectly. Ed’s unwavering passion for tennis and dedication to those in the tennis community is only matched by Andrea’s expertise and brilliance behind the scenes taking care of all things on the business end. As they continue this journey together, Andrea and Ed look back and realize how lucky and blessed they are to have found each other, and celebrate all their accomplishments along the way. From staying up all hours of the night to input college tennis scores, to traveling the country running the College Tennis Exposure Camps, the Krass’ have truly carved out their own unique love story.