Winter Nationals in the Desert:: tennisrecruiting.net

Winter Nationals in the Desert:: tennisrecruiting.net~~

Julie Wrege has been busy since I first worked with her at the Clay Courts in suburban Washington DC last summer. She and husband Doug are always in the junior trenches, working desks, writing, photographing, helping with scheduling, and in Arizona, promoting their new website, The Tennis Recruiting Network. (Full disclosure--I'm a contributor to the site). They hope to develop for tennis what has long been a staple of college football and basketball--a means of ranking prospects to assist college coaches in recruiting. In some ways, tennis has an advantage, with national tournaments and head-to-head results, which are much better predictors of college success than statistics. When the USTA went to a points-per-round ranking system to reward juniors for playing frequently on a sectional and national level, however laudable the goal of encouraging play, the end result is not very helpful when it comes time to compare players who have concentrated their efforts on ITF events with those who have stuck to the USTA-sanctioned environment.

The Tennis Recruiting Network has provided an alternative to the USTA rankings, one that has the advantage of being organized by class year, not by age. They've even come up with an RPI ranking. And from a personal standpoint, I don't have many arguments with the rankings that their computers are producing (although adding Futures events would be helpful--I personally don't think Vania King should be anywhere but No. 1 among high school juniors, given she's already in the Australian Open professional qualifying draw). But they are off to a great start, and it's a resource I use often.

Julie also writes some very good stories and her wrap up on the Winter Nationals is a great read. Make sure you read about Jordan Cox, Kristie Ahn and Lauren Herring, as I wasn't able to work these three champions into my SMASH column.

Today, Julie posted an article on an early round Copper Bowl match, a match I was delighted to see featured Spencer Newman, a twelve-year-old from Miami whose ebullient personality first captivated my husband during his initial stint at the Junior Orange Bowl 12s desk in 2004. And despite what I assume, with my daily, deadline-driven habits, just because the match was played a few days ago, doesn't mean it's irrelevant, and this story is a perfect example of that.