Hey guys, this is the Utah Captain. I noticed that a few people have speculated that somehow I, or my team, must have cheated in some way to win Nationals. That is absolutely false.
Here is the truth of what we did to win Nationals:
We started training in early January. My team roster included 18 players of all age ranges, including 7 players ages 55+. The oldest player on our team who played at Nationals this year was 68. At the beginning of the year, every player started out well inside the 4.0 level (excepting 2 appeal players—both age 55+, who were right on the 4.5 border).
Starting in early January, we held 4 practices each week. This included 2 team practices, 1 professional singles instruction, and 1 professional doubles instruction.
Starting in the Spring, we also added in a 4.0/4.5 tennis ladder, and many of our players played additional matches each week in the ladder.
We also held our own in-house 4.0/4.5 tournaments. (Note: A key strategy is that we always invite 4.5 guys to our practices and tournaments. Many of them played for me in the past, and are willing to help us improve.)
I organized various scrimmage matches as well. We even played against the BYU women’s tennis team! Most of our match play during the year was actually outside of the USTA league.
I have an app that keeps track of every match played by every player on our team. One of our players played over 100 matches! This player started out the year at about mid 4.0 level and finished well into the 4.5 level because of his 100+ matches and all the professional training. He has a wife, a child, and a full time job. This is not cheating...this is dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. How many other USTA league players played over 100 matches between January and October? Lots of matches + professional instruction is the basic formula for success.
Our team goal is to get everyone up into the 4.5 level before Nationals. At 4.0 Nationals you must be into the 4.5 level to be competitive. Some of you have claimed that being above level is a form of cheating…but if that were the case…every single player who ever moved up a level in the USTA leagues would be “cheating” before the end-of-year ratings came out—because technically they were above level at some point in the year. So you can’t really make a good argument that working hard and legitimately progressing above your current rating level is cheating.
What about sandbagging? I am very much against sandbagging. Several years ago, I stopped telling my players about strikes and Dynamic Disqualification because I didn’t want any chance of tanking games or matches. Because of this, I know my players are always playing fair and to the best of their abilities.
What about my player who got dynamically DQ’d after Nationals? We train hard, and sometimes my players improve too much. But he was still competitive at Nationals. He played 5 matches and only won 2 of them. ALL my players were competitive at Nationals, and several of our matches went to tie breakers. We even lost 1-4 to Texas! Frankly, it was all the practice and training that allowed my players to crawl back from that loss to eventually win Nationals. I was very proud of them. Nationals was very competitive and very close. Texas, Florida, or Eastern could have easily won instead of us.
We worked hard and sacrificed a significant amount of time away from family, work, and our other obligations to make this happen—so please don’t dismiss this win as “cheating” somehow. Nothing could be further from the truth. We earned this Nationals win. If any other captain or team worked harder than us during the year—then maybe they deserved to win instead.
In addition, I enjoy spending hours working on stats and numbers. I know the stats of my players and every player we compete against—I know all the “most likely lineups” of my opponents, possibly even before they do! I try to win every match on paper before we ever play it.
It’s been really fun and fulfilling to build up these teams over the years and do all the numbers. But I’m a year and a half away from age 60 now, and starting to wear out. It is seriously so much work. It’s like having another full time job, and then some. I feel like maybe I need to take some time off from captaining. But first, I need to accomplish one more thing:
A couple years ago, I captained a 4.5 team. At 4.5 Nationals we finished with only a 2-2 record. The 4.5 players did not experience as much improvement in my program as the 4.0 players. Maybe it’s because they are closer to their ceiling? On average, I can increase a 4.0 player’s level by about .36 throughout the year. But I can only increase a 4.5 player’s level by about .21. Example: If a mid 4.0 player starts the year at 3.75, I can generally get him up to 4.11 before Nationals (on average)....some a little more, some a little less.
This is a graph from the app I have, which shows the singles results of the player who was DQ’d after Nationals. These are his singles results from January to June practices (there is a different graph for doubles). You can see he started at 3.60 and eventually hit the 4.5 level by June. He continued to improve and was eventually DQ’d. You can see his improvement trajectory.
However, 4.5 players are different. Last time, I could only take a 4.5 player up .21 on average. However, I have some new training ideas I’d like to try. So I’m thinking about captaining another 4.5 team this next year and taking one more shot at 4.5 Nationals! It’ll be a good challenge!
