Team rosters and club politics

I'd be interested to know how other club players handle their USTA teams, especially when you have more than one team at each level.
The other issue is that we have more players than available spots due to a court shortage on some nights/days.

Should the club or the pros get involved in this or just let the designated captains sort it all out?

This issue will continue this summer and fall as we move into mixed (3 lines) and adult combo (3 lines). I'll bet 30% of our club will be left out bc of court shortage especially at the 7.5 level.

I'd hate for it to come to this, but does anyone do a lottery for team spots?

This continues to be an issue at my club and I'd really like to get some feedback from other players from club teams. The main issue is whether the club pros should get involved when selecting teams for USTA matches. Our club does not get involved and invariably some members get their feelings hurt when the don't get on the "A" team or don't get on any team at all.
This all came to a head this year when one of our ladies teams decided to roster all 3.5 players on a 4.0 team. It left some of the legit 4.0 players without a team and they had to got play out of a public park while paying club dues.

So how does your club handle USTA teams? do they get involved or just let the captains sort it out?

It is up to the captains to sort it out. When you get the clubs involved, it gets messy and noone ends up being happy.

Who's "noone"?

My club has a couple of players who act as liasons across the different levels of players (4.0-4.5) and (3.5-4.0). Over the course of the year there are opportunities to intermix the levels and these liason-types facilitate that, along with the help from the club pros. So overall, it's a pretty open dialog when it comes to who plays on which teams. There are clearly a core group of guys who form the team at a given level, and then there are guys who could play up or down a level as they sit in between (i.e. top end of a given NTRP rating). So depending on how much play time they want, they go up or down (up implies less playtime, down implies more).

Now with all the recent bumps there is going to be a fair amount of reshuffling. The issue is problematic for folks who have been with a given group for a while and formed bonds and now a fraction are no longer eligible to play at that level. At the higher level some of these players are of questionable value and may end up playing very little, or quite possibly not make the team. I don't get the sense this is ego driven however....it's more about the numbers. Forming multiple teams at the same level is a possibility but then the rosters are pretty thin and teams end up defaulting.

Hopefully it settles out favorably for everyone, but in the end it wouldn't surprise me to see one or two players in less than favorable situations this year.

Here, it is up to the captains to recruit players for their individual teams. Their is no "general pool" of club players that are divided up between the teams. The captains have to talk to the guys and get them to join their team.

Here we very occasionally run across this problem, usually in mixed, this year in mixed 7.0. Once a few years back we ran across it in one of the women's adult levels. Back then it was written in the bylaws that the pro would divide the teams, and there would be a competitive team and a development team. Well, you can imagine how thrilled the pro was to look through his stable of paying customers and decide who was good enough for the competitive team. It got pretty ugly. And the competitive team only made it to local playoffs anyway.

So now we have a club member that is the league chair consult with the captains and the pro and divide up the teams evenly. I was the league chair last year, and was recently at the end of the season party and heard that though people originally thought the teams weren't even, they finished the season with identical records. So apparently I chose okay.

So this was my algorithm for mixed.

-You get the list of interested players.
-Pick captains first. This is basically volunteers, or people who you think you can talk into volunteering.
-Then put the captains and their spouses on each of the teams.
- If their spouses are odd ratings (in 7.0 mixed, 3.0s playing up or 4.0s playing down) put the other interested odd rating people on that team. (The few times I've done this I ended up with one team all 3.5 and the other with some 3.5 pairs and some 3.0 and 4.0 pairs.)
-Now you group people in partner sets. You know, the couple (A) that won't play together, but she plays with guy B, and his spouse, girl B plays with guy C, and girl C plays guy A.
-Some of these sets are very good, some are just really fun. Make sure there are very good and really fun on both teams.
-We then also had them run all practices together, and put their home matches one after another so they could cheer each other on.
-And needless to say, the end of the year party was joint.

I'm not a member of a club, but I think I know how one club did it, according to a friend who told me about it.

They had various players on the various level teams (I don't know how this was done originally). Once a player/doubles pair was on a team, they could "challenge" anyone who was higher to a match. If the challengers won, they took the spot of the other team.

This system did not work. The challenged team had a way of never being available to schedule the match. They had an incentive to hide and no incentive to come out and play.

I believe the club now has a system where players can sign up for whatever team they think is appropriate, but the pros do the line-ups. So if you sign up for a level that is too high, you will ride the bench. My friend seems to be a lot happier with this system.

I've usually seen the "system" work best when captains recruit their own players.

I think it puts a club pro in a very tough spot to assign people to teams.

I have also heard of clubs that have people sign up for teams that are divided by how much time you are willing to put into practices. So if you are willing to practice 4 times a week, you can be on team A, if you are only available 2 times a week, you can sign up for team B, if you don't commit to practice at all , you are stuck with team C as your only option.

Within the top teams there are ladders. At the beginning of the season the ladder freezes. Top teams available play in every lineup. You can only be challenged for position during the season if you lose your USTA match. It's got to be a big club with very committed players to be able to really run this kind of team.

I think that clubs should stay out of choosing teams and leave it up to the captains. People captains teams for a variety of reasons. Some captains want to put together a great team that can advance to post season. Some want to play with their friends. Some do it because no one else will....and this is probably the majority of captains. So if someone is going to take the time and energy to captain a team, they shouldn't be told who is going to be on their team. It seems like when club pros interfere and try to divide teams by ability, it gets ugly. Club pros often don't know who the better players are anyway. They don't spend their time perusing Tennislink and watching USTA league matches. So they don't have much to go on.

The thing about clubs is, well, they are clubs. People join to play tennis. Part of the dues pays for courts, and implied in that is that they get to play on club teams. If captains get to pick teams, and there are a glut of people at that level, some members are not going to be picked up for a team. And a club really doesn't want disgruntled members. I play in a section of NorCal this is mostly clubs, and all have rules on USTA teams, and none that I've heard of give court time to captains that pick their own teams.

That is not to say captains can't pick teams, just to say they need to find public courts to play their USTA matches on. And many in this area are able to do just that.

It's hard for pros to get involved with this because their professional goals differ from potential goals of having a team.

Teaching pros want to make money, they do this by teaching lessons and drills.

So it's good for their students to get on these teams as well because it motivates those participants to continue to take lessons and drills.

However that can sometimes result in a weak team, or even worse a team with far too many players (so nobody gets a chance to play much).

Or sometimes they are the teaching pros that fill a team full of too many players but purposely under rate them. It's because they dont want to look bad if the team does really poorly. (which is common for some teams that have too many players where nobody gets to play a lot of matches)

I think whether it's good or not kind of depends.

At my club, they dont do anything to get involved in forming teams so it's all up to the captains. Because of that there are a lot of players who just never end up on a team and that cant be a good thing. (especially since one of the main points of USTA tennis is to get people interested and involved in tennis)

People who can't get on teams can always become a captain and start their own team. I did that the first year I played tennis. I hear a lot of people saying they can't get on a team, so I always suggest they start another team and captain it. If they can't find enough interest in their own club, they can go outside of the club, find some courts and form a team with others in the same boat.

catfish said:

People who can't get on teams can always become a captain and start their own team. I did that the first year I played tennis. I hear a lot of people saying they can't get on a team, so I always suggest they start another team and captain it. If they can't find enough interest in their own club, they can go outside of the club, find some courts and form a team with others in the same boat.

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I think this depends on the club. Around here people join clubs to get on teams. It's part of the club marketing, and why the clubs allow non-members (the visiting team) play on their courts. If you join a club and they still don't put you on a team, then you quit the club and tell anyone that will listen why you quit the club and voila, the club has trouble selling memberships.

Though if you are one of those folks that doesn't mind recruiting your own team and getting your own courts I'm thinking why pay to join the club in the first place. There is plenty of good tennis outside the clubs.

Joeyg said:

Who's "noone"?

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Here, USTA team rosters have NOTHING to do with a club membership. Individuals captain teams and do their own recruiting. While it's fairly common for several club members to be on the same team because they're friends, that's not a requirement in any way. Belonging to a club does not mean you'll get invited to be on a team - even if several or even most of the members of the team come from that club.

On the other hand, Kansas City has a pretty strong TENCAP league. In Tencap Tennis, club membership IS required to be on a team, and teams are comprised of ONLY members from the same club. Some of the larger clubs have several teams competing against each other in the same division. In this case also, the teams are captained by individual club members. The club pro's do not get involved (as far as I know) with getting people placed on teams.

Geezer Guy said:

Here, USTA team rosters have NOTHING to do with a club membership.

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Same here.

Except that those of us who are non-club members are aware of which teams are the "country club" ladies. We, uh, take particular pride in beating those teams. We have noticed that such teams often seem to have been coached by a pro to employ certain doubles tactics -- relentlessly, regardless of their appropriateness to the situation. So you will see teams who follow every ball to the net for two hours but who cannot volley so well, have no overheads and cannot run down lobs. Heh, heh.

I sometimes sense that the Country Club Ladies have their own views about the non-club members. We are usually not so smartly dressed, for one thing -- you will often see non-club members in T-shirts or track pants rather than snazzy tennis attire. And there was one match last year where an on-court argument deteriorated into a verbal smackdown, and one of the Country Club Ladies said something derogatory about "county players." Something like, "Well, I guess that is how people do things in the county, but at Woodmont we try to behave better."

Trouble is, the county player on my team who was involved in the fight is a notorious cheater, so I guess she gave us all a bad name.

Cindysphinx said:

Except that those of us who are non-club members are aware of which teams are the "country club" ladies. We, uh, take particular pride in beating those teams.

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I've found that tennis people are tennis people, regardless of whether they are playing out of a country club, swim and racquet club, cabana club, or on public courts. Some are nice, some are not so nice. I've found that membership in a club has very little correlation to how many lessons one takes a week. There are some folks who play or run the public court teams that consider tennis a way of life, take multiple lessons a week, and play every day. The amount of money they spend on tennis per year eclispes anything I, a country club member, would dream of spending on tennis. (Including my club dues.) And I have also found in this area players move fluidly between teams and clubs. Typing players by where they play would be fruitless.

Your club should have different levels from 3.0 to 4.5, if your club has that many people playing. I know the club I play in Long Island, has 3 to 4.5 usta teams. The club instructors even play on the 4.5 team. They even made it to nationals.

subban said:

Your club should have different levels from 3.0 to 4.5, if your club has that many people playing. I know the club I play in Long Island, has 3 to 4.5 usta teams. The club instructors even play on the 4.5 team. They even made it to nationals.

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We have multiple teams at every level from 3.0 to 5.0. On Tuesday night alone, we have seven teams that play that night so trying to coordinate courts is yet another issue that we face. Further, we have a very popular city league that plays Saturdays and Sundays so the USTA doesn't compete for courts on the weekends and are limited to Monday-Thur for USTA matches.

In our area, the clubs stay out of it. It is up to the captain to recruit the players for the team. It can increase competition for the "established" teams, but people are usually willing to step up and captain. I captained because I couldn't find a mixed team over the winter. I am on both a new and an established team for the spring season.

If you want to play in my area, you have to break into the tennis circles. If you are short players, you can let the pro's know; sometimes they direct players to the captains.

86golf said:

We have multiple teams at every level from 3.0 to 5.0. On Tuesday night alone, we have seven teams that play that night so trying to coordinate courts is yet another issue that we face. Further, we have a very popular city league that plays Saturdays and Sundays so the USTA doesn't compete for courts on the weekends and are limited to Monday-Thur for USTA matches.

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So, you have to provide the courts for the teams that play out of your facility? Does each team have to schedule their own matches or something?

Here, the USTA provides a schedule of who plays where, when and makes the court reservations.

Here the each captain has to provide courts for their home matches. This is why people join clubs, as the clubs will provide, and schedule courts for each team. For instance, my club has 6 courts. For Spring season we have a W2.5, W3.0, W3.5, W4.0, M3.5, M4.0 and Women's Super Senior 65 3.5 team. Scheduling the courts is the club league coordinator's job.

There are people that play out of city run public courts, and the city rec department organizes the master schedule. And then there are those that play on truly public courts, such as high school courts. Those folks have to do whatever it takes to reserve those courts.

JoelDali said:

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Classic! (now I have "Anyway you want it" stuck in my head now, thanks) hah

JT_2eighty said:

Classic! (now I have "Anyway you want it" stuck in my head now, thanks) hah

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She said hold on........

Geezer Guy said:

So, you have to provide the courts for the teams that play out of your facility? Does each team have to schedule their own matches or something?

Here, the USTA provides a schedule of who plays where, when and makes the court reservations.

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The USTA does consider how many courts we have when they make out the schedule. Even though we have 10 courts, they will only book one match per time slot a night so our pros can teach and we can have a couple open courts for members during league nights.

The club is responsible for booking the courts once the schedules come out.

This fall could be a big problem with the 7.5 level. So many 4.0's out there and only so many teams for them to play.

cak said:

Here the each captain has to provide courts for their home matches. This is why people join clubs, as the clubs will provide, and schedule courts for each team. For instance, my club has 6 courts. For Spring season we have a W2.5, W3.0, W3.5, W4.0, M3.5, M4.0 and Women's Super Senior 65 3.5 team. Scheduling the courts is the club league coordinator's job.

There are people that play out of city run public courts, and the city rec department organizes the master schedule. And then there are those that play on truly public courts, such as high school courts. Those folks have to do whatever it takes to reserve those courts.

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Jeepers - as if being Captain wasn't ALREADY enough of a pain in the ass!

Yeah, there are a few teams that play out of a city park. To reserve the courts they camp out there every weekend day.

cak said:

Yeah, there are a few teams that play out of a city park. To reserve the courts they camp out there every weekend day.

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I don't know about camping out to "reserve" courts for a USTA match at a city park. When I have played at public facilities (parks or schools) the teams that are based there have to have an agreement or permission from the city or county that oversees the facility to have USTA matches there otherwise there would undoubtedly be problems. Of course, in order for a team to get permission to have USTA matches at tennis courts accessible to any tennis player they have to pay either a fee for the season or on a per match basis.