No tournament for individuals planned for this year
The MIAA enjoyed its initial statewide tennis tournament championship experience at MIT so much last year that it’s hoping for a return engagement.
At Tuesday morning’s brief MIAA Tennis Committee meeting, MIAA associate executive director Richard Pearson made it very clear that the association wishes to return to the dupont Tennis Courts again.
“It was a very positive experience for everyone, MIT is very interested in having us there,” Pearson said. “We were very happy with everything, the stands, the courts, the whole kit and kaboodle. We hope to finalize things soon and we should be good.”
While everything was upbeat on the state final front, the same could not be said for the individual tennis tournament. Barring an unlikely change of events, it appears as though there won’t be an individual event for at least one more year.
Unlike other hybrid sports which can use timed performances (swimming and track) in order to run individual events of this nature, there seems to be an issue as to whether tennis can do the same. Sharon
athletic director and committee member Nick Schlierf expressed hope that somewhere down the road a University Tennis Rating (UTR) system or something else can be used to rank individual players.
Needless to say, many local tennis coaches were less than pleased with the
recent news. Andover girls tennis coach Alan Hibino feels there is no reason why the individual tournament can’t be restored immediately. Among the points he brought up were the possibility of using the sectional mode and if that’s not acceptable, creating a committee of coaches who
would rank the players using different metrics (UTR, head to head matchups, season records).
He also mentioned the fact that many elite players on decent teams looked at the state individuals as their Super Bowl. Without an individual tournament, many of them are choosing not to play.
“The infrastructure is in place, the venues are secure, the coaches and players are overwhelmingly in favor of it,” Hibino said. “The coaches would organize and run the tournament for the MIAA. All they have to do is ask us or let us help.”