How/when are ITA results reported? Missing invitational results?

[jcgatennismom]

I was checking some players and teams on UTR and saw some results were not included from early Sept invitationals. At first, I thought it was a UTR delay but when I saw some results from the same days were included and some weren't, I looked at ITA results and compared them to the tournament results posted online at the invitational site. Then I realized the results weren't in UTR because they were never entered into ITA. Are ITA omissions in reporting common? I spent about 15 minutes looking and found at least 10 matches reported on one 9/11-9/14 invitational draw that were excluded from ITA results.The missed matches were from different days and different draws so there was no pattern. e.g. like a person missed entering one page. I am sure there were a lot more missing since I just looked at a sample. Most players I checked had one missing match, but one player had played 3 matches and none were reported. I checked another invitational and some of its results were also missing from ITA results.

Being a parent of a junior, it is a whole different ballgame. If a match is misreported, the tournament director gets an email and it's fixed within 12 hours. Do coaches check results and eventually get missed matches added back in? The reason I looked at UTR in the first place is that some international players have low reliability UTRs as they may have not played for 6 months (gap year). I was interested to see what the actual rankings of some of the new freshmen might be after actually playing some ITA matches. However, when the matches weren't on UTR, I looked to see why they were missing and then found the omissions on ITA results. I am not sure what happens on UTR if these matches are eventually added to ITA. If UTR has already input data from those tournaments, will missed matches from past tournaments end up in their database? I can understand week old matches not being entered into ITA, but missed matches from almost 3 weeks ago? This type of error would be easy to catch if whoever entered the matches had a count of actual matches played and compared that number with a simple report from ITA that listed number of matches entered.

 

[JLyon]

ITA results are entered by respective school coaches, so it is incumbent on the coaches to enter results for the tournaments, you'll find limited results usually below the D1 level, unless you have a proactive coach

 

[jjones]

Must be ITA sanctioned event to count toward rankings, some fall events are not.

 

[TopDawg]

Are ITA omissions in reporting common?
Do coaches check results and eventually get missed matches added back in?
If UTR has already input data from those tournaments, will missed matches from past tournaments end up in their database?

Many coaches don't check the results during the team portion so I'd be really surprised if they did during individuals. There are always a handful of keying errors during the early portion of the team matches and they usually don't get corrected unless somebody notices the error and points it out to the ITA. Usually the error has to do with whether it was a home match or away match and with bonus points awarded for road wins those extra points can make a big difference come tournament time.

UTR typically pulls college results from the ITA page once a week so as long as they get entered in the ITA page eventually they should make their way to UTR - if they don't get entered in then they likely won't ever show up on UTR.

 

[jcgatennismom]

Thanks posters for your answers. I assume these invitationals were ITA sanctioned because both were attended by mostly ACC/SEC teams. There were even some matches missing from the A draws. As far as ITA ranking, I guess players play the majority of their matches in the spring dual matches so maybe a missed match here or there does not mean much, but for the guys on the lower end of the roster, their fall wins help establish a reliable UTR ranking if they wont have a ITA ranking.Players are only ranked for ITA up to 125? Maybe if individual players know about UTR and check it occasionally they will realize if they are missing wins and follow up with their coach or assistant coach. I think UTR was used for seeding for the US Open Sectional Qualifying tournaments, the BB&T Wild Card Qualifying, and a few tournaments like the recent Boston Open-all of which included juniors, collegians and pros as players. Juniors and their parents look at the UTR ratings of teams to see which colleges would be a good fit.The trickiest piece is knowing the ranking of international freshmen who have not competed for 6-12 months before the fall ITA season; it would be easy for those guys to be significantly under or overstated. One fairly high ranked international freshmen (around 13.5 this summer) at an invitational had a close match with a player almost 2.0 UTR behind him, and conversely another international freshman beat another player more than 1.0 UTR ahead of him; both of those were among the sampling of missed matches. Hopefully since that player has a reliability of 20% (no matches since fall 2014 ITFs), the missed match will eventually show up and improve both his reliability and ranking. I was also surprised at looking at UTR rankings that a lot of college players did not play tournaments this summer with a 5 month gap between competition mid April until mid Sept. I am sure guys had practice matchplay, but dont coaches expect players to get some competition over the summer? Ironically I heard there was one college soph at Kzoo 18s-guess he was a very young soph-can't remember who he played for.

On another note, is there any document on this forum that explains the ITA team and individual ranking system? I looked at the FAQ on the ITA site that described the ranking process but it was written in 2010/11, and the ITA site stated that the FAQs were to be updated soon.

 

[TopDawg]

On another note, is there any document on this forum that explains the ITA team and individual ranking system? I looked at the FAQ on the ITA site that described the ranking process but it was written in 2010/11, and the ITA site stated that the FAQs were to be updated soon.

Here was last year's FAQ's - it hasn't changed in years. Here is a post I did a few years ago that explains how to compute the team rankings.

 

[Nostradamus]

http://www.itatennis.com/Assets/Men$!27s+All-American+Qualifying+Singles+Draw-2015-10-04.pdf

http://www.itatennis.com/Events/ITANationalChampionships/MensAllAmerican.htm

here are the draw pages and results are supposed to be reported in this website as well. Tulsa will have Webcam coverage starting on Monday...........

 

[jjones]

I wouldn't try to make the rankings and exact science, they can be so far off, and many times great players are under rated cause of lack of play, and average players are over rated because of one big win that carries them the entire year. A player can win a monster match cause they played a top player and the treed for once in their life or the top guy was off or sick or whatever that day and then their ranking is carried high throughout a year as that top player goes on to beat other great players and pulls that guy's great ranking along for the ride. Some players are really under rated because they focus on academics first semester rather than matches in the fall and pay for it all year in their ranking (but have better grades). Mitchell Frank was unranked as a senior at one point. Rankings can be off cause of where players are in the lineup and how strong the teams they play for, how many high ranked competitors are in their division, etc. A #5 or 6 on the best teams could kick the *** of many team's #1's but won't get the ranking cause they don't play players with a good ranking in dual play. Players that win the NCAA singles are often not the best player out there for example (except for SJ), not everyone cares about the singles of NCAA as they are physically or mentally done after NCAA teams. All-Americans are sometimes the best players, sometimes they just get a lucky draw and get there. Point is, there are many variables that affect them - they are not right or wrong, just affected by so many things and over analyzing them will make you crazy - after a couple years you will understand when they are in sync and when they are not. But trying to make them right and accurate will never happen.