How does your league handle teams who default team matches?

[JavierLW]

Javier, the rule is in place not necessarily as a deterent, but as a way to keep teams in contention from benefitting from a full team default. There are always a few teams in our local league (usually men's teams) that defaut full team matches at the end of the season if they are not in contention. The teams that they default to should not benefit from the default. The round robin is really not complete if there is a full team default in the standings. The idea is to play all of the matches. That's why the team results are removed from the overall standings. No one benefits, but no one is hurt. And again, if all teams in contention played the team that defaulted, then you leave the overall standings alone. TennisLink has a feature that DQ's a team from overall standings but leaves all individual matches in TennisLink.

I can't figure out a good way to deter teams from defaulting full team matches at the end of the season. Quite often the captain makes every effort but they can't get anyone to play. I don't think the captain should be punished. Every situation is different, but many times the captain is not at fault, and many captains are very dedicated and want to do the right thing. They can't always get their players to cooperate.

Im not sure how it's fair if you dont count the match either. (how is it fair to the team receiving the default, it's not their fault the other team didnt show up?)

Unless you guys then go by percentage wins or something, but if you are missing a match in the standings otherwise, you will technically lose 1/2 a win.

In our league it would be worse because individual matches are what counts, and we'd lose the ability to win 5 matchs (and lose 2.5 matches in the standings).

If they are not thinking of things that are a deterent then they should be, instead of just worrying about which team is going to win. Defaulting matches does far worse things to most teams then that. (wasted court time, someone doesnt get to play)

Most of us sign up to play tennis, not to sit around and win for free, so in any league it's not desirable at all to have defaults, and if you have them all the time, you tend to lose interest.

Plus if you had a big enough penalty, you might avoid some defaults, and then you wouldnt have to worry about the standings as well.

 

[Cindysphinx]

Well, I received a reply to my e-mail. It was [paraphrase] "Thanks for writing to us. We're aware of the situation and will handle it."

So. I guess that's it. . . . .

 

[JavierLW]

I am not so sure that I agree with this. Its one thing if there was a conspiracy to not show or throw a match (good luck proving that to anyone).

I have seen teams forfeit the last match of the season or simply not complete a rain make-up in every year I've played USTA. In the northeast, there is always at least 1 rain out if not 2 to 3 in the spring/summer league.

Some are material to standings and some aren't.

There are many reasons why forfeits increase near season end. The rain outs, the loss of interest, its now summer people have better things to do, lousy personal experiences on the team that people are fed up with, no impact to their team for winning/losing, vacations, people are playing in tournaments instead of USTA, people like to hose the captain who p*ssed on them and not show, etc.

There shouldn't be special rules for this well known near season end phenomenon.

I agree with you about the standings rule.

However I disagree if you dont think there should be some sort of penalty for doing this.

Almost all the reasons you sum up here, can be attributed to one thing: Those people are losers (and they werent really interested in the first place).

In any league if you have people who constantly just dont show up, you usually have other players who lose interest and leave. And if you dont penalize them, you will tend to have even more people that dont show up. (why would they put their time into it if it didnt matter)

It shouldnt be acceptable, especially if someone does it all the time, and especially near the end of the season (when people do tend to be losers about it).

 

[amarone]

Im not sure how it's fair if you dont count the match either. (how is it fair to the team receiving the default, it's not their fault the other team didnt show up?)

Unless you guys then go by percentage wins or something, but if you are missing a match in the standings otherwise, you will technically lose 1/2 a win.

In the case I referred to, their results were discounted against all teams so there was no need to go to percentages.

In the actual situation, there were four teams in contention. The offending team had lost 3-2 to three of them, then defaulted against the fourth. This would give the team a 5-0 win. The standings were so close that some teams were likely to finish level on team wins, in which case the tie would be broken on individual match wins - and one team had just been awarded two more of those than all the other teams. Hence it seemed fairest to discount all results against that team.

It was my team that was defaulted against, but I agreed with the decision not to count that result.