Interesting happenings with NorCal 40+ 4.5+ Nationals representative

Pull up a chair for sure – Some good USTA drama.
Here is the sub-plot from what I can tell
Sectional Team A was originally captained by a person who has been sanctioned/banned by USTA NorCal for improper recruiting, score fixing, rating fixing, etc (this had been going on for years). A large group of captains/players filed and won a grievance against him this year. The grievance email got sent/forwarded to pretty much every captain in Norcal (it’s spectacular and long). The banned captain argued in part that it was his training regimen that made his teams so good and not his recruiting. USTA NorCal disagreed gave him a multi-year ban on a whole bunch of stuff somewhere around mid-40+ season.
The Sectional Team A he put together with a lot of 4.5A players was allowed to switch captains during the season (banned captain was listed as a co-captain for a while then removed completely) and team avoided sanctions.
It gets better as I hear – it was actually the banned captain who showed up at Sectionals and was the one coaching and distracting at the clinching match (rumor was he was filmed by Team B and that was part of the grievance).

I will say USTA NorCal let Team A switch captains and get to Sectionals so it seems strange to grievance the team on the last day.
Also curious to see if anyone can beat them at Nationals. They can basically field a full five line 5.0+ team for 4.5+ Nationals. If they don’t win look out for the NorCal 4.0As at Nationals next year.

schmke said:

What? Teams at Nationals have rosters that are friends? I thought they were all handpicked mercenaries from all parts of the local area, pulled together by a captain that researched, recruited, and planned going back to 2017?

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Only in Houston!

jviss said:

Pull up a chair for sure – Some good USTA drama.
Here is the sub-plot from what I can tell
Sectional Team A was originally captained by a person who has been sanctioned/banned by USTA NorCal for improper recruiting, score fixing, rating fixing, etc (this had been going on for years). A large group of captains/players filed and won a grievance against him this year. The grievance email got sent/forwarded to pretty much every captain in Norcal (it’s spectacular and long). The banned captain argued in part that it was his training regimen that made his teams so good and not his recruiting. USTA NorCal disagreed gave him a multi-year ban on a whole bunch of stuff somewhere around mid-40+ season.
The Sectional Team A he put together with a lot of 4.5A players was allowed to switch captains during the season (banned captain was listed as a co-captain for a while then removed completely) and team avoided sanctions.
It gets better as I hear – it was actually the banned captain who showed up at Sectionals and was the one coaching and distracting at the clinching match (rumor was he was filmed by Team B and that was part of the grievance).

I will say USTA NorCal let Team A switch captains and get to Sectionals so it seems strange to grievance the team on the last day.
Also curious to see if anyone can beat them at Nationals. They can basically field a full five line 5.0+ team for 4.5+ Nationals. If they don’t win look out for the NorCal 4.0As at Nationals next year.

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Sounds like this is the "gotta be something more" I figured there had to be.

jviss said:

The grievance email got sent/forwarded to pretty much every captain in Norcal (it’s spectacular and long).

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Any chance of copying and pasting those e-mail contents here? (Editing out the names, of course.) I'd love to read this "spectacular" document.

jviss said:

Pull up a chair for sure – Some good USTA drama.
Here is the sub-plot from what I can tell
Sectional Team A was originally captained by a person who has been sanctioned/banned by USTA NorCal for improper recruiting, score fixing, rating fixing, etc (this had been going on for years). A large group of captains/players filed and won a grievance against him this year. The grievance email got sent/forwarded to pretty much every captain in Norcal (it’s spectacular and long). The banned captain argued in part that it was his training regimen that made his teams so good and not his recruiting. USTA NorCal disagreed gave him a multi-year ban on a whole bunch of stuff somewhere around mid-40+ season.
The Sectional Team A he put together with a lot of 4.5A players was allowed to switch captains during the season (banned captain was listed as a co-captain for a while then removed completely) and team avoided sanctions.
It gets better as I hear – it was actually the banned captain who showed up at Sectionals and was the one coaching and distracting at the clinching match (rumor was he was filmed by Team B and that was part of the grievance).

I will say USTA NorCal let Team A switch captains and get to Sectionals so it seems strange to grievance the team on the last day.
Also curious to see if anyone can beat them at Nationals. They can basically field a full five line 5.0+ team for 4.5+ Nationals. If they don’t win look out for the NorCal 4.0As at Nationals next year.

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So that's the story behind the banned captain. It was posted towards the beginning of this thread and immediately edited out.

After what @sam_p and @jviss wrote, the question I have about this grievance is... why was the 2nd doubles team disqualified when neither player on the court did anything wrong?

Players are usually disqualified from a match due to a ratings issue or unsportsmanlike conduct on the court. In this case, the Tiburon team's grievance seems to be targeted towards what this ex-captain was doing off the court, with his supposed "coaching" (which would hardly be impactful in 4.5+ in my opinion) and overzealous cheering. Seriously, if the actions of some random yahoo in the crowd who isn't on the team can get a doubles duo disqualified after they've won on the court with officials present, I'd like to see the exact rule in the USTA guidelines for that.

Sounds like this captain is on his 5th+ strike which is absolute garbage. Is this the same captain who's team was perma banned years ago?

jviss said:

Pull up a chair for sure – Some good USTA drama.
Here is the sub-plot from what I can tell
Sectional Team A was originally captained by a person who has been sanctioned/banned by USTA NorCal for improper recruiting, score fixing, rating fixing, etc (this had been going on for years). A large group of captains/players filed and won a grievance against him this year. The grievance email got sent/forwarded to pretty much every captain in Norcal (it’s spectacular and long). The banned captain argued in part that it was his training regimen that made his teams so good and not his recruiting. USTA NorCal disagreed gave him a multi-year ban on a whole bunch of stuff somewhere around mid-40+ season.
The Sectional Team A he put together with a lot of 4.5A players was allowed to switch captains during the season (banned captain was listed as a co-captain for a while then removed completely) and team avoided sanctions.
It gets better as I hear – it was actually the banned captain who showed up at Sectionals and was the one coaching and distracting at the clinching match (rumor was he was filmed by Team B and that was part of the grievance).

I will say USTA NorCal let Team A switch captains and get to Sectionals so it seems strange to grievance the team on the last day.
Also curious to see if anyone can beat them at Nationals. They can basically field a full five line 5.0+ team for 4.5+ Nationals. If they don’t win look out for the NorCal 4.0As at Nationals next year.

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The original non-playing co-captain of Team A was suspended between Districts and Sectionals. A group of disgruntled captains and players, tired of losing for years, convinced the NorCal grievance committee that he wasn't good for the game. NorCal did not find him to have coached at Sectionals.

Jack the Hack said:

After what @sam_p and @jviss wrote, the question I have about this grievance is... why was the 2nd doubles team disqualified when neither player on the court did anything wrong?

Players are usually disqualified from a match due to a ratings issue or unsportsmanlike conduct on the court. In this case, the Tiburon team's grievance seems to be targeted towards what this ex-captain was doing off the court, with his supposed "coaching" (which would hardly be impactful in 4.5+ in my opinion) and overzealous cheering. Seriously, if the actions of some random yahoo in the crowd who isn't on the team can get a doubles duo disqualified after they've won on the court with officials present, I'd like to see the exact rule in the USTA guidelines for that.

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indeed, note how the story channeled here by Tiburon lacks details of the alleged events beyond a bunch of claims that actually never were upheld in the original byzantine grievance against the former co-captain. Who, incidentally contacted the NorCal office to inquire whether he was allowed to attend as a spectator - answer was "Yes".

Herbster said:

The original non-playing co-captain of Team A was suspended between Districts and Sectionals. A group of disgruntled captains and players, tired of losing for years, convinced the NorCal grievance committee that he wasn't good for the game. NorCal did not find him to have coached at Sectionals.

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Exactly, and as I said, the officials at courtside during the incident between two points at 1-1 in the second set did not feel that he created any disturbance or did anything untoward. He did pull out his phone to take pictures of the Tiburon players who were yelling at him, but pointing your camera phone at someone at a USTA match is quite obviously neither distracting or malicious.

Jack the Hack said:

After what @sam_p and @jviss wrote, the question I have about this grievance is... why was the 2nd doubles team disqualified when neither player on the court did anything wrong?

Players are usually disqualified from a match due to a ratings issue or unsportsmanlike conduct on the court. In this case, the Tiburon team's grievance seems to be targeted towards what this ex-captain was doing off the court, with his supposed "coaching" (which would hardly be impactful in 4.5+ in my opinion) and overzealous cheering. Seriously, if the actions of some random yahoo in the crowd who isn't on the team can get a doubles duo disqualified after they've won on the court with officials present, I'd like to see the exact rule in the USTA guidelines for that.

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Sorry for second reply - that ended up being the crux of the issue. The D2 match was played and FC won after coming back from down 4-7 in the super. Tiburon played, lost, shook hands and then filed grievance after losing match. After a couple of rounds of back and forth the GC overturned result of D2 despite acknowledging that no one could know if the "disturbance" (which the officials didn't see!) affected the outcome. The appeal of that decision pointed out that this is against the code that tennis played in good faith stands and the AC changed the ruling to state that the entire team was disqualified from attending nationals. The National USTA appeal committee said that is BS and said only they can decide about team eligibility after fairly earned, thus the winning team, after buying flights, making reservations had to fight the sectional grievance system all the way to the end to get to be the rightful representatives at Nationals. No one can rightfully say the berth isn't deserved.

So USTA updated it correctly and Foster City is the now the team going?

2ndServe said:

So USTA updated it correctly and Foster City is the now the team going?

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Correct

Herbster said:

The original non-playing co-captain of Team A was suspended between Districts and Sectionals. A group of disgruntled captains and players, tired of losing for years, convinced the NorCal grievance committee that he wasn't good for the game. NorCal did not find him to have coached at Sectionals.

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This is interesting. A lot of hearsay from people who watched the match and some clarification from actual FS players. Still a lot of questions though.
This is from the up-held former captain suspension email from May.
“This suspension includes any association with any USTA NorCal team, as a player, co-captain or captain, as a surrogate or as advisor”
“In addition, the team with which he has violated the terms of this decision will also be subject to sanctions including immediate disqualification and removal of the entire team from league play”
-Why is/was the the player from the D2 winning line suspended from usta play after the match? I believe still currently suspended. This is really strange if the actual grievance came from disturbances outside the court.
-To avoid team sanctions all you have to do is switch captains while the process is going on or claim he’s a non-playing captain?
-The actual match grievance really just came down to if someone distracted players at 1 all in the tie break that the umpire didn’t see? And not coaching? If that is the case no idea how USTA overturned the win.
-A lot of people watched this right?
-Suspended former captain showing up seems dicey but then again having a huge chunk of District and Sectional wins from Adjusted players seems dicey to me too.
I guess a win is a win.

This is sad.

jviss said:

This is interesting. A lot of hearsay from people who watched the match and some clarification from actual FS players. Still a lot of questions though.
This is from the up-held former captain suspension email from May.
“This suspension includes any association with any USTA NorCal team, as a player, co-captain or captain, as a surrogate or as advisor”
“In addition, the team with which he has violated the terms of this decision will also be subject to sanctions including immediate disqualification and removal of the entire team from league play”
-Why is/was the the player from the D2 winning line suspended from usta play after the match? I believe still currently suspended. This is really strange if the actual grievance came from disturbances outside the court.
-To avoid team sanctions all you have to do is switch captains while the process is going on or claim he’s a non-playing captain?
-The actual match grievance really just came down to if someone distracted players at 1 all in the tie break that the umpire didn’t see? And not coaching? If that is the case no idea how USTA overturned the win.
-A lot of people watched this right?
-Suspended former captain showing up seems dicey but then again having a huge chunk of District and Sectional wins from Adjusted players seems dicey to me too.
I guess a win is a win.

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From this, it sounds like the suspended captain violated the rules of his suspension, and perhaps the team did too, note the sentence on the team being subject to sanctions. This would seem to be the reason for the action taken against the team, not just a distracting fan and possible coaching as has been described so far. Was the action correct? I have no way of knowing, I'm sure there are more details than what is in this thread.

The NFL free agency period is not as confusing as this. This is serious tennis right here.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

jviss said:

This is interesting. A lot of hearsay from people who watched the match and some clarification from actual FS players. Still a lot of questions though.
This is from the up-held former captain suspension email from May.
“This suspension includes any association with any USTA NorCal team, as a player, co-captain or captain, as a surrogate or as advisor”
“In addition, the team with which he has violated the terms of this decision will also be subject to sanctions including immediate disqualification and removal of the entire team from league play”
-Why is/was the the player from the D2 winning line suspended from usta play after the match? I believe still currently suspended. This is really strange if the actual grievance came from disturbances outside the court.
-To avoid team sanctions all you have to do is switch captains while the process is going on or claim he’s a non-playing captain?
-The actual match grievance really just came down to if someone distracted players at 1 all in the tie break that the umpire didn’t see? And not coaching? If that is the case no idea how USTA overturned the win.
-A lot of people watched this right?
-Suspended former captain showing up seems dicey but then again having a huge chunk of District and Sectional wins from Adjusted players seems dicey to me too.
I guess a win is a win.

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First to answer your bullet points:
-- The D2 player is currently suspended from Norcal Tennis. Tiburon made up stories which were denied by USTA refs. Still the Norcal GC/AC chose to believe Tiburon. The Tiburon players are also on the GC and/or AC. There were more witnesses that said there was no disturbance outside the court -- from players, two referees, 4.5 ladies, and other spectators, but, the GC and AC chose to say they lacked "quality of character". The D2 player was suspended, because the GC/AC said they could not tell if they believed him, when he said he asked for water.

The original grievance did not come from disturbances outside the court. Tiburon claimed the co-captain was captaining. He was not, and they could not find any evidence that he was. In fact, they let that point go, ending their whining about the previous co-captain captaining. Only after their original grievance was repudiated, Tiburon and the GC and AC engineered the story about outside disturbances.

--The captain was never changed. When the co-captain was sanctioned from a previous grievance, Norcal removed him from all USTA teams. This happened to occur during the 40+ season. The co-captains were not "switched" by Foster City. The original co-captain was suspended for previous history, nothing to do with the 40+ season. Your statement is incorrect, regarding switching of captains to avoid team sanctions. The team Captains had nothing to do with the sanctions. However, moving forward, the GC and AC chose to make a warning on the Captain and Co-captain for "not controlling" spectators in regards to the D2 Sectional match.

-- Former co-captain, NOT captain, shows up only after GC grants specific permission for former co-captain to attend, spectate, and cheer for Foster City. This is not dicey. It's a public venue. The Foster City team, while following the rules of Norcal, does not take part in McCarthyism, nor does it shy away from those who have been unfairly attacked.

-- The unsubstantiated claim of distraction was in the second set at games 1 all, not in the tiebreaker. Yes, no one I know understands how Norcal thought they could overturn the match. In fact, they then reversed their original overturning of the match and chose to suspend the team. They questioned the "character" of Foster City because:
1. They didn't know what the FC D2 player said
2. FC was unable to control spectators.
and therefore said they were unfit to represent Norcal.

I don't know what your statement "I guess a win is a win" means or has anything to do with this embarrassing and shameless behavior of Norcal and Tiburon.

schmke said:

From this, it sounds like the suspended captain violated the rules of his suspension, and perhaps the team did too, note the sentence on the team being subject to sanctions. This would seem to be the reason for the action taken against the team, not just a distracting fan and possible coaching as has been described so far. Was the action correct? I have no way of knowing, I'm sure there are more details than what is in this thread.

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The suspended co-captain did not violate any rules of his suspension, therefore, the team did not either. Please re-read the sentence on the actual sanction. The original co-captain was not allowed to captain, advise, etc. Nowhere did it say he could not attend matches. The GC wrote an email specifically saying he could attend, cheer at the matches, but not advise or captain.

Everyone involved (on both sides) needs to reevaluate their lives. As does anyone cheating / sandbagging their way to a USTA league title at any level other than the highest available to them.

Clearly question marks not statements because all of this sounds unreal. Thanks for the clarification. Seems pretty clear FC should go through on the Sectional grievance front.
A win is a win was tongue and cheek reference to what everyone dislikes about what this team did. Filled with 5.0s who seem to be able to appeal down multiple times instead of actually playing at their level. Bone spurs?
To most this isn't exactly earning the big win.
The grievance email doesn't seem to differentiate between captain or co-captain. He started the 40+ as the co-captain so it's an easy jump to think he was doing the same things that got him a multiyear suspension. Especially considering the win percentage of the adjusted players on the team. Guess not.
Think most would agree this complete hot garbage rating NorCal rule bending is bs.
No more adjusting down

Herbster said:

The suspended co-captain did not violate any rules of his suspension, therefore, the team did not either. Please re-read the sentence on the actual sanction. The original co-captain was not allowed to captain, advise, etc. Nowhere did it say he could not attend matches. The GC wrote an email specifically saying he could attend, cheer at the matches, but not advise or captain.

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You're clearly biased, I'm saying where there is smoke there is fire and that captain seems to have a lot of smoke around him not only in this situation but in the past.

Yeah, to me it seems fishy. Captain is banned from captaining... but shows up for his team anyway. I'd bet even odds that whatever he's banned for is still going on with the team, just with him doing it unofficially rather than officially as captain.

The whole situation with overturning a result based on a grievance based on hearsay, and then overturning it back, is such a massive clusterf though. Glad I'm not on any of the teams involved.

jviss said:

Clearly question marks not statements because all of this sounds unreal. Thanks for the clarification. Seems pretty clear FC should go through on the Sectional grievance front.
A win is a win was tongue and cheek reference to what everyone dislikes about what this team did. Filled with 5.0s who seem to be able to appeal down multiple times instead of actually playing at their level. Bone spurs?
To most this isn't exactly earning the big win.
The grievance email doesn't seem to differentiate between captain or co-captain. He started the 40+ as the co-captain so it's an easy jump to think he was doing the same things that got him a multiyear suspension. Especially considering the win percentage of the adjusted players on the team. Guess not.
Think most would agree this complete hot garbage rating NorCal rule bending is bs.
No more adjusting down

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All appealed members of the team appealed only once, their usta ratings must have been just .00 something above the 4.5 level because they requested to appeal in 2018 and the appeals were immediately granted. Appeals had nothing to do with medical requests.

I don’t know why Usta allows appealing up or down. I don’t myself agree with having appeals. Nevertheless, the Foster City team did not cheat; whereas Tiberon and Norcal lied and fabricated stories.

Why do you complain about the appeal rules and not about the poor character in lying and cheating, and making false grievances by Tiberon, and Norcal’s less than stellar manner of handling this grievance? You may not like certain rules, but why do you complain about the people who follow them? Shouldn’t your anger or dislike be towards those who make these rules you consider to be “garbage”? ... and don’t you have anything to say about the dishonorable behavior of Tiberon and Norcal?

The Foster City Team had zero contact with this original co-captain regarding tennis and this team since his suspension, and the FC Team abided by ALL the sanctions imposed on him.

Everyone can believe what they want, but my only bias is for the truth.

I don’t know what original grievance email you are referring to, btw.

mikej said:

Everyone involved (on both sides) needs to reevaluate their lives. As does anyone cheating / sandbagging their way to a USTA league title at any level other than the highest available to them.

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This is very true, but won't happen. From someone who is in Texas and has viewed some craftier situations than this, but equally strange. There are retired from careers captains that spend 40 hours a week on USTA, mostly planning and not playing. These people do not have lives to evaluate. They aren't out there having great love lives or dating lives on the weekends, they aren't having much of a vacation life, they never had success in tennis at the collegiate level, it's a unique group of people who are mostly in boring family life situations or are single and don't have active social lives. For some even, it's a healthy escape from a bad divorce or something they want to avoid thinking about, so they play tennis on 10 teams. The cheating and scheming is hard to understand, but it's just a an application of so much life energy and time to something they can control and maybe "win" and then brag about, mostly to non-tennis players. They become the tennis guy or tennis gal to their friends. That's the only way I've been able to understand it, to really think about why they are choosing this activity, to this degree of obsession. I think the same league activities like softball and bowling leagues capture the same types. Also, kickball leagues for the under 25 crowd are equally silly and full of social missfits.

There truly is an opportunity for a docu-comedy just like "Best in Show", if only tennis movies ever made any money. (notoriously, tennis movies fail at the box office).

Herbster said:

All appealed members of the team appealed only once, their usta ratings must have been just .00 something above the 4.5 level because they requested to appeal in 2018 and the appeals were immediately granted. Appeals had nothing to do with medical requests.

I don’t know why Usta allows appealing up or down. I don’t myself agree with having appeals. Nevertheless, the Foster City team did not cheat; whereas Tiberon and Norcal lied and fabricated stories.

Why do you complain about the appeal rules and not about the poor character in lying and cheating, and making false grievances by Tiberon, and Norcal’s less than stellar manner of handling this grievance? You may not like certain rules, but why do you complain about the people who follow them? Shouldn’t your anger or dislike be towards those who make these rules you consider to be “garbage”? ... and don’t you have anything to say about the dishonorable behavior of Tiberon and Norcal?

The Foster City Team had zero contact with this original co-captain regarding tennis and this team since his suspension, and the FC Team abided by ALL the sanctions imposed on him.

Everyone can believe what they want, but my only bias is for the truth.

I don’t know what original grievance email you are referring to, btw.

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I do agree that its wrong to file a grievance after a match ends. I believe you have to stop the match if something is going on. FC is moving on and that looks like the right decision on that front. And I can imagine how frustrating it must have been but even you have to admit the optics on everything else look not so good.
A banned co-captain to start the season (part of ban was for recruiting and rating manipulation) and a team that primarily uses 4.5A players in big matches (with a huge win percentage). In comparison- last years National NorCal team had two A players - one was 5-4 and the other was 9-4.
Crazy you dont need a reason to adjust (did not know that). Pretty much everyone thinks a whole bunch of guys deciding to all adjust the same year and team up is problem.
Yeah it's the usta fault for letting it happen but you have to take some credit as a team for your manipulation.
You guys played the system well. Good luck.

I would love to hear some of the Texas stories some time.

Herbster said:

All appealed members of the team appealed only once, their usta ratings must have been just .00 something above the 4.5 level because they requested to appeal in 2018 and the appeals were immediately granted. Appeals had nothing to do with medical requests.

I don’t know why Usta allows appealing up or down. I don’t myself agree with having appeals. Nevertheless, the Foster City team did not cheat; whereas Tiberon and Norcal lied and fabricated stories.

Why do you complain about the appeal rules and not about the poor character in lying and cheating, and making false grievances by Tiberon, and Norcal’s less than stellar manner of handling this grievance? You may not like certain rules, but why do you complain about the people who follow them? Shouldn’t your anger or dislike be towards those who make these rules you consider to be “garbage”? ... and don’t you have anything to say about the dishonorable behavior of Tiberon and Norcal?

The Foster City Team had zero contact with this original co-captain regarding tennis and this team since his suspension, and the FC Team abided by ALL the sanctions imposed on him.

Everyone can believe what they want, but my only bias is for the truth.

I don’t know what original grievance email you are referring to, btw.

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It is truly remarkable the degree to which people excuse the corrupt behavior of the section GC and AC. They think that there must be something shady going on or how could the match have ever been overturned? It is sad, because the team that won on the court has to defend itself continually.

The whole appeal thing is a canard as well. The USTA grants computer appeals because they know the algorithm is imprecise at the edges. Players within 0.05 above the border are granted a computer based appeal without question. The appeal players on the FC team are virtually all from two previous teams that have been in the 40+ mix for most of the last 4 years and all are friends and familiar with each other from before this season. Sure, there are a couple of guys from a distance, but the core all are a tennis family and play together frequently. That the timing is finally right to make a run with a very deep team is something everyone on the team is grateful for - that is why the fight to get the team’s rightful shot was so cohesive and persistent.

There is plenty more to this story but hard to tell it without revealing some of the vile private emails and comments from the opposing team that seemed to really think they could cheat their way to getting a win.

To me it is a scandal that a team that lost in districts and got a wildcard to sectionals and then lost at sectionals thinks they are the appropriate representative to go to Nationals.

An even bigger issue is that the GC and AC felt that it was reasonable and fair to strip a team of a win because they have been feuding with a single individual for several years (mostly about claims related to involvement in 3.5 teams that have no relationship to higher level play).

Ok, these are in the forums already, but Texas is just better at "scheming". Houston formed a team once with all the best players from the entire area on one team, impressive, not really cheating, but not the spirit of the league. Dallas team lost 3 seasons in a row, every line, at 4.5 to get knocked down to 4.0, that's a ton of losing on purpose, if 15 guys don't win once for about 10 months. A 4.0 team is doing that now in Dallas to make a run at 3.5. Players on teams in cities hundreds of miles from their homes. Paying usta membership fees, paying bounties for good players, etc.

Enjoy..

FuzzyYellowBalls said:

Enjoy..

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That video is AMAZING! Somebody had fun putting that together!

mikej said:

Everyone involved (on both sides) needs to reevaluate their lives. As does anyone cheating / sandbagging their way to a USTA league title at any level other than the highest available to them.

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I honestly can't decide which is worse: the team that is built up with sandbaggers by a captain that shouldn't be captaining, but shows up anyway... Or the team(s) with friends in high places fabricating/exaggerating stories to DQ the former.

How wonderful it must be to win at 40+ 4.5 that people will go to these lengths to do it!

FuzzyYellowBalls said:

Ok, these are in the forums already, but Texas is just better at "scheming". Houston formed a team once with all the best players from the entire area on one team, impressive, not really cheating, but not the spirit of the league. Dallas team lost 3 seasons in a row, every line, at 4.5 to get knocked down to 4.0, that's a ton of losing on purpose, if 15 guys don't win once for about 10 months. A 4.0 team is doing that now in Dallas to make a run at 3.5. Players on teams in cities hundreds of miles from their homes. Paying usta membership fees, paying bounties for good players, etc.

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Hunter Emmott will always be the worst. This is a guy who was a nationally ranked junior and major conference D1 recruit at Baylor, so at least a 5.5 level player. A captain with a well known reputation for being shady has him sign up for an "open" doubles league self-rated at 5.0. Conveniently, he only plays 4.5 opponents and loses badly in every match for a 4.0C rating, while in the same season, wins open level doubles tournaments against 5.0 competition that conveniently have no bearing on his rating.. How anyone with even the slightest shred of decency can think that it's right to put a 5.5 level D1 recruit in a 4.0 lineup is beyond me.

J_R_B said:

Hunter Emmott will always be the worst. This is a guy who was a nationally ranked junior and major conference D1 recruit at Baylor, so at least a 5.5 level player. A captain with a well known reputation for being shady has him sign up for an "open" doubles league self-rated at 5.0. Conveniently, he only plays 4.5 opponents and loses badly in every match for a 4.0C rating, while in the same season, wins open level doubles tournaments against 5.0 competition that conveniently have no bearing on his rating.. How anyone with even the slightest shred of decency can think that it's right to put a 5.5 level D1 recruit in a 4.0 lineup is beyond me.

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slight correction he played at Texas A&M, but everything else is spot on.

Hunter Emmott was doing God's work: proving to TTPS that not all 4.0's are pushers.

jm1980 said:

How wonderful it must be to win at 40+ 4.5 that people will go to these lengths to do it!

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I mostly just laugh to myself anytime someone brags about winning USTA nationals, assuming they didn’t do it at the open / 5.0+ level.

It’s basically the equivalent of a swimmer bragging:
“I won the 18+ 50 y freestyle event for people who rated themselves as taking over 2 minutes per 50 y”
“Cool, I can swim that in 30 seconds but let’s hear your time”
“1:47”
“Oh so basically you shouldn’t have been competing with those people, but nice job”
“Thanks, have you seen my team’s banner?”
“...”

Competing in these USTA sectional / national events makes for some fun weekends with friends and good competition, but anyone who is managing their rating / the ratings of their team members to try to be the biggest fish in some small, meaningless pond...whatever, have at it. The better players at your club all think you’re silly, whether they tell you to your face or not.

mikej said:

I mostly just laugh to myself anytime someone brags about winning USTA nationals, assuming they didn’t do it at the open / 5.0+ level.

It’s basically the equivalent of a swimmer bragging:
“I won the 18+ 50 y freestyle event for people who rated themselves as taking over 2 minutes per 50 y”
“Cool, I can swim that in 30 seconds but let’s hear your time”
“1:47”
“Oh so basically you shouldn’t have been competing with those people, but nice job”
“Thanks, have you seen my team’s banner?”
“...”

Competing in these USTA sectional / national events makes for some fun weekends with friends and good competition, but anyone who is managing their rating / the ratings of their team members to try to be the biggest fish in some small, meaningless pond...whatever, have at it. The better players at your club all think you’re silly, whether they tell you to your face or not.

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These competitions have their place - they give people who can't compete in open competitions something to try to win. People like competition. It's human nature. But, you're right about doing the underhanded things to manage ratings and whatnot to get an unfair edge. The value of the NTRP championship is the competition, not the prize. If you compete fairly and win, it's an achievement to say you won the competition, but the prize itself (i.e. being the "best" third tier team in the country or whatever) is meaningless, so if you have to cheat to win the prize, you really aren't winning the competition and your prize is completely meaningless.

Since this is in the NorCal thread, I should add the disclaimer that I'm not implying that either or both of the teams in this discussion are cheating in any way. I have no opinion on that other than that the whole conflict seem childish.

Wow, just wow. Seems like we need a thread where we crowd source the most incredible USTA stories.

But on topic to have a captain banned does cheapen the whole thing. Makes the intent and actions up to the ban questionable. But post ban IF all rules are followed it would seem petty to judge a entire team’s character. But I play in the NorCal section and have seen a few crazy stories of appeals and complaints. It would seem to me if you can’t prove that anything bad happened coaching or distracting or whatever than you have to assume it didn’t happen. Just as if you aren’t sure a ball is out than it must be considered in. But when you have these dream teams built up and people with some clout affecting decisions of course bad things may come.

The truely bad part is the timing but given all that was posted on here seems the right decision was come to in the end. At least in my opinion.

jm1980 said:

I honestly can't decide which is worse: the team that is built up with sandbaggers by a captain that shouldn't be captaining, but shows up anyway... Or the team(s) with friends in high places fabricating/exaggerating stories to DQ the former.

How wonderful it must be to win at 40+ 4.5 that people will go to these lengths to do it!

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You are obviously biased since no one on the FC team is a sandbagger and there is no evidence of such. Furthermore the captain was always the captain and had no grievances against him.

I don’t know why you don’t understand that it was the co-captain who was grieved and about events entirely separate from this team. The co-captain performed no captain duties after his suspension for any team, and the GC, the AC, and even Tiberon gave up on that false accusation. Why do you keep saying such false things?

I also don’t understand why you cannot believe some tennis players are friends, the ex co-captain and all the players on this team happens to be ours.

Herbster said:

You are obviously biased since no one on the FC team is a sandbagger and there is no evidence of such. Furthermore the captain was always the captain and had no grievances against him.

I don’t know why you don’t understand that it was the co-captain who was grieved and about events entirely separate from this team. The co-captain performed no captain duties after his suspension for any team, and the GC, the AC, and even Tiberon gave up on that false accusation. Why do you keep saying such false things?

I also don’t understand why you cannot believe some tennis players are friends, the ex co-captain and all the players on this team happens to be ours.

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How could I be biased if I don't know anybody on either team?

I'm just going off what has been said on the thread and my experience with USTA teams that are built to win year after year. This usually means some form of recruitment and/or rating manipulation is being used. Can you explain the allegations that the team has been using 4.5A players to win key matches (the team has eight 4.5A players, by the way)?

Having a captain that has been suspended for past shenanigans is always a bad sign because these people don't tend to change. For example, if you tell me Jason Freeman was involved in putting together a team in Houston, I'm already going to assume it's stacked with sandbaggers even if Freeman himself wasn't captaining it anymore.

mikej said:

I mostly just laugh to myself anytime someone brags about winning USTA nationals, assuming they didn’t do it at the open / 5.0+ level.

It’s basically the equivalent of a swimmer bragging:
“I won the 18+ 50 y freestyle event for people who rated themselves as taking over 2 minutes per 50 y”
“Cool, I can swim that in 30 seconds but let’s hear your time”
“1:47”
“Oh so basically you shouldn’t have been competing with those people, but nice job”
“Thanks, have you seen my team’s banner?”
“...”

Competing in these USTA sectional / national events makes for some fun weekends with friends and good competition, but anyone who is managing their rating / the ratings of their team members to try to be the biggest fish in some small, meaningless pond...whatever, have at it. The better players at your club all think you’re silly, whether they tell you to your face or not.

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I generally agree with you, however, don't agree that winning at 5.0+ is any more impressive. There are obviously multiple levels above that as well. The best 5.0+ team would do OK at the 5.5 Nationals in Vegas, but probably not win and they would have no chance in the Open Invitational in Vegas. Furthermore, the Open invitational team wouldn't beat a strong current D1 college team who wouldn't beat the best D1 college teams, who all would get taken apart by journeyman Challenger level pros who would all get destroyed by the World Laver Cup team who gets routinely destroyed by the Europe team.

The bottom line is that USTA is fun because it does give players a chance at competition against players of "similar" level. Similar is in the eye of the beholder for sure though and the USTA ratings are hardly perfect.

sam_p said:

I generally agree with you, however, don't agree that winning at 5.0+ is any more impressive. There are obviously multiple levels above that as well. The best 5.0+ team would do OK at the 5.5 Nationals in Vegas, but probably not win and they would have no chance in the Open Invitational in Vegas. Furthermore, the Open invitational team wouldn't beat a strong current D1 college team who wouldn't beat the best D1 college teams, who all would get taken apart by journeyman Challenger level pros who would all get destroyed by the World Laver Cup team who gets routinely destroyed by the Europe team.

The bottom line is that USTA is fun because it does give players a chance at competition against players of "similar" level. Similar is in the eye of the beholder for sure though and the USTA ratings are hardly perfect.

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I’m just talking about the best league level that is available to most players - there’s some added respectability in joining the highest league available to you. There aren’t any 5.5 or open USTA teams that I’m aware of anywhere near me. The couple 5.5s I know have basically been forced out of the USTA system locally, after unsuccessful appeals simply asking to be 5.0 again so they can play some league tennis. I guess they should move to Texas where the section seemingly doesn’t care what’s going on as long as a bunch of laughable low-level nationals banners are rolling in.

And the attitude is totally different at 5.0+, no one thinks they’re winning anything important at these USTA events, as most had much bigger accomplishments earlier in their tennis careers. Half the time around here they’re double-defaulting Monday sectionals matches to get back to work.

mikej said:

I’m just talking about the best league level that is available to most players - there’s some added respectability in joining the highest league available to you. There aren’t any 5.5 or open USTA teams that I’m aware of anywhere near me. The couple 5.5s I know have basically been forced out of the USTA system locally, after unsuccessful appeals simply asking to be 5.0 again so they can play some league tennis. I guess they should move to Texas where the section seemingly doesn’t care what’s going on as long as a bunch of laughable low-level nationals banners are rolling in.

And the attitude is totally different at 5.0+, no one thinks they’re winning anything important at these USTA events, as most had much bigger accomplishments earlier in their tennis careers. Half the time around here they’re double-defaulting Monday sectionals matches to get back to work.

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Yep, agree, the higher the level the more you know how far you are from the top.

mikej said:

I’m just talking about the best league level that is available to most players - there’s some added respectability in joining the highest league available to you. There aren’t any 5.5 or open USTA teams that I’m aware of anywhere near me. The couple 5.5s I know have basically been forced out of the USTA system locally, after unsuccessful appeals simply asking to be 5.0 again so they can play some league tennis. I guess they should move to Texas where the section seemingly doesn’t care what’s going on as long as a bunch of laughable low-level nationals banners are rolling in.

And the attitude is totally different at 5.0+, no one thinks they’re winning anything important at these USTA events, as most had much bigger accomplishments earlier in their tennis careers. Half the time around here they’re double-defaulting Monday sectionals matches to get back to work.

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The higher level players care more about tournaments and less about league.

it's not even 100 posts yet and I'm out of popcorn already. is there more dicey details coming?

jmnk said:

it's not even 100 posts yet and I'm out of popcorn already. is there more dicey details coming?

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Here man...

Imagine if all you had to come home to was a USTA Nationals title. SMH.

FuzzyYellowBalls said:

Ok, these are in the forums already, but Texas is just better at "scheming". Houston formed a team once with all the best players from the entire area on one team, impressive, not really cheating, but not the spirit of the league. Dallas team lost 3 seasons in a row, every line, at 4.5 to get knocked down to 4.0, that's a ton of losing on purpose, if 15 guys don't win once for about 10 months. A 4.0 team is doing that now in Dallas to make a run at 3.5. Players on teams in cities hundreds of miles from their homes. Paying usta membership fees, paying bounties for good players, etc.

Enjoy..

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What the hell is wrong with people??!!

FuzzyYellowBalls said:

Ok, these are in the forums already, but Texas is just better at "scheming". Houston formed a team once with all the best players from the entire area on one team, impressive, not really cheating, but not the spirit of the league. Dallas team lost 3 seasons in a row, every line, at 4.5 to get knocked down to 4.0, that's a ton of losing on purpose, if 15 guys don't win once for about 10 months. A 4.0 team is doing that now in Dallas to make a run at 3.5. Players on teams in cities hundreds of miles from their homes. Paying usta membership fees, paying bounties for good players, etc.

Enjoy..

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omfg