Anyone have a League Coordinator as the worse offender of sandbagging?

[Govnor]

sounds to this non USTA player that if you aint' cheatin, you ain't tryin!!

[Vik]

This is my area. I remember a few years back when I got back into tennis after a 10 year layoff. I called the league coordinator to find a 4.5 team.

I explained my situation and that I had played college tennis back in the day. Said coordinator wanted to make sure I was absolutely certain I was a 4.5 and not a 4.0. Now I know why

That said, the greatness of his 4.0 squads are getting exaggerated on here. I think he may have captained one 4.0 team to nationals a few years back. His team does usually make sectionals (but honestly FW is not one of the cities as evidenced by this year's sectional result). Can't comment on his senior exploits.

Do I think he goes the 'extra mile' to make the best 4.0 team. Yeah. Is it any worse than people/teams in other cities. No. I've seen way, way worse examples of tanking in Dallas.

[JLyon]

Originally Posted by Vik

This is my area. I remember a few years back when I got back into tennis after a 10 year layoff. I called the league coordinator to find a 4.5 team.

I explained my situation and that I had played college tennis back in the day. Said coordinator wanted to make sure I was absolutely certain I was a 4.5 and not a 4.0. Now I know why

That said, the greatness of his 4.0 squads are getting exaggerated on here. I think he may have captained one 4.0 team to nationals a few years back. His team does usually make sectionals (but honestly FW is not one of the cities as evidenced by this year's sectional result). Can't comment on his senior exploits.

Do I think he goes the 'extra mile' to make the best 4.0 team. Yeah. Is it any worse than people/teams in other cities. No. I've seen way, way worse examples of tanking in Dallas.

hah nothing beats the tanking in Dallas, except for a few select group in SA (DC), and RB down in Houston

[DeanMacBaine]

Originally Posted by twos

Sounds like you were there. If fw were a bunch of serious sandbaggers, I assume you think those other teams up there were too? I See that Houston won all the men's division. 4.0 4.5 5.0 and 5.5. That's pretty impressive. Is Houston the Mecca of sandbaggers too? I'm not being sarcastic, just wanted your take since you were most likely there.

I played against the Houston team last year. Same core group of guys and both of the guys I saw in doubles are still on the team that won this year. I think they beat me and my partner like 0&1 or 0&2. They both said that was the best match they've played in awhile so maybe they just had a good day. I know the lesser of the two guys would probably be the 2nd or 3rd best dubs player on our team (though last year he would have been the best). The other guy though, no clue how he was a 4.0. I even checked his stats after I saw they won Sectionals this year. This other guy is undefeated at 4.0, 2-1 at 4.5, and 3-1 at 5.0. I can understand playing up a level but playing up two levels and winning 75% of your matches??? I'll let you draw your own conclusions there. If he isn't bumped then the system is seriously broken.

Sometimes I wonder how well the USTA balances the ratings from different regions. Houston just brings some really good teams every year and yes, I do think there is some sandbagging. But I don't know those teams personally so I don't know what to think of their losses. I know Miller's team and I've seen them dominate Fort Worth and then when the ratings get to high, they go out and lose to 4.0s that would be lucky to get to the 2nd round of any 3.5 major zone.

Again, sandbagging goes on and we expect it to a degree. But this is a league coordinator actively ordering players to lose to keep ratings lower. That is what is so frustrating. Especially when his team wins the FW division every year. One good thing about it is that it is forcing the rest of us to get stronger as a team. We haven't resorted to sandbagging yet but in the end, it may be the way to go if we ever want a chance to compete nationally.

[DeanMacBaine]

Originally Posted by Vik

This is my area. I remember a few years back when I got back into tennis after a 10 year layoff. I called the league coordinator to find a 4.5 team.

I explained my situation and that I had played college tennis back in the day. Said coordinator wanted to make sure I was absolutely certain I was a 4.5 and not a 4.0. Now I know why

That said, the greatness of his 4.0 squads are getting exaggerated on here. I think he may have captained one 4.0 team to nationals a few years back. His team does usually make sectionals (but honestly FW is not one of the cities as evidenced by this year's sectional result). Can't comment on his senior exploits.

Do I think he goes the 'extra mile' to make the best 4.0 team. Yeah. Is it any worse than people/teams in other cities. No. I've seen way, way worse examples of tanking in Dallas.

But one the big problems with the league is what you just mentioned. You called him to find some 4.5 team options and he was basically recruiting you for his 4.0 team. Every year when he rolls out some new players, this is how he gets them. He gets the call as a League Coordinator but takes is as a Team Captain. If the player is a good 4.0, he nabs them. If not, he passes their info along. And if they are 4.5 and willing to self rate lower, he is all over it.

[goober]

Originally Posted by Vik

This is my area. I remember a few years back when I got back into tennis after a 10 year layoff. I called the league coordinator to find a 4.5 team.

I explained my situation and that I had played college tennis back in the day. Said coordinator wanted to make sure I was absolutely certain I was a 4.5 and not a 4.0. Now I know why

That said, the greatness of his 4.0 squads are getting exaggerated on here. I think he may have captained one 4.0 team to nationals a few years back. His team does usually make sectionals (but honestly FW is not one of the cities as evidenced by this year's sectional result). Can't comment on his senior exploits.

Do I think he goes the 'extra mile' to make the best 4.0 team. Yeah. Is it any worse than people/teams in other cities. No. I've seen way, way worse examples of tanking in Dallas.

While it may be true that bigger cities have more depth and can work the system even better, that doesn't excuse his behavior. I don't see how anybody can objectively look at it and not see it as anything other than cheating and unethical. The fact that he is a representative of the USTA makes it even more embarrassing.

[cknobman]

Originally Posted by DeanMacBaine

But one the big problems with the league is what you just mentioned. You called him to find some 4.5 team options and he was basically recruiting you for his 4.0 team. Every year when he rolls out some new players, this is how he gets them. He gets the call as a League Coordinator but takes is as a Team Captain. If the player is a good 4.0, he nabs them. If not, he passes their info along. And if they are 4.5 and willing to self rate lower, he is all over it.

Bingo - hammer meet head of nail.

[goober]

hooray it has already started. ESR were released and several 4.5 were bumped down to 4.0 mostly playing mixed. Of course they all end up mysteriously on the same team. One guy even got bumped down despite winning an open level tournament. Sure a lot of 4.0s can do that. I guess tourneys only count into year end ratings. I can already see all the tank jobs that are coming with 3-2 victories all fall season so they can all get their precious C ratings at the end of the year.

[Littlemissball]

Originally Posted by DeanMacBaine

In our league, this guys team wins the Fort Worth playoff every season in the 4.0 division. He has a great core of senior guys that all used to be 4.5 and are now 4.0. These guys all go to nationals almost every season as a senior team. If they get bumped to 4.5, the admittedly try to lose every match in the fall season to get bumped down for the next spring (he runs a 4.5 team for this purpose too).

He brings unrated players on in the fall and has them go about .500 so they can be computer rated for spring and thus no dreaded DQs. As a team they also lose 1-2 matches towards the end of each season just to keep their ratings down. And they will lose to some pretty bad teams or some marginal players that should be probably be 3.5.

Anyway, they kick *** in playoffs and win every year, usually in a 4-1 or 5-0 match every time. This year was the closest anyone has come in awhile pushing it to 3-2 in the finals but they beat the same team 4-1 in the regular season. Then they use fall league as a way to bring their ratings down. They get 3 guys bumped to 4.5 in the mid season but all are able to play on the 4.0 Senior team. Now this playoff team is going to sectionals but 0-4 in this senior league. These 4.5 guys have yet to win more than 3-4 games total against very poor 4.0s and even one 3.5 rated guy that was playing up. It obvious what they are doing. Hell if they were olympic badminton players, they'd be DQd. But what can be done about this? Again, this is the League Coordinator for all of the Fort Worth men's leagues. If this guy is so blatantly gaming the system, it basically means we all have to cheat or find 4.5 guys intentionally willing to lose games to compete.

And should the USTA consider weighting the fall leagues differently? This guy uses it solely for bringing ratings down. I'm sure alot of the national level teams do this as well.

Big time where I am at. Not even funny. Really pathetic and some people absolutely do not want a challenge whatsoever. I totally sympathize. I totally understand.

[schmke]

Originally Posted by DeanMacBaine

No kidding right. At least his team went 0-2 today at Sectionals. Though Fincher went 2-0 today. He will have to lose badly at least 2-3 more times in the over 40 league to make up for it.

I was just going through some old threads and came across this one. Clearly there are some emotions involved here so I thought I'd do a quick objective analysis from an outsider.

I took a look at all regular season adult, senior, super senior, and adult fall leagues for Fort Worth and here is a chart showing my Estimated DNTRP for one of the named players in this thread. These charts show the individual match rating in blue and the Estimated DNTRP in red.

To explain what we see here, every player has ups and downs and we'll see this on the chart. But it is uncommon for the range of best to worst to be larger than 0.5, and certainly rare to have more than a couple results that far apart and for them to alternate back and forth throughout a year.

First, for 2011:



There are some great results and some terrible results, the range being a full 0.78. And there are clumps near the extremes, with 6 matches above 3.8 and 4 below 3.5. And if we look at which leagues the highs and lows occurred in we see an interesting trend.

The first 7 results are from the senior league 1/22 thru 3/12 and while there are two not as good match results, those were still wins and just against weak competition. The next 5 results are adult league and include one of the worst results but a good result too. The last 2 are fall league and are both poor results.

So for 2011, some of the up and down results are due to the opponents, some could just be to normal good/bad days, but the last 2 poor results in fall league would seem to support the theory that it is played simply to keep one's rating down. Especially with each being a straight sets loss.

For 2012:



Here the range is 0.68, again pretty large. Here the first 5 are senior league and just the 5th was a poor result and was actually a loss. The next 5 are all adult and similarly just one poor result, this one still a win but against weak competition. The last 3 are again fall league where the performance again drops.

For 2012, one of the results is due to the opponent being weak, but again the fall league looks suspicious, especially with them all being convincing losses including a 6-1,6-1 to a self-rated player that isn't shown.

Note that this doesn't include any playoff results which would presumably be against tougher competition and attempted to be won which would all be good results increasing the necessity of some bad matches in the fall league to keep the rating down.

[Timbo's hopeless slice]

look, I just thought I would relate this little story, even though it doesn't strictly equate to 'sandbagging'

I play in a league that is technically 'open', 3 person teams and mostly local coaches and their best HS age pupils.

The standard is around 5.0 but there are a couple of guys who are better than that.

Anyway, there is one team who, while not dominating, usually win the league. They have had the same team for the last few years, the club coach at number 1, a guy who wins a lot of state level 55+ tournaments at 2 and a young guy at 3.

Anyway, we had never beaten them, but this year we changed something in our team. We brought in our number 1 player's dad to play at number 2. He is in his sixties but was a real star back in the day. (TTers might remember me telling the story of having a hit with him last year)

So, we played them first round, and behold!, we won!

Next round came along and they rolled out a 'new team'
The club coach had been relegated to number 3 and pos 1 and 2 were now filled with towering young men home from College on a break and ranked in the top 20 nationally!

To make matters worse, we had a fill in number two as David was away at the national Seniors championships.
We got absolutely smashed!

what does this have to do with your situation?

Not much, but it is kind of relevant and a reminder that, whatever the standard, it doesn't take much to upset the balance.

(although, as I said, this is an open league and we field the best three guys we have got!)

[Timbo's hopeless slice]

update

we didn't win a set, but averaged 3 games per set...

sigh

it's fun, but it would be nice to have your very best serves not come back every single time!

[cknobman]

I know this is digging up an old thread but I just had to post back on this spring.

The much discussed "league coordinator" in this thread has done it yet again. Not only is he responsible for league division/team/match scheduling he also happens to field is own team as well (can we say conflict of interest?).

Anyways as usual his spring team is kicking everyone's butt. This year his team was a perfect 8-0.
I say WAS because one of his (several) self rated players has already been DQ'ed! This DQ caused one of the matches he played in to turn from a 3-2 victory into a 2-3 defeat.

This self rate had just so happened to not only go undefeated in league play but was stupid enough to play 6 tournaments and to pretty dang good in those tournaments. I think the tournament play along with his last match (0&2 drubbing of someone at singles) was what got this guy.

Anyways if you look through his players he has a guaranteed 2 other players (maybe 3) that are on the line for DQ as well because they are going undefeated in this spring with no previous history or only 1 or two prior matches.
He also has a player or two that lost almost every single fall match and are now magically 7-1 or 8-0 in the spring.

Good times.

[asimple]

Originally Posted by DeanMacBaine

Sorry but I'm not getting my *** handed to me. I went 6-1 this season plus another 3-1 in playoffs. I even went 1-1 against the great Miller's team. And there are a few others in this very thread that have experience with this guy by playing on his team and they admitted to what goes on. So maybe you should just stay out of a thread if you are only talking out of your ***.

It sounds like you shouldn't be a 4.0 as well with that record and you are just angry that he is sandbagging more effectively than he is. From what I have seen the 4.0 level is a nightmare. Maybe you should just focus on getting bumped up and play at 4.5

[lostinamerica]

I can tell you that there is nothing in Fort Worth that compares to the shenanigans in Houston or Dallas. The captains in those cities are not league coordinators.

[SunshineJS]

Originally Posted by cknobman

I know this is digging up an old thread but I just had to post back on this spring.

The much discussed "league coordinator" in this thread has done it yet again. Not only is he responsible for league division/team/match scheduling he also happens to field is own team as well (can we say conflict of interest?).

Anyways as usual his spring team is kicking everyone's butt. This year his team was a perfect 8-0.
I say WAS because one of his (several) self rated players has already been DQ'ed! This DQ caused one of the matches he played in to turn from a 3-2 victory into a 2-3 defeat.

This self rate had just so happened to not only go undefeated in league play but was stupid enough to play 6 tournaments and to pretty dang good in those tournaments. I think the tournament play along with his last match (0&2 drubbing of someone at singles) was what got this guy.

Anyways if you look through his players he has a guaranteed 2 other players (maybe 3) that are on the line for DQ as well because they are going undefeated in this spring with no previous history or only 1 or two prior matches.
He also has a player or two that lost almost every single fall match and are now magically 7-1 or 8-0 in the spring.

Good times.

Tournaments don't count towards DQs... only matches in USTA leagues

[beernutz]

Originally Posted by SunshineJS

Tournaments don't count towards DQs... only matches in USTA leagues

Good point. To further clarify the issue the NTRP FAQ states:

Do USTA sanctioned tournaments count in the dynamic rating system? If so, can a tournament win be used as one of the three “strikes”?
Each Section has the option of including NTRP tournament results for year-end calculations. If your Section includes sanctioned NTRP tournament match scores, they will not be calculated into the system until after the USTA League National Championships. Sanctioned NTRP tournament results do not generate strikes; however, they will impact your year-end rating.

[lostinamerica]

Originally Posted by beernutz

Good point. To further clarify the issue the NTRP FAQ states:

Do USTA sanctioned tournaments count in the dynamic rating system? If so, can a tournament win be used as one of the three “strikes”?
Each Section has the option of including NTRP tournament results for year-end calculations. If your Section includes sanctioned NTRP tournament match scores, they will not be calculated into the system until after the USTA League National Championships. Sanctioned NTRP tournament results do not generate strikes; however, they will impact your year-end rating.

The tournaments are suppose to get included but my novice observations is it has very little effect if you played playoffs. I know a doubles team that got mid season bumped, won 3 major zone tournaments and finished 1st in the state in doubles. They had an average playoff (2-2). They then went 4-0 at the higher level in the fall. They got moved back down at year end. Go figure...

[HoustonHacker]

He and Fincher have been sandbagging together for years.

LOL. They tried to tank against my team in a meaningless match at Sectionals and got incensed when we tanked back. They still ended up 4.0 the next year.