My Easter Bowl 16s and 18s Recap; USTA Announces Goal of 35 Million Tennis Players, Vows to Support Next Generation of Stars; Piric Announces Departure from Miami Men's Program; NAIA Taylor University to Bring Back Tennis
The last two days of the FILA Easter Bowl were tense ones, with rain in the forecast for the final day Saturday and eight finals to be played after the semifinals in singles and doubles were completed Friday. All four of the doubles finals and the Boys 16s singles final were completed by Friday night, with the three other singles finals and seven other consolation finals and third place matches taking place in the early morning Saturday, before the rain arrived.
Usually the weather isn't worthy of much consideration when it comes to the Easter Bowl, but as anyone who was at the BNP Paribas Open last month knows, that wasn't the case in Indian Wells this year. My recap of the 16s and 18s tournament for the Tennis Recruiting Network was published today; for Monday's recap of the 12s and 14s tournament, click here.
Today the USTA announced a goal of 35 million tennis players in the United States by 2035, which would be about 50% more players than the 23.8 million the USTA says play tennis now. That means more courts and more coaches will be needed and the retention rate of current players must improve, all of which are a part of the 35 by 35 project the USTA describes here.
I found the fourth prong mentioned in this project the most interesting and suspect it was added after the Jose Higueras email began circulating (my post on that is coming soon):
- Supporting and elevating the next generation of stars. The USTA remains committed to its efforts to develop, support and showcase the best events, players and coaches that U.S. tennis has to offer—empowering up-and-coming competitors to achieve their full potential, and providing a clearer path for our top junior performers to reach the pinnacle of the sport and motivate millions more to follow in their footsteps.
In college tennis news, Aljosa Piric, who has been head coach of the University of Miami's men's program for the past eight years, has announced he will be leaving at the end of the season. Piric, who coached at Old Dominion and Georgia Tech prior to taking over at Miami in 2016, has accepted a position as Director of High Performance and Recruiting at Tennis Innovators Academy in White Plains New York, according to yesterday's release.
Taylor University, an NAIA school in Indiana, announced on Monday that it would be reinstating its men's and women's tennis programs in 2025 after they were dropped during the pandemic. The release contains this quote from Athletic Director Kyle Gould:
"We are excited that our current environment allows men's and women's tennis to return to their rightful status as intercollegiate sports here at Taylor," stated Gould. "We have a strong history of competitive success and life-changing development in both programs and we look forward to hiring the right coach to lead these programs back, starting in the fall of 2025."
1 comments:
Tennis in the US faces so many systemic challenges, it's hard to know where the USTA should start. Certainly early youth development needs attention - important to get more kids playing at the entry level. But, outside of larger cities and suburbs the opportunities for early childhood competition are limited. My town has great tennis instruction available at the tennis center of the local university, but there are no opportunities for regular match play for kids (and no leagues for adults) and the nearest U10 tournaments are an hour away from here and buried in the playtennis platform where parents won't stumble upon them. We have 6 indoor courts and during winter and especially during the university's dual match season they're near impossible for recreational players to reserve. Clinics are great! But competition is what gets kids hooked on any sport.
Then if your kid advances a bit and wants more regular match play the costs start ramping up - shoes, racquets, stringing, entry fees, instruction, indoor court time in the winter, gas and hotel and food if compete beyond the district level and up to the sectional level. You can spend $10k a year without ever flying to a tournament. National aspirations? Hope you have one parent who makes $300k a year and another parent whose work situation allows extensive travel. Or that you live in Florida or Southern California, because otherwise high-level competition won't be nearby.
The common threads of these challenges are cost and geography. We can look at the European model and try to learn from it, but Europe is densely packed and so costly travel to get quality match play is not as essential there as it is for those outside FL/CA in the US - not to say their model isn't expensive too, but at least that variable is a little moderated. I'm not sure how you solve that problem in the American context. Some parents might think it's worth the spend if it might end in a scholarship, but over time they'll learn how relatively scarce those are. Some justify the spending as a route to elite college admission. But for most families local affordable rec options don't exist and the USTA junior experience involves too much travel.
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