USTA Announces Overhaul of Junior Competitive Structure for 2021
In order to counteract that trend, the USTA has decided on simplification, which means, finally, a nationwide ranking system. The stumbling block over the years has been the autonomy of the 17 USTA sections, which had their own rankings and set their own competitive calendars. While the sections will retain some control over their tournaments, the new overall structure doesn't appear to vary much, no matter where you live in the United States.
I have my share of issues with the International Tennis Federation, but with just a few exceptions, the same ranking and progression system in its junior circuit has been in place throughout the time I have covered junior tennis. The USTA, on the other hand, has made more changes to their structures than I can count, and if a complex new structure must be implemented and adapted to every two to four years, it obviously does not leave a lot of time for promoting and marketing the sport, and it just adds to the frustration of junior high performance coaches and their players. Whether the USTA's frequent changes have drawn people to the ITF pathway, I'm not qualified to say, but it was one of the fears expressed during the massive USTA changes implemented in 2013.
That said, I don't believe that simplifying the pathway is likely to have a major impact on participation numbers, because I believe the causes of the decline are much more complicated than that, but as long as the USTA sticks with this for more than a couple of years, I don't see many drawbacks for implementing it. There will be unintended consequences--there always are in these changes--but if they can be dealt with with minor adjustments, rather than a scrapping the whole system again, this could turn out to be a positive development.
The brief explanation entitled The Why is short on specifics, but it does demonstrate an effort by the USTA to communicate the background of this change with those who will have to navigate the new system. The Ten Things to Know post provides an overview of the major changes, and should be viewed as a starting point for those who are just hearing about the new structure. But I urge everyone to email the USTA at JuniorTour@usta.com and ask to be put on their mailing list for additional information and webinars in preparation for the 2021 change.
10 comments:
Unfortunately this is not simplification. There will now be 2 National Standing List(confused yet). One will comprise your 6 best results(the real NSL) and the other will comprise your 3 best national and 3 best sectional results. That hybrid list is then carved up to create sectional standing lists from which National Championship selections will be made. Inexplicably they have moved the real NSL to the top of the selection process as was the case under the 2013 changes. So this real NSL list will now be meaningless to all but the top 50 or so players and we will likely see the same selection dislocations we saw back then where a kid ranked 750 from Section A got in to KZOO while a kid ranked 100 from section B was left out. To optimize your position on the selection NSL you would play half your tournaments in section whether you want to or not. 2013 told us most people didnt want to and the bailed out. This will have the same affect. Its really just the 2013 changes dressed up in a halloween costume. Its nice that the sections are all calling their tournaments the same thing and calculating their standing lists same way but people don't want to be told what to do and where to play. This will just accelerate the decline IMO.
The reason USTA junior participation is down is because the tournaments are horrible experiences. The only sport on earth where kids have to enforce their own rules. Shy kids are bullied, cheaters are rewarded. Kids try tennis after playing other sports and are blown away how kids are expected to keep score, argue calls, find roving umpires, etc. The rich kids with tons of lessons and coaches win early and chase the better athletes away from tennis quickly.
The USTA puts way too much money into executive salaries and supporting select players. They need referee on EVERY court, every match. Even if its senior volunteers or college kids for course credit.
Stop the cheating and huge advantage for aggressive personalities and kids will play tennis tournaments.
The comment below by 'here we go again' shows the problem. The USTA and this poster thinks 5000 kids quit USTA tennis because of the structure of the ranking lists? That has nothing to do with it at all. The serious kids and families are not quitting. The point chasers, the 'ranked kids', the ones playing nationals are not quitting.
The kids quitting are the ones who try 1-2-3 tournaments and see the cheating, the bullying, the gamesmanship, the point chasers, etc. No kid who can play other sports instead wants to keep their own scores and argue calls. They do not want to deal with kids obsessed with UTR and parents pacing the sidelines. Its not worth it.
The only kids staying are the ones chasing rankings. So this restructure has zero to do with why so many quit USTA tennis. Its everyone else that is quitting, not the rankings chasers.
My kid played a tournament recently. A football weekend or something like that, so hotel was about $240 a night. He's hoping to play an upcoming sectional championship. Hotel + parking: $250 a night. Neither of these, nor the tournament coming up later in November, have discounted rates negotiated by the tournament. $120 a pop for registration fee, plus gas and food. Racquets: $220 each for three. Strings: $75 a month. Shoes: $80 every two months. Instruction: $72 an hour. Court time in the winter: $40 an hour. We can afford that, most families cannot.
That expenditure likely won't end in a college scholarship, since those are dwindling in number, many are half scholarships, and a third of them go to international students (at my local D1 school one player out of the nine on the team is American).
Meanwhile, soccer is growing rapidly in popularity with kids, and while it's not without Its own pay-to-play issues, the costs for team sports are generally way, way lower than for junior tennis. Cities have MLS teams where kids can go watch the stars play. The French Open is buried on a TV channel that requires an additional sports package.
Tinkering with the ranking lists won't change any of that.
It's incredible that the USTA has failed once again. They keep trying to change the system to justify their existence and they keep making it worse. Now that "more than 5,000 players have exited the USTA system in 2018 alone" this proves that they've made things worse.
Wayne Bryan warned the USTA several years ago that their new changes would only make things worse in his highly publicized comments nationally and on this blog; and he has now been proven correct. He warned the USTA that all this new green ball, red ball, 10 and under tennis garbage and the billions spent on the Orlando tennis center would be a mistake, a waste of money, and that USTA membership would not increase, it would only decrease. The USTA told him that they knew what they're doing and that they were the self proclaimed "experts" based purely on theories that were never tested. Their theories have now been proven wrong, and Wayne Bryan has been proven right. It looks they now have some new unproven theories so more trial and error; more waste of time and money and tremendous frustration for juniors and their parents. The only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the USTA will continue to demonstrate its incompetence. These USTA executives and junior development coaches are grossly overpaid and don't deserve this compensation; all that money would be much better utilized by subsidizing more players. It's so obvious but the USTA can't see this partly because they have their own self interest in making sure that the money goes to their undeserved salaries.
I've been around junior tennis my entire life as a player and ultimately as a coach. I could not agree more with the problem of asking kids to call their own lines. It's the cheating that drives a lot of kids away and quite frankly it's just weird to not have an official if there are any sort of stakes on the line--meaning ranking points. The USTA needs to solve that problem first and foremost of having an official or some neutral party assigned to oversee every sanctioned match. I probably won't have my kids play tennis simply because of that. I would have thought that by now this problem would have been so obviously solved. It's too bad.
Agree w/ all the comments re: officials. It's a huge issue. Another related issue that's not going to help tennis is that less and less people are interested in being an official in any youth sport. There are even some areas of the country where they are playing HS football games on Thursdays due to lack of officials. Too much abuse from parents and coaches (and players) have made it a pretty lousy gig. Personally I think it could be fun to officiate some youth sports, but the potential for abuse from coaches and parents makes it so not worth it.
I emailed the link on the USTA webpage concerning the changes. The response said that their research confirmed what we experienced about kids quitting due to the tournament atmosphere. They said they are planning more events for kids who want to play for fun. But that does not address the major problem....without supervision, matches for points and rankings will continue to be dominated by force of personality rather than ability.
Of course soccer (same with baseball) is popular, every town has a league that takes 2 minutes to sign up for and boom your on a team with 2 parent coaches and 10 kids. When you decide your child is better than rec level you pay more and sign up for club team. The organizations are set up locally and all you do is pay and show up. Any individual sport is more difficult logistically with finding coaching and of course more expensive.
Take soccer and baseball as an example of your cheating example, you need 2 for baseball and 3 for soccer for 20-28 kids (2 teams, average roster soccer 9-15 depending on age group and team, baseball 11-14). For tennis you have 8-15 matches going on at same time depending on draw size and multiple sites... and your asking for enough officials to cover that amount of matches? Obviously the draw gets smaller as tournament goes on, but its also hard to find enough qualified officials, not to mention its mind numbing being a umpire for a match.
I don't really see how orange and red balls is the major offender is all this, they tried and it didn't stick. I also don't think the USTA has money issues, they just don't do a great job in developing players. There are a lot of factors in developing players and in my opinion the biggest for the US is that it takes a lot of money in the US and kids with a lot of money are often not hungry enough.
When I played juniors and college tennis in the 80's and 90's players cheated, and I am sure players will always cheat. The European system is better with good younger players playing adult tournaments younger so you don't have to travel as far.
Golf has the same problems as tennis as far as less kids playing and huge cost barrier to entry.
USTA Junior Tennis is run by bureaucrats who hire expensive 3 party consultants to advise them on the dropping numbers for junior players. Consultants tell them whatever they want to hear. Complicated sectional structures, rankings, etc. So USTA doesn’t focus on real issue which is the degradation in the tournament experience. Cheating, bullying, arguing, etc. has become so rampant that it is driving fair and nice kids to leave tennis. Who wants to deal with a bully cheating and arguing across the net? USTA calls it good for development of kids…really? USTA is running decades behind in incorporating low-cost technology to solve some of these issues on court and improve the tournament experience. Basically, incompetent people running the system.
Post a Comment