USTA's Junior Competition Committee Makes Changes, but Doesn't Reveal Them; Women's Division III Team Indoor Starts Friday; Pacific Coast Doubles Underway

I received an email from USTA Director of Junior Competition Lew Brewer this afternoon with a link to this statement:

The Junior Competition & Sportsmanship Committee of the USTA had a positive and productive meeting in Dallas from February 26 to February 28 regarding the 2014 National Junior Competitive Structure.

During this meeting the committee reviewed feedback received at the Listening Sessions and the Letusknow.com e-mail address. This included comments from key stakeholders including parents, coaches and players, tournament directors, teaching professionals, college coaches, USTA sections and other tennis constituents.

The proposed changes developed during this meeting were unanimously approved by the committee and will be presented to USTA National and Section Leadership on or about March 6, 2013.

These proposed changes will be vetted by USTA Leadership at the USTA Annual Meeting, March 16-18, 2013, and then presented to the USTA Board shortly thereafter.

Other than the obvious message that the committee will not be starting over, which is the result many of us had hoped for when the USTA first "paused" the 2013 changes, there's not much more to be said about this until the exact "changes" are revealed. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be before they are given the stamp of approval by the sections and the board, so any objections will be, once again, after the fact. That method didn't work out very well last year, but I suspect changing the governing method of the USTA was a bridge too far in this particular battle.

Keep an eye on the Parenting Aces blog and on the Stop the USTA 2014 Tennis Changes Facebook page for possible additional updates.

The ITA Women's Division III Team Indoor begins Friday in DePauw, Ind., with, as was the case in the men's tournament last weekend, a field without all of the top teams.  Here are the participants, by seeding, with their preseason national rankings in parentheses.

1. Chicago (3)
2. Carnegie Mellon (5)
3. Washington and Lee (7)
4. De Pauw (10)
5. Johns Hopkins (11)
6. Trinity (15)
7. Skidmore (16)
8. Wisconsin-Whitewater

The draw, preview and live scoring can be found at the ITA tournament website.

USC coach Peter Smith and Furman coach Kelly Jones are seeded fifth at the Pacific Coast Men's Doubles Tournament this weekend.

 

 

The 124th annual Pacific Coast Men's Doubles tournament began this afternoon in La Jolla, California, with its usual wide array of college teams taking the weekend off from dual match play to compete in the prestigious event.  Here's a list of schools whose players, and often coaches, are in the draw:

Boston College

Claremont McKenna-Mudd-Scripps College (CMS)

Fresno State University (FSU)

Furman University

Oklahoma State University

Pepperdine University

Rice University

San Diego State University (SDSU)

Stanford University

University of California, Davis (UC Davis)

University of California, Berkeley (CAL)

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

University of Central Florida

University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)

University of San Diego (USD)

University of Southern California (USC)

University of Toledo

Villanova University

In the 128-team draw, there are two of each seed. The No. 1 seeds, are Cal's Campbell Johnson and Christoffer Konigsfeldt, the No. 1 college seeds, and Stanford's 2004 NCAA champion KC Corkery and his partner Blake Muller, the No. 1 independent seeds.

USC coach Peter Smith and Furman coach Kelly Jones are playing together and are one of the No. 5 seeds.

Ken Thomas will be again be providing coverage Sunday at radiotennis.com.  Results will be updated at the TennisLink site.