Southern USTA League 18 & Over Sectionals are complete, teams headed to Nationals - Issues with ESL bumped up players yet again

Southern held their Sectionals for 18 & Over this past weekend in Mobile, and I hear it was hot and humid so a trying test of tennis for those involved.  But with the completion, we have a another Section's representatives for Nationals determined.

I've looked at how many Nationals teams have been sent by state in the past few years, so thought it would be interesting to see where this year's winners were from.

For the women:

• 2.5 - Georgia*
• 3.0 - Tennessee*
• 3.5 - Arkansas
• 4.0 - Mississippi
• 4.5 - North Carolina

And for the men:

• 3.0 - Alabama*
• 3.5 - Georgia *
• 4.0 - Kentucky
• 4.5 - North Carolina
• 5.0+ - South Carolina

Congratulations to all the teams.  And with 8 of the 9 states represented, all showed well.  Just Georgia and North Carolina had multiple winners.

You see I have an asterisk by several teams above.   This is to denote the team came from an Early Start League (ESL) meaning they played their regular season during 2017.  The reason this is interesting is that these teams may have players that were bumped up at 2017 year-end, and with the demise of Early Start Ratings, Southern has elected to allow these players to continue to play on these teams at their rostered level even though their 2017 year-end level is now a level higher.

This more or less gives these teams an advantage over their opposition that has only at-level players, and we see that at the lower levels, 2.5 and 3.0 for the women and 3.0 and 3.5 for the men, this advantage was apparent with these teams winning the sectional title.

Now, this sort of makes sense that the lower levels would benefit the most.  This is where there are the most new players that are naturally improving, and likely where the rosters are more likely to have bumped up players and have an advantage.  Once players get to the 4.0 and above levels, the improvement year to year is not typically as large and so there are likely fewer situations there are year-end bumped up players on these rosters, and even when there are they are likely not as clearly above level as at the lower levels.

The other interesting thing is that these now above level players are eligible to play at Southern Sectionals, but will not be eligible at Nationals (with one caveat).  This means the teams as constructed for Sectionals may not be the team that goes to Nationals, they will invariably be a weaker team with their best players missing.

For example, the Georgia 2.5 women's team is nearly entirely comprised of now 3.0 level players.  Given this, it isn't a big surprise they won 2.5 Sectionals and given what I said above, you'd think this team couldn't even field a team at Nationals.  They should be able to as there is a caveat in the National rule allowing 2.5 teams to have 3.0 level players on their National roster as long as a player is not "clearly above level", and it appears they have only one of these perhaps.  It appears that player is most definitely going to be a 3.5 next year and is perhaps even a borderline 4.0!  That would be something to see, play at 2.5 and 3.0 States and 3.0 Sectionals (she played on a 3.0 team too) in 2018, and get a 4.0 year-end rating a few months later.  That would be a rare progression.

But even without this player, the other 2.5 teams at Nationals are going to be facing mostly computer rated 3.0s which doesn't seem entirely fair, even if other teams likely have players that are going to be bumped up to 3.0 at 2018 year-end.

But the Tennessee 3.0 women's team does not have the clause allowing any now 3.5s to play at Nationals as 3.0s, and they have a whopping 8 of these players that won't be Nationals eligible.  That leaves just 9 players rostered that are 3.0s, and one of these doesn't appear to have gotten enough matches in to be eligible, so they have only 8 eligible players which is the minimum to send a team and is a difficult row to hoe with 4 matches in 2 days with a small roster.   But it appears there is a player who had only one regular season match that was allowed to play in local playoffs and had they not been allowed to, would not have the matches to be eligible.  Most areas require two regular season matches to be eligible so curious what happened here, as without this player they may not be able to send a team to Nationals.  This happened last year with a men's team, a Sectionals winning team that couldn't go to Nationals.

The men's 3.0 team from Alabama is also going to be impacted.  They have 7 now 3.5s that won't be playing at Nationals, but do appear to have 9 3.0s that are eligible so won't be forced to not go, but will certainly be a far weaker team with just their 3.0s and be playing 4 matches in 2 days with a small roster.

The Georgia 3.5 team won't be affected by this rule, but that is only because it is an entire roster of self-rated players and none played enough in the 2017 rating year to get a year-end rating so none of them are now a level higher.

I have to say that Southern's rule allowing these bumped up players to play doesn't seem fair to the competition they faced which is limited to having at-level players on the roster, both the other teams at Sectionals and the opponents of the Georgia 2.5 team at Nationals.

What do you think?  Do you prefer allowing teams to stay together through Sectionals even with now bumped up players?  Or should these players become ineligible soon to be more fair to the competition?