How many USTA League teams do you captain?

Captaining a USTA League team is often a thankless job.

Captains have a long list of duties including recruiting and assembling a team, getting players signed up, scheduling, coordinating availability and juggling line-ups (e.g. egos and expectations), arranging practices/courts, communicating with other captains, knowing the rules, and so much more.  And all this is done in exchange for getting to play recreational tennis, perhaps some post season glory, and in some sections a thank you gesture/gift from the USTA at the end of the season.

Nevertheless, many captains come back for more every year, doing it again and again.  At my club, there is sort of a repeating set of captains with "Bob" captaining the 40+ 4.0 team while "Sam" captains the 18+ 4.0 team, and "Bob" and "Sue" captain the 40+ 8.0 Mixed team, etc.  The burden is spread out, and with a few exceptions, generally no one captains more than two teams in a year.

I happened to be looking at some captaining stats though and there are some captains that love the game so much, or perhaps love the "power" being captain gives them, that they captain many more than a few teams every year.  Looking back to 2015, I found 11 players that captained 40 or more teams since then, and that is including 2018 which is just getting started!  I even found several that captained 19 teams in 2017!

You might ask how this is possible?  Well, it helps if you are 55+, as you can easily see how you could get to six teams captaining 18+, 40+, and 55+, each in Adult and Mixed.  And some captains will captain an at-level team or playing up too, or multiple levels in combined leagues like Mixed and 55+.  Add to that that some areas have multiple seasons for a given league and the number goes up even more.  Some players live in parts of the country where they can play in multiple areas/districts/sections so that brings more opportunities.  And then there are alternate leagues like Combo, Tri-Level, and Singles.  Regardless, 19 is still a lot!

Captains will use lots of tools from simple spreadsheets to Web-sites that help coordinate availability, practices, and matches, and some get my reports to aid in recruiting and managing their team or scouting opponents.  Still it is not easy, so thank your captain for what they do, and try to be responsive when they e-mail and ask for who can play when.

How many teams to you captain?  How many would be too many?

It is March 2018, guess what that means it is time for? 2019 leagues?

It is March 12 and some areas have started play for their 2018 leagues while others will be starting shortly.  But in Atlanta, teams are already forming for 2019!

Yes folks, Atlanta redefines 'early' start leagues by starting them in the Spring, before some areas will start their 2018 league play.  Should a team advance through playoffs and to Nationals, it could be a full 19 months from when the team is formed to when it plays at Nationals.  That is some kind of long season!

In pursuit of the perfect USTA League season - Does it ever happen?

I recently heard a question asking if a USTA League team has ever won every court all year.  Going into a season, that is certainly the goal, but you would expect it to rarely if ever happen, simply because the NTRP rating system is aiming to have players of similar ability playing each other, and if that is the case you wouldn't think a team could win every court for an entire season.

Naturally, I had to go research it though!  I took a look at 2017 for the 18+ and 40+ divisions to first see if any teams had perfect regular seasons that played at least five team matches.  I found just nine teams that met this criteria:

• An 18+ 4.5 men's team from Idaho went 6-0/30-0 in a two team league
• A 40+ 4.0 men's team from New Jersey went 8-0/40-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 2.5 women's team from Seattle went 8-0/24-0 in a nine team league
• A 40+ 4.0 men's team from Alabama went 7-0/35-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 3.5 women's team from Atlanta went 7-0/35-0 in an eight team league
• A 40+ 4.5+ women's team from Louisiana went 6-0/18-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 2.5 women's team from North Carolina went 9-0/27-0 in a four team league
• A 40+ 4.5+ men's team from Wisconsin went 7-0/35-0 in a two team league
• A 40+ 3.5 men's team from Georgia went 6-0/15-0 (yes half the matches were two courts) in a two team league

We see a full 2/3 of these teams come from two team leagues, and not to discount the accomplishment, but these leagues are often an A and B team, the B team there just to get the A team qualified to advance.

But regardless of how they achieved the perfect regular season, how did these teams do as they advanced?

A number of teams made it to Sectionals and even Nationals, but only one kept perfect run going to Sectionals and that was the Wisconsin 4.5+ team.  They had one local playoff they won 5-0 and went to Sectionals where they had their only loss of the season there falling short of Nationals and ended up losing six total courts.

The Seattle 2.5 team made it to Nationals, but lost courts along the way but did make the semis at Nationals.

So last year at least, there was no perfect season and really, no one terribly close.  And it looks like those perfect season from two team leagues generally did not prepare a team for playoffs as only one of those six teams even made a decent run to Sectionals.

NTRP tournaments now count toward NTRP ratings in the Pacific Northwest - Get a report including tournament matches

The USTA runs a number of different programs and formats for recreational players to play competitive tennis.  The one I write about most often is USTA League, where players form teams in one of several divisions and levels and play against other teams, and can advance on to playoffs and even Nationals in the main Adult and Mixed divisions.  This allows player who like the team atmosphere to play once a week or so in a 10-15 week season and potential advance further.

But USTA League is not the only game in town, there are sanctioned USTA tournaments as well, and these in two different formats.  Tournaments cater to the individual or doubles teams that are looking for several matches in a tournament format typically over a single weekend.

One tournament format is age group tournaments where there may be an Open draw for players of any age, but then several draws for players of at least a certain age, typically starting at 35 and over and going up in 5 year increments, although every tournament doesn't always offer every increment.  Players accrue points based on the category of tournament and how far they advance and get rankings based on those points.  These tournament matches have no bearing on a player's NTRP level.

The other tournament format is NTRP tournaments.  These are similar to USTA League in that players are in a draw with players of the same NTRP level (players can play up though), but it is done in a tournament rather than league format.

For the second format, since players play at a given NTRP level, one might wonder if these matches are used in calculating a player's year-end NTRP level.  The answer is "it depends".  Each section is given the option of including tournaments in year-end rating calculations and some do and some don't.

For as many years as I've been playing USTA League and tournaments, the Pacific Northwest section has not included NTRP tournaments.  For 2018, that is changing, matches played in sanctioned NTRP tournaments will count towards year-end ratings and levels.

I became aware of this being considered a number of months ago, and as I understand it it is due in large part to the new NTRP Nationals for this year.  This is basically a "Nationals" for NTRP tournament players similar to the Nationals that USTA League players can advance to.  By including NTRP tournament matches in year-end ratings, it will both increase the number of matches used in the calculations and better represent a player's rating that plays both league and tournaments.

What do you think?  Will NTRP Nationals and NTRP tournament matches counting for ratings cause you to be more interested in playing NTRP tournaments?

And for those that are interested, I can now include NTRP tournament matches in by Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports so do contact me if interested.