New USTA changes (whats your season looking like?)
 

32 Y/o

Playing Adult 18+

We had 11 teams last season. 5 teams are leaving us for 40+ league.

we have 6 remaining. Our main Rival is still in our league so that's good but 3 of the remaining 6 teams were typically C teams and with losing records so the competition has dropped with the change.

Seems like the majority of good players went 40+ (as we only had 11 of us in the whole league younger than 39)

Fortunately my team didn't desert me even tho only 2 of us on the team are younger than 39 :)

and we picked up one other guy who's team voted 40+ and left him team less. so we are looking solid for singles now.

should be fun as always but I feel like it's not going to be that competitive of a season with the change and so many good players leaving us.

Our team is playing 18+, and 40+, and USTA Single's League

Probably will end up playing both if the states are on seperate weekends. :) I just turned 44 today so 40's will surely be fun to play. :)

I would like to play both 18+ and 40+. For SoCal, the 18+ is April to July and I'm not sure when the 40+ league will be. Hopefully, it will be a different time than the 18+ so it's easier to play both.

There is an open question as to whether my group of gals will play the 40+ league at all. I am not going to captain it because I am already captaining combo. If someone steps up, great. Otherwise . . .

Thankfully, we have one Captain who captained 18+ Spring and Fall, 40+ Fall, two Combo teams, a
Singles team and one Mixed...all in one year.

Tremendous effort by him.

And 18+ Fall .....didn't mean to short him ;)

for us 40+ mens is playing thursday nights with 18+ playing saturday mornings

I'm only 25 and the changes don't affect me (for a few more years!), so I will probably just play all the regular stuff (mixed, combo mixed, weekend spring team, weekday spring team, singles season, combo doubles, combo mixed, tri-level)

I am not sure yet ... if I was forced to choose one level I think I would prefer the 40+ groupings. Just seems like more fun ....

However, My adult teams have played at sectionals the last three years ... so even though the 18 year old high school self rates that end up going to nationals each year have left a bad taste in my mouth ... I still feel some obligation to continue to defend our "titles" by playing 18 +.

I used to play 3 levels of mixed in the winter, and adult tennis in 2 different districts at both 4.0 and 4.5. Between those teams I would get 40-50 matches per season.

Presumably, if I were not bumped and I participated in all opportunities, I could theoretically play on 6 winter teams (October-April) and 7 Summer teams (March - August). I wont be playing that much but I have not yet figured out what I am going to choose.

I totally saw this coming!!! The USTA better have some long-range plans in place, because they are going to be driving away a lot of <40 yr old players because there will be no teams for them to play on!

Yeah right now it feels like 40+ is the "in crowd league". The guys that play every week have had the same teams for years etc etc..

I have never seen anyone in our league younger than 25 and usually around 26-28 they have newborns and are not playing regular and then get back into tennis in their early 30's

Like I stated in the original post if we had a pure league of younger than 40's
we would only have 11 people (1 team)

I guess they are hoping to make money off all the 40+er's that double up on leagues and are not worried about the younger people.

We only had four teams at my level last year. 2 of them have registered 18+ (they had a couple people under 40), and 1 has registered 40+. If the last one registers 18+, not sure what the 1 team will do that's 40+.

All this is doing is limilting the number of people we'll get to play against, whihc will make the league less fun. In my area we don't have enough people to to have all these different divisions.

I'm 37 and kinda bummed. I get no new playing opportunities, and for people 40+ there is a lot more going on! :(

I can't believe I'm complaining about not being old enough!

Don't wish yourself old, T. I meet the new criteria and I ain't playin' it. And if I can't find an 18+ team to take me, well then, I'm done with USTA. I'll just play to play.

Ok, I'm not really complaining...but I do think it odd that the older players are going to have so many more playing opportunities and the 18+ hasn't changed at all. But I also think it will be interesting to see how it actually pans out around here...our clubs seem already maxed out by the existing leagues. And I'm hoping having 40+ in the winter doesn't bump out the singles league, which has really taken off and prospered.

Two of my friends are 39 and will turn 40 next year, and trust me, they are going to garner a LOT of complaints. Neither looks anything even remotely resembling 40 (like you AQ!) and are super duper fit. They, however, are really looking forward to it! Haha!

USTA is simply catering to the fact that there are more older players and they have more time to spend on tennis (a generalization of course).

For example, just in this thread, we see people observing how the 40+ crowd actually makes up a majority of 18+ teams.

The 40+ division is being played on Sunday afternoons in this area. Lots of football fans say they don't want to play at that time and are continuing to play 18+. That might change in the spring.

So, today is the deadline for team registration for our district. Last fall there were a total of five 4.5 teams. This year, only 3 are registered, 1 for 18&over and 2 for 40&over. That's not enough to make up a league.

I looked at the 4.0s and the same thing is happening, it's a splitting of the teams between the 2 divisions. They will probably have enough for a league, but it won't be as competitive as last year.

There weren't enough people to go around to make this realignment work. Someone didn't do their research... how depressing not to be able to play USTA this fall :(

won our match saturday...they guys complained about us being young and able to run more than them

lol

I asked them "well how come you guys didn't play 40+?"

Them: "Oh we saw that most of the best players went to that league and figured we would have a better chance in this one"

(head slap)