Not many people switch from the fast-paced life of the tech industry to coaching high school sports. For Steve Apfelberg, however, the decision let him pursue a lifelong passion: teaching tennis.
Apfelberg’s tennis journey started in Palo Alto. While his friends spent their high school summers hanging out and scooping ice cream, he spent his time teaching recreational tennis at Stanford.
“I learned the patience of working with kids, and realized that I was able to teach the sport that I loved so much pretty well,” Apfelberg said.
After graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in economics, Apfelberg began his tech career working for multiple enterprise software companies, raking up over 25 years of corporate experience — including multiple as a vice president of marketing. Throughout his time in business, he continued coaching and parent coaching for the various sports his children played, including flag football, track and field, and baseball.
“I can see why going into coaching made a lot of sense for him,” Apfelberg’s former colleague Josh Newman said. “So many of the skills I observed were transferable to coaching. He was the coach, just the coach of business. He really excelled at building teams, teaching, spotting talent — all the things you need in the business realm.”
Aside from coaching, Apfelberg was on the Los Altos Little League Board for 12 years — 4 of those as president. Apfelberg finally retired from the corporate world in 2018, and started working as the JV girls tennis coach at LAHS.
“I do miss certain parts of being in the business, some of the people, business travel, and challenges to solve with a team,” Apfelberg said. “But I haven’t really looked back.”
According to his athletes, Apfelberg goes beyond being just a regular coach. Working with JV girls tennis until their season ended, he took the extra mile, coaching the varsity team through their final games — despite not being their official coach.
“He really cares about the team and he’s always so positive and encouraging,” JV tennis player junior Lindsay Lai said. “I don’t know what we’d do without him.”
“He hasn’t technically coached me, but I like to say that he’s coached me all four years,” varsity tennis player senior Tyra Bogan said. “There’s so much he does for the varsity team.”
Apfelberg also unofficially helps out with track and field and boys tennis, but LAHS isn’t the only place he coaches at. He also works as both the track and field and tennis coach at Egan Junior High School.
No matter where he is, Apfelberg always finds the same spark coaching that he did in his teens — in what he calls a “full circle moment.”
“One of the most rewarding things about coaching is seeing the growth of these student-athletes as people,” Apfelberg said. “I’ve been doing this long enough that the freshmen when I first started are now juniors in college. It’s amazing to see how much they’ve grown.”
