Tuesday, November 5, 2013

2014 USTA League teams are forming soon, who should you recruit for your team?

In many sections, USTA League tennis is a year round endeavor with multiple different leagues and age groups available to most players.  But in most sections, the main adult leagues (18 & over and 40 & over) are played in the Spring with some starting earlier, as soon as January, in order to not have the two leagues completely overlapping.

Given that it is November, January isn't that far away and it is time to start forming teams and recruiting players.  But there are a couple of challenges in doing this.

It can be difficult to recruit the right players in November as year-end ratings aren't out yet and some players may be on the bubble of being bumped up/down and you don't want to find out in December that those 4.0s you recruited are now 4.5s and you have to go find more 4.0s to fill your roster out now that other teams already grabbed them.

Then the USTA only tells you a players rating to the half point and you don't know really how strong a player is within that range.  Certainly if you know and play with a player, you have a pretty good idea, but simply looking at past season wins/losses may not be representative of how strong a player is.

One solution to both these challenges that can be an aid in recruiting and forming teams are my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings.  With ratings to the hundredth, you can both know how highly rated a player really is as well as have a good idea of if a player will be bumped up or down.

Individual reports can tell you a lot about a player's profile over the year and where they are currently, but you don't need that much detail to identify who to recruit all the time.  Team reports are a standard offering I have and show less information but for a whole team so they are an option to aid in recruiting.  But sometimes you just want lists of ratings and I do offer these too.  Pricing is dependent on how many ratings and a few other factors so contact me for more details and to get a quote.

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