As he sat on a bench by the tennis courts at Ashburn Farm's Windmill Park, Dan McNeil's cell phone rang.
"You won again, girl?" he said, grinning. It's his 9-year-old "superstar," as he calls her, Caitlin Garrity, phoning from Richmond to tell him about her win at the Westwood Futures Regional Championship.
It's just another addition to McNeil's list of accomplishments lately. As the tennis coordinator at Ashburn Farm and Broadlands, he has done more than improve a backhand swing here and there. In the past year, McNeil, 28, has started a tennis management company (named after what all the youngsters call him, Tennis Dan) coached a team headed to a national championship this October and founded a charity tennis tournament to help out a close friend.
"My life is tennis right now," McNeil said.
IN THE YEAR before McNeil started coaching a team called Loose Strings, the women went 1-12 in the regular season. After Tennis Dan stepped in, Loose Strings finished with a 13-3 record. Three years later, it's preparing to be the first team from Ashburn to head to the United States Tennis Association's National Championships in Palm Springs, Calif.
"I think everyone has experienced coaches who are into winning," said Terri Kim, an accountant from Sterling who is also Loose Strings' co-captain. "He wants us to have fun. We're not professionals. This is still for fun."
Many of the women on the 12-strong team only began playing in the past few years. And while McNeil has been playing tennis since he attended Park View High School, this is his first trip to nationals as a coach, too.
"We never had a team even progress to sectionals," he said. "This is new for everyone here."
To help Loose Strings succeed in Palm Springs, McNeil is doing the other thing he does well — hosting a fund-raising tournament. On Sept. 25-26, Ashburn Farm will host a tourney to help defray travel expenses for Loose Strings.
Raising money via a tennis tournament is something McNeil wants to do a little more of — for a good cause. In July, McNeil began what he hopes will become a biannual tradition with a tournament benefiting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The games raised more than $2,000.
"I feel that it helps our program," he said. "If you give back, people want to participate."
MCNEIL'S NEXT TOURNAMENT, to be held Aug. 21-22 at Windmill Park, benefits a close friend, Joe Clemente, who served as the general manager of Ashburn Village's sports pavilion in the late '90s, while McNeil was the racquet sports director.
In October of 2003, doctors found a tumor the size of an adult fist in Clemente's lung, as well as cancer in his collarbone and hip. It came as a surprise to Clemente, who, as a fitness professional, had never smoked a cigarette in his life.
"I was the last person I thought would get cancer," he said.
When he first established the Joe Clemente Cancer Fund, it was intended to help his family — which had just welcomed its third child — cope with the costs of health care. But after a fund-raiser at the Reston YMCA in February was successful beyond Clemente's expectations, the cancer fund took on a new slant.
"Anything we get from now on I want to allocate to education and financial assistance to anyone with any kind of cancer," said Clemente, who now lives in Haymarket.
SINCE UNDERGOING months of chemotherapy, the cancer in Clemente's collarbone and hip has disappeared, and the tumor in his lung has shrunk dramatically. Now, he wants to help out others who might not have had the help he received.
"Medicine is one part of it," Clemente said. "If you don't have the right mental attitude, if you don't have the faith, if you don't have the resources ... then you put all your eggs in one basket."
McNeil's help with the Joe Clemente Cancer Fund has been inspiring to Clemente, who speaks glowingly of his former colleague.
"It's the kind of industry that you get to meet people and you get to make lifetime friends," he said.