Mark Young started playing tennis as a junior in Australia training under relatively strict conditions. When his dad came home one day and announced he was moving the family to the US, the captain of the local high school team took Mark under his wing and helped him develop into a very proficient college player at Oberlin College, a top D3 program in Ohio. 

Fast-forward many years where Mark and his wife joined the faculty of USC in Southern California as part of the accounting department. Anyone who is familiar with USC sports will understand how Mark quickly became one of the tennis team's biggest supporters and fans, so much so that he decided to write an entire book chronicling the history of this great program, TROJAN TENNIS.

In this week's episode, Mark discusses his connection to the USC Trojan Men's Tennis Team and why he felt it important to document its story. He did extensive research in USC's Doheny Library, called and emailed a variety of past USC players, and spent an incredible amount of time interviewing current and past coaches. The result is a comprehensive history of one of the greatest - and winningest - college tennis programs in US history.

There are so many lessons to learn from Mark's book and from this week's podcast! Please listen and share with your junior players!

You can purchase TROJAN TENNIS online here. 

Read more about Mark in his bio:

Dr. S. Mark Young holds the George Bozanic and Holman G. Hurt Chair in Sports and Entertainment Business at the University of Southern California. Dr. Young is also a Professor of Accounting in the Leventhal School of Accounting and holds joint appointments as Professor of Management and Organization in the Marshall School of Business, and Professor of Communication and Journalism in the Annenberg School of Communication. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Peking University. Previously, Young served as the Associate Dean of the Marshall MBA Program. He is also a New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestselling Author. 

Professor Young received an A.B. from Oberlin College (Economics), an M. Acc. from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. (Accounting) from the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests are in the areas of management accounting and control, the business of the creative industries, and the sociology of collecting and futurism. His book (coauthored with Pinsky, The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America, (Harper Collins, 2009), is an analysis of how celebrity acting out behavior is having a profoundly negative impact on today’s youth and our society. This book was on both the New York Times and LA Times Best Selling Lists. Within the Marshall School of Business, Mark developed the Business of the Creative Industries concentration, an academic program in which MBA students can learn about the business side of the motion picture, television, music and games industries. Young teaches the core course in the program, “Management and Organization of the Creative Industries.”  

Within management accounting he has published over 40 articles that focus on how the design of management accounting and control systems influences human behavior and performance in a wide variety of organizational contexts. In 2006, his book Implementing Management Innovations: Lessons Learned from Activity Based Manufacturing in the U.S. Automobile Industry (co-authored with Shannon Anderson, Kluwer Academic Press) won the Notable Contribution to the Management Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association – the highest research award given in academic accounting. He has coauthored the text, Management Accounting, Information for Decision Making and Strategy Execution (6th Edition, Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2012) with Robert Kaplan (Harvard), Anthony Atkinson (Wilfred Laurier) and Ella Mae Matsumura (Wisconsin), and the associated book, Readings in Management Accounting (6th Edition; Pearson, Prentice-Hall, 2012). 

A former Division 3 tennis player and life long enthusiast, Mark also serves as the team historian for USC Men’s Tennis team. He also serves as Chair of the Oversight Committee for Athletic Academic Affairs – the committee that oversees the academic side of all USC athletes.  Mark’s book, Trojan Tennis – A History of the Storied Men’s Tennis Team at the University of Southern California was published in 2018. This book documents the USC Trojans – the winningest men’s tennis program in U.S. collegiate tennis history. 

Dr. Young has won several outstanding teaching awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including the Golden Apple Teaching Award at USC, the Mellon Mentoring Award (twice for working with Ph.D. students) and the Jim Bulloch Award for Innovations in Management Accounting Education given by the American Accounting Association. Young is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Teaching Excellence at USC. He has also taught in senior executive programs including the Global EMBA in Shanghai. Young is currently a member of the Board of Governors of Fremont College and served as a Board Member for StoriedLearning.Com. He has consulted and conducted research with Warner Brothers, Chrysler, GM, StorageTek, Texas Instruments, and the California Medical Association. 

Mark comments regularly in the business and entertainment presses and has appeared on BBC’s Newsday, CNN’s The Situation Room, Showbiz Tonight, The View, The Howard Stern Show, Fox & Friends, ABC News, Fox Business Channel, the KTLA Morning News, and the Fox Strategy Room, and has been interviewed by The Economist, Financial Times, Laura Ingraham, the BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, the LA Times, National Public Radio, Marketplace, The London Times, Scientific American Mind, the Associated Press, Newsweek, People Magazine, Premiere Magazine, Woman’s Wear Daily and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Thank you to STØNE for our music! You can find more of his music at SoundCloud.com/stonemuzic

If you’re so inclined, please share this – and all our episodes! – with your tennis community. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the ParentingAces website.