All the rumblings throughout Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 about a coaching vacancy. The Indeed job post regarding Cheyenne Mountain High School seeking a tennis coach.

They’re true. The 2025-26 prep year served as Dave Adams’ last hurrah.

Cheyenne Mountain’s longtime tennis coach officially announced his retirement after several decades as the Red-Tailed Hawks’ tennis coach.

“(Athletic director) Kris (Roberts) had known for a while that – assuming things went the way that I hoped – I was planning to hang it up,” Adams said. “The day after the state tournament, a lady from Air Academy came up to me and gave me a card with my name on it. I said, ‘What’s this?’ And she said, ‘Congrats on your retirement.’ … The phone lines started buzzing once word got out.”

Adams’ coaching career at Cheyenne Mountain began in 1987 and has since helped bring numerous individual champions and more than 30 team titles to the school.

The most recent, and to stamp his career at the helm for the Red-Tailed Hawks, was earlier in May. The girls’ team, the top seed in 4A, swept No. 2 Kent Denver 4-0 at the team tournament state championship in Denver to give Cheyenne Mountain back-to-back titles.

In Pueblo, days prior to the team tournament, the Red-Tailed Hawks crowned five champions during the individual state tournament at Pueblo City Park, which includes doubles. During his tenure, Adams has orchestrated multiple dominant runs.

From 1992-2002, Adams coached the boys to 11 consecutive team titles and the Red-Tailed Hawks have 19 overall. Since 2007, when Adams took over the girls’ program, Cheyenne Mountain has 15 total.

The girls won in Adams’ first year as their coach and won nine team titles in a row from 2009-2017. Rose Katen, who recently graduated from Cheyenne Mountain, won singles titles three consecutive years from 2024-26.

Katen’s recent individual title came at No. 1 singles against Windsor’s Aristea Fulgenzi, who defeated Katen 7-6 (9-7), 6-3, on April 24. On May 9, Katen won her final title and avenged her loss to Fulgenzi with a 7-5, 6-1 victory. Katen said Adams’ tutelage helped pave the way to the win.

“He was always adamant about going into a match and not expecting a certain outcome,” Katen said. “That’s been helpful for everyone’s mentality and his help with everyone’s mindset and pushing everyone to play their best has been helpful and game changing for the whole team.”

Adams’ replacement has not been officially announced as of Wednesday.