Mark Ardizzone

Mark Ardizzone is in his fourth season as the Associate Head Coach at Florida State University.  He joined the Seminoles’ staff in 2019 and has truly infused an incredible amount of wisdom and experience from inside the world of tennis to the entire Florida State program. 

Ardizzone has helped the Seminoles enjoy incredible success in just his first three seasons at Florida State. 

During the 2022 season, Ardizzone worked side by side with Head Coach Jen Hyde to guide the Seminoles into the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament.  The Seminoles won seven of their final 10 matches of the regular season – including a victory over Duke (who finished fourth in the final national rankings), to put the Seminoles in position to be selected to play in the NCAA Tournament.  Once in the championship, the Seminoles defeated Florida International to win their first round match.

Ardizzone had the pleasure of coaching Petra Hule, the second winningest player in school history.  Hule was named the National Senior of the Year, the Southeast Regional Senior Player of the Year, and the Southeast Regional Most Improved Player of the Year.  She also earned All-American First-team and All-ACC honors, and finished the season ranked No. 3 in the nation. 

Ardizzone helped the Seminoles reach new heights in 2020 as the Seminoles reached a program record-high ranking of No. 2 in the country. The Seminoles finished the season with a 14-3 record, with seven wins over nationally ranked teams.  Ardizzone helped coach one of the top doubles pairs in the country, as Hule and Allen were named ITA Doubles All-Americans.

Florida State began the 2020 season with a victory over No. 14 Washington in Hawaii.  The Seminoles began the season with a 6-0.  Florida State earned their second win over a ranked team when they defeated No. 18 Texas A&M in the final match of ITA Kick-Off Weekend.  The Seminoles’ victory over Texas A&M advanced the Seminoles to the ITA National Indoor Championships for the second time in program history. The Seminoles defeated No. 15 UCF (4-3) before heading to Chicago for National Indoors, where the Seminoles would finish with a 2-1 record, including wins over No. 7 Texas and No. 22 Georgia Tech.

Ardizzone joined the Seminoles after 23 seasons as the head coach of the DePaul University women’s tennis program (1995-2019).  As the winningest coach in program history, Ardizzone established himself as a mentor on and off the court.  With a 364-204 overall record, he led the Blue Demons to five NCAA Tournament berths since 2010, and to four Big East Championships in six years. Ardizzone was named the ITA Midwest Coach of the year in 2010 and 2014, and was named the Big East Coach of the Year five times.

An accomplished recruiter, Ardizzone has coached 51 all-conference players, two Big East Players of the Year, four Big East Tournament Most Valuable Players, 15 nationally ranked singles players and eight nationally ranked doubles teams.

Ardizzone has also built an incredible reputation as an academic leader.  In 21 of the last 23 years, his teams have been named ITA All-Academic teams, including twice at Florida State.  Ardizzone has coached student-athletes who have won the ITA/Arthur Ashe Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship, the prestigious ITA/Cissie Leary Award for Sportsmanship and Big East Scholar-Athlete Sports Excellence Award.

Ardizzone went to DePaul from the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill. where he was the assistant coach for both men’s and women’s tennis teams.  Before that, he was the assistant coach at Northwest Missouri State and served as the Director of Nike Tennis Camp in 1998.

As a player, Ardizzone was a two-year captain at Northwest Missouri State, where he was nationally ranked in both singles and doubles. Off the court, he was an Arthur Ashe Sportsmanship Award winner and was awarded numerous scholarships. Prior to playing at NWMS, Ardizzone played one season at the College of DuPage.