Zootennis


Schedule a training visit to the prestigious Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, MD by clicking on the banner above

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Arizona States Announces Elimination of Men's Tennis

When Arkansas-Little Rock announced the cutting of its men's tennis program last week, it was disturbing, but the demographics of the school, which are nearly 2-to-1 female to male, made for some serious Title IX compliance issues.

Today's announcement that Arizona State is going to cut its men's tennis program is on a whole different level. This is a Pac-10 school with a storied tennis history, including a national champion--Sargis Sargsian in 1995. This year the team was ranked 23rd in the country; their loss to Duke in the first round of the regionals on Saturday left them with a 15-5 record in their final season. The school's press release spins the news by comparing the number of sports ASU will now sponsor (20) to other selected programs. Somehow they neglected to mention Ohio State's 38 or Stanford's 35, and worse, every program they mention with at least 20 teams has managed to keep men's tennis.

This news certainly will take some of the fun out of the celebration of college tennis that happens every year at the NCAA championships.

The ITA has announced the regional winners for their annual awards. The national award recipients will be announced during the NCAAs. Click here for the complete list.

8 comments:

scott said...

That is a bit shocking and really disappointing news.



On a different note, does anyone have contact info for the Tulsa athletic department? I've been wanting to send them an email to let them know their stats and video did not work at all last weekend for their regional and I will just assume they don't know there is a problem. It is going to be extremely frustrating when Thursday rolls around and the issues aren't resolved. At least to this point, I'm not optimistic that they will pull this tournament off the way A&M, UGA and Stanford have in the past.

Colette Lewis said...

Scott, try stephanie-hall[at]utulsa.edu

scott said...

Thanks, Colette. I sent off an email we'll see if they get it fixed by Thursday.

Unknown said...

It's very disappointing, especially here in the Phoenix area.

It's not as though tennis doesn't have a good history here. We had an individual national champion some years back and we're generally competitive in the Pac-10, one of the tougher divisions in the NCAA.

The school has indicated they would need a $5 million endowment to preserve tennis. Hopefully, people will have a philanthropic heart, but that's a lot of money to have to raise, if they decided to try.

Anonymous said...

Wow, Bangoura beat Chris Lam, ~700 in the world, in a Futures event yesterday. Didn't think he had the game to play at the pro level right now given how slight he is and lack of pace (at least when I saw him play Sarmiento in Kzoo last August). Impressive.

Anonymous said...

Is this an April Fools joke a month and a half late? Im not quite sure what to say about this other than it is rediculous.

scott said...

I got an email back from Stephanie Hall at Tulsa and she told me that the live scoring problem was an issue with Daktronics and they were told the problem has been solved. But just in case, they will have someone on site this weekend to fix any issues with the scoring if they should arise. The live video problems have been fixed as well, so that should also be working for the weekend. So hopefully things will run smoothly this weekend.

Anonymous said...

lets cross our fingers. i went on there a little while ago and it looked like everything was working. we shall see. ill stay positive.