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Saturday, May 13, 2006

Tennis Player at Arkansas Ruled Ineligible by N.C.A.A.:: New York Times


On Friday, the New York Times published this article, about a women's tennis player at Arkansas who was found to have entered a tournament as a professional and was suspended immediately, and barred from competing in the NCAA Regionals Friday. You might think this indicates that the NCAA has been shamed into action by the Times' investigation into this issue, which was published last month, but this is all self-policing by the school and the SEC. The AP's version of the story has this very curious quote by Wally Renfro, senior adviser to the NCAA president:

"They're the ones who have indicated that they want student athletes to not have played as professionals, not to have played with professionals, [emphasis mine] not to have accepted prize money that exceeds the expenses involved in participating," he said.

Amateurs play with professionals all the time; the USTA approved that for major junior events several years ago, and every single Pro Circuit Futures event in the country has dozens of amateur juniors in it. Doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the NCAA knows what's going on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not that I think the USTA does have a handle on the situation (or even the vaguest idea what the situation is, what the point of college tennis is or how it fits into the overall scheme of player development) but I did assume Renfro was referring to amateurs playing with professionals in a team situation, as in the German leagues.

AndrewDemasson (after the last lot of comments, I decided there was more courtesy in a full name).

Colette Lewis said...

I agree that was probably what he was getting at. But he should have said "on teams" in foreign countries if that's what he meant.

Anonymous said...

ncaa stands for no clew at all. they need tennis guys in there when dealing with the rules of eligibility in regards to tennis players.