New questions-dallasoliver/T. Recruiting

[MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER]

At the TENNISRECRUITING site the LATEST spring Letters of Intent (LOI) and commitments have been posted-

When a player lists a school, they are posted under that school's "list"- It is a little confusing when you sort by school then look up the player and realize they are NOT going there- have no offer (and most likely will not).
You have 1-2 stars going D1. Why add players "wish lists" to commitments?

Stories on top players very interesting, even if most readers are not on the same planet as these guys.

I think players SHOULD read the commitments closely and think positively-
Every junior player should look at where they are and then look at some of these players who have been offered team scholarships at some really good schools!
The Tennis recruiting site is a great tool for finding schools that have tennis programs and where you might fit.

Originally Posted by MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER

At the TENNISRECRUITING site the LATEST spring Letters of Intent (LOI) and commitments have been posted-

When a player lists a school, they are posted under that school's "list"- It is a little confusing when you sort by school then look up the player and realize they are NOT going there- have no offer (and most likely will not).
You have 1-2 stars going D1. Why add players "wish lists" to commitments?

Stories on top players very interesting, even if most readers are not on the same planet as these guys.

I think players SHOULD read the commitments closely and think positively-
Every junior player should look at where they are and then look at some of these players who have been offered team scholarships at some really good schools!
The Tennis recruiting site is a great tool for finding schools that have tennis programs and where you might fit.

if a player commits to a school, whether or not they got scholarship or signed a loi or are even playing on the team, they can put that they commited there because they might be going there regardless of a roster spot. there are many walk-ons. if a person got a scholarship or signed a loi it says that they did

[dallasoliver]

kc got it right, but here is a little more detail...

TennisRecruiting.net gets its information on commitments from three different sources:

1) Players report commitments by updating their profiles.

2) Coaches report commitments through the website or via email after an official signing.

3) Reliable independent news sources (e.g., college websites, newspapers).


Source (1) is an important source for us - it provides us with more than 60% of our data. However, it is obviously the least reliable - and it is one of the chief reasons that we review all profile updates. In addition to the review process, coaches do have the opportunity to refute player-reported commitments, but they often leave players on the list who want to try and walk on the team without a scholarship.

We do have a feature on the roadmap to help address this issue. We hope to differentiate in the future between players who will have a roster spot - players who plan to walk on - and people who are just planning on attending the school without necessarily playing tennis. Again, this is a feature on the roadmap - it has not been scheduled.

[10isRocs]

Hey Dallas,

It seems that the USTA in putting a greater emphasis on doubles and for a college teams, it is as important as singles in match play. Do you intend to work on some sort of doubles ranking on your website? Some kids do well much better indoubles but not singles but that will not show up under a player profile...How will coaches know your ability in doubles, or even find you, if you do not list doubles info? Thx

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by 10isRocs

It seems that the USTA in putting a greater emphasis on doubles and for college teams, it is as important as singles in match play. Do you intend to work on some sort of doubles ranking on your website?

Good question - and one that we get asked a lot. We currently do not include doubles play in our rankings or feature them prominently at TennisRecruiting.net.

I personally love doubles, and Julie Wrege (one of our founders who spent many years running the Girl's 14 Nationals in Atlanta) has always pushed for doubles to have prominence.

Our position is NOT because we find doubles unimportant. On the contrary, we would love to feature doubles more prominently. We are not doing more with doubles because it is a very difficult problem to tackle with a head-to-head ranking system.

Let me take a break to provide some background. (Apologies to those of you who already know all of this.) There are two kinds of ranking systems: (1) points-based systems, where players are fundamentally awarded points based on how far the progress in tournaments, and (2) head-to-head systems where players are assigned rank values based on who they beat. The USTA and its sections use points-based systems for the most part, and TennisRecruiting.net uses a head-to-head system.

Handling doubles in a points system is straightforward - just assign points to both players based on the round that they reach. You can even have a combined ranking that is a combination of point values from both singles and doubles.

In a head-to-head system, ranking with doubles is not so obvious. We tried some naïve things - like crediting both winners and penalizing both losers - but the resulting rankings were horrible. Combining doubles with singles failed just as badly. A second problem we ran into was data quality. We spend an enormous amount of time and money getting accurate data for singles. While the data quality for singles is pretty good, we have found it difficult to get good data for doubles.

So, to answer your question, we have approached this problem a couple of times, but the task always seemed daunting with no good solution - and even if there was a good solution we are unsure if we would be able to handle the problems of getting the data.

In the end, we have always decided to tackle much smaller problems that we knew we could solve - like including player photos, ranking recruiting classes, etc. We are a small company with very limited resources - we can only tackle a small number of features each year, and we want those features to have a good bang for the buck.

None of this is not to say we are ignoring the problem. As time goes on and data quality improves, the task of incorporating doubles may become simpler.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Dallas

[10isRocs]

Dallas,

Thanks for your response.

Now that the USTA has stopped National individual/team doubles rankings it theoretically takes away an easy way for college coaches to identify good doubles players. While a coach can go and look at individual player records, it seems to penalize a good doubles player since they might not be in the top of a player list where the coaches are looking. We know some kids who are great doubles players but even adding these National points, do not put them anywhere near the top of the lists where the coaches are looking.


We fully understand the limits of your website and thank you for all the hard work you do. Maybe you can get the USTA to reinstate double team rankings...you have the pull...right?

[chrisplchs]

dallas,

how is Christian Harrison still listed on there? I thought you only list people that are still eligible to play college, i.e. non-pros. I confirmed it last week after speaking to a person extremely in the know that he turned pro the same time Ryan did.

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by chrisplchs

How is Christian Harrison still listed on there? I thought you only list people that are still eligible to play college, i.e. non-pros. I confirmed it last week after speaking to a person extremely in the know that he turned pro the same time Ryan did.

Good question. We talked to the Harrison family directly when Ryan signed, and the boys' father indicated that they were trying to work things out such that Christian would still have the option to play college tennis. Based on these statements, we have left Christian in the rankings for now (although Ryan has been removed).

dallas, are u guys still considering doing the stars again in the spring time around now? i think it would be really beneficial because people move up a lot, especially in the critical recruiting time of junior and senior year, and a lot of coaches will see a 1 or a 2 star and not even look at someone when they are really in a 3, 4, or 5 star range

[Zhou]

Dallas,

Do you include Challenger 1 events? I live in Minnesota.

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by kctennis1005

dallas, are u guys still considering doing the stars again in the spring time around now?

This is a feature that people often ask about. Your arguments for redoing the stars are all good ones, although I think you need to give more credit to college coaches - they can tell the difference between a 2-Star recruit who has been improving and a 4-Star recruit who has been falling.

This feature is now on our roadmap, and we have been talking about exactly how it will be implemented for the past 9 months or so.

Unfortunately, it does not look like it will happen in the 2007-08 timeframe. We are in the middle of a number of different projects, and we did not budget time/resources for a spring ratings. As I have mentioned before, doing the ratings involves a great deal of data entry, validation, and correction. It is not as easy as just doing another ranking.

Hopefully we will see two rating periods in the 2008-09 timeframe.

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by Zhou

Do you include Challenger 1 events? I live in Minnesota.

The short answer is that we use some but not all of your Challenger 1 events.

A description of the tournaments we use in rankings is shown here:

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/faq.asp#Rankings-J

Julie Wrege oversees our ranking process, and she tells me that these are sectional events that must meet our minimum criteria of 30% national players in an event - where a national player one who has competed in a USTA Level 1-3 tournament or in one of the Sectional tournaments that count for USTA national rankings.

[COME ON!]

^^^
dallas
why dont i show up on your site ive defeated a few 1 star players in tournaments an i search for my last name and nothing shows

[babolat15]

dallas,
my good friend ryan lipman just decided on vanderbilt like two weeks ago

[MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER]

Lets rub that Internet lamp, and see if we can't ask Dallasoliver for a little more of his time with some constructive questions about Tennisrecruiting.

Dallas- Can you see an overall (and admitted VERY general) number boy players have been historically to be picked up by a D1- D2-D3 school BEFORE the schools turn to foreign players?

That is, you and your staff must love the numbers, and have seen general trends in your experiances; Maybe throw in something +/- on grades, and forget girls (a separate rank system all together due to a number of reasons).

If you want to do a short lecture on GRADES and tennis- Thats o.k. I think most guys know that you are put in "the rack" in minor sports- Tennis coaches want 40 hour weeks for their 25% scholarships, and don't care if you have a tough time trying to go to school- (Don't really say different) so good study habits are critical- But throw us a bone- give us an idea to work toward as well.

I know the answers will have to be general, as you don't want to leave a lot of your customer base with their faces hanging out, but your readers have always found you honest.
Thanks

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by COME ON!

^^^
dallas
why dont i show up on your site ive defeated a few 1 star players in tournaments an i search for my last name and nothing shows

We get this question a lot. The answer has to do with the tournaments that are included in the rankings.

All ranking systems use a subset of the available tournaments:
- Points-based systems like those used by USTA national and the ITF specify which tournaments will count and what the point values will be.
- Head-to-head systems like the one used by TennisRecruiting.net specify which tournaments will count to guarantee enough cross-play between players for good rankings.

Even though you defeated some 1-Star opponents, you may not have played them in tournaments used in the TennisRecruiting.net.

I hope this answers your question in general. For questions about specific tournaments in your area, send us an email: info [at] TennisRecruiting.net.

Best,
Dallas

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by babolat15

dallas,
my good friend ryan lipman just decided on vanderbilt like two weeks ago

Hey babolat15 -

Thanks for the heads up. Ryan actually contacted us a few weeks ago about the commitment, and we have had him listed as a Commodore since that day.

We are actually running a story on Ryan at TennisRecruiting.net this Thursday. Colette Lewis caught up with Ryan at the Grass Courts in Philly to talk about his commitment. Stop by the site on Thursday to check it out.

Best,
Dallas

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER

Lets rub that Internet lamp, and see if we can't ask Dallasoliver for a little more of his time with some constructive questions about Tennisrecruiting.

Hey Manfred -

I have a lot going on today. Give me a little time and I will address this one later on in the week.

Best,
Dallas

[iowabagelboy]

Im still confused on this whole thing. I cant figure out why someone is ranked ahead of me when they havent played since 8/2007. Also If its a dual event where novice and open play in the tournament in seperate divisions open division players dont get scored by tennisrecruiting.com for our open matches. I guesss that is the percentage rule in action? I also dont understand the reasoning with the Prince Hot 100. I see many players with records 6-5 7-4 and other average records make the list but my 15-4 last month didnt and I'll bet my 24-4 for this month doesnt make it either. Its seems to me if you arent playing national events then your website doesnt help me. Thats to bad because 90% of us cant play nationals. Im playing hard and my usta ranking is way up but I can just barely break the top 1000 in my class on your website. Also I cant understand how a 1 star is ranked higher than a 2 star and 3 star. Same 1 star player had 3 wins over a 3 star that is playing up out of his division. Do you get bonus points for beating someone with you that has more stars even if they are 3 years younger than you? Please update your faq section so I can understand all of this better.

[MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER]

^ Iowabagel, A lot of your questions, I think you know the answer in your heart already.

Where you live and play makes a big difference in the number and size of the tournaments available to you- That's just how it is.

Yes, it stinks that you can't size up against big states- California, Florida, Texas- heck even Atlanta has more boy 16 junior players than some states Juniors, total. All year tennis and money is an advantage, period.

The changes in "the star system" are NOT immediate- Thay are annual, and seem soooo slow in coming when you are on the way up, don't look for the stars to change like USTA rank; It has been explained in threads like this- Just research threads by using search options and insert search words like Tennisrecruiting, and DallasOliver- Your questions have all been asked and answered here in the past and learning to search these threads is a great, great resource.

The search option(s) are great for string, rackets, rules, everything to do with tennis written by some pretty knowledgeable players- some college players; Some say some pros read this stuff and even (rarely) post under the "fake" names- I read some wild opinions that Johnny Mac used to post under "Eviserator"

The word for you is stick with the USTA Mid *EST section rankings and work to be the best- get your endorsement(s) and shoot for the Big tournaments from those endorsements. If you want to know more about this path, read your USTA membership rules book, talk to a top player on endorsements, or contact your Section Junior's coordinator, They WORK for you as a USTA member.