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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Fed Cup Team Announced; Horter to Baylor; Full Ride Isn't; Improving College Tennis Attendance

Mary Joe Fernandez participated in a conference call today to announce the Fed Cup team for the final against Italy November 6th and 7th in San Diego, and as the San Diego Union-Tribune reported yesterday, CoCo Vandeweghe will join Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Melanie Oudin and Liezel Huber on the team.

I joined the call to ask, as I usually do, the names of the practice partners, who are referred to Future Fed Cuppers on the women's side. Fernandez was unable to say for certain who would accompany the team to San Diego.

We're still working on it because the future Fed Cup'ers that were going to come have all been doing really well and they're trying to earn points to get into the Australian Open main draw. There's tournaments the week of Fed Cup.

As of now, players like Sloane Stephens, been on the team before, Christina McHale, and also Ally Riske, Alison Riske, has been on fire over in Europe, winning three tournaments and reaching one final. They're all right on the verge of making that cut.

We're going to see this week how Sloane does. She's in Puerto Rico, see if any of them can come. If not, we're going to go down the line. But those three have really been making a big push, along with CoCo, which is very exciting.

For the complete transcript of the conference call, see the ASAP Sports website.

In conjunction with the Fed Cup, there will be a kids clinic at the Barnes Tennis Center, a USTA Regional Training Center, and home to the Girls 16s and 18s Nationals. For more on the November 3rd event, click here.

Today's Tennis Recruiting Network story in the Signing Countdown is by Granger Huntress, who talks with Megan Horter about her decision to sign with Baylor. Baylor has had very few Americans on its always excellent teams, and Huntress delves into the reasons Horter has chosen to be a pioneer of sorts.

Any student-athlete signing a National Letter of Intent and accepting a scholarship needs to look closely at the numbers, whether it is a full scholarship, which women receive in tennis, or a partial, which is what most men receive. And according to this article today on espn.com, even a full ride may come with other expenses necessary to attend school, but not provided by scholarship. The NCAA is also being sued for making scholarships one-year renewable, rather than negotiable for a longer term.

As someone who has heard Wayne Bryan speak often at clinics and conferences, I can attest to his love and support of college tennis. He recently organized a summit in Southern California to address ways of boosting attendance at college tennis matches; the ITA website has a review of those attending and the topics discussed. There were several Tennis Channel executives there, and although I don't get Tennis Channel myself, I would welcome their support of the collegiate game. There was a time, not too long ago, when they covered the NCAA individual tournament, and a resumption of that would be welcome. I think it would also be fantastic if they could do the "Getting to Know" segments, like those they did for juniors here in Kalamazoo, for college players.

And if you live in the New York area, please consider attending the upcoming USTA/ITA National Indoor at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center November 4-7. It's a great opportunity to see high quality tennis and support the collegiate game.

In today's regional finals, Connie Hsu of Penn, Sona Novakova of Baylor, Kristy Frilling of Notre Dame and Gonzalo Escobar of Texas Tech all won regional singles titles. I have updated Monday's post to include all regional winners, except for the Mountain men's doubles and Northwest women's singles, both still undecided. Freshmen Kristie Ahn and Nicole Gibbs of Stanford have reached the Northwest final, which may be played another day this week, since both had already played three matches today.

7 comments:

tennisfan said...

Tennis recruiting.net has Mitchell Frank committed to Virginia

casual observer said...

Scholarships need to one year because players’ games and more importantly their commitment to college tennis can change. If a player is given a multi-year scholarship commitment that locks in a coach to honor it even if the player lost his competitive spirit for the game. That happens a lot with Ivy League schools were there are no scholarships but players use tennis to get in through athletics which is significantly lower admit standard then regular applicants.

no such thing said...

Casual Observer.. You are way off base. There is no such thing as a 4 year scholarship and hasnt been forever. They must be renewed each year in all sports. Way too many post on here with way to little knowledge.

The difference... said...

Ivy and D3 schools only offer merit scholarships, not athletic scholarships.
IMHO, it is better for a kid to get a merit scholarship, it can be a full ride for 4 years, especially considering men's tennis teams are limited to 4 1/2 full scholarships...which I believe should change!!

wi tennis said...

Clearly, "No Such Thing" didn't read the articles that were linked in this post! Thanks for the info, Collette. I would have never found these articles, otherwise.

getthefactsrights said...

to no such thing ... i believe casual observer was referring to the current lawsuit against the NCAA to make athletic scholarships multi-year vs.one year, you need to read the reference before commenting and to the difference I have 1 child attending a ivy and no ivy league schools offers merit scholarhips or else my kid would have qualifed . it is all need based, not merit based. perhaps D3 are different but no such thing at the ivy league ..

tennisgift said...

At least you have some kind of tennis scholarship system - here in the UK we are way behind and most of our young, upcoming players have to support themselves while climbing the ranks.