For those just joining the story, for 2017, the USTA got rid of early start ratings and instead required players in 2017 early start leagues starting in 2016 to just use their 2015 year-end rating for joining the early start league. The gotcha was that players that were bumped up at 2016 year-end would not be eligible to play at 2017 Nationals at their lower level, whereas with early start ratings players could remain eligible as they would have rostered using their early start rating.
That sort of makes sense, you don't want someone who is a 2016 year-end 4.0 to be able to be playing at 2017 3.5 Nationals. Where the USTA goofed though, in my opinion, is that they left it up to each section to determine if these bumped up players would be eligible to continue to play in their local league, local playoffs, state/district playoffs, and Sectionals.
Some sections elected to allow these bumped up players to play through Sectionals, meaning a team could win their section on the shoulders of bumped up players that would not be eligible to go to Nationals on the team. Southern was one of the sections that took this route and I wrote about the impending issue in looking at some teams headed for Sectionals.
Without going through all my reasoning and how this is unfair to other teams that must play the "ineligible team", you can click on the links above to take another look, what I predicted might happen has happened if reports I've heard are correct. I've been told that a team in Southern that won Sectionals does not have enough players to go to Nationals and is having to give up their berth. Apparently the runner up does not have this problem and will be able to go.
I'll refrain from naming the team as this is not official and until teams show up in the Nationals flights on TennisLink nothing is certain, but the short story is the team only had eight 2016 year-end at level players and either decided that wasn't enough, or perhaps one member couldn't go and the USTA doesn't allow teams to go to Nationals if they don't have a full roster.
Update: A deeper look reveals while the team had eight 2016 year-end at-level players on the roster, one had only played two matches on the team and a player must have played three to be eligible for Nationals, so they did only have seven eligible to go which National does not allow.
It may be this is the only team this happens to, other teams may be affected but not to this degree, but it is something I'd think a section would want to avoid. Why have a format set up where a team that wins Sectionals can't go to Nationals? That doesn't seem fair to their opponents at Sectionals or even States/Districts that got beaten by players and a team National considers ineligible. Sure, the second place team gets to go, but what about the team that was second in their Sectionals flight and didn't get to make the final. Or the second place team States/Districts that lost out on a trip to Sectionals?
What do you think?
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