Individual tennis tourney unlikely
The prospects of the MIAA holding an individual tennis tournament this spring seems a bit unlikely for a variety of reasons.
The MIAA Tennis Committee met Tuesday morning and discussed the possibility of conducting a postseason team tournament. They are hoping that the Tournament Management Committee, which is scheduled to meet today, will provide guidance on that.
“The timetable is pretty tight for an individual tournament,” said MIAA Tennis Committee liaison Carolyn
Bohmiller. “The first matches can’t start until May 6 at the earliest and the individual tournament deadline is May 14, so I think it would make more sense to focus on a team tournament.”
A topic of discussion was using a Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) system. Implementation would remove subjectivity when it came to individual tournament seeding as well as providing a proper system to rank players, thus avoiding the possibility of stacking a lineup.
“Coaches are going to have their hands full this year,” said committee member Dave Bouchard, the athletic director at Quaboag. “It probably makes sense to postpone using (UTR) for a year.”
The committee also discussed modifications it would be presenting to the Sports Medicine Committee.
Among the equipment modifications are each team are to use their own balls, use different numbered balls on adjacent courts, make the court number on all assigned balls, make sure players know what tennis ball number they are using and if a ball goes into another court, return it with a kick or racquet.
Home teams will be responsible for providing hand sanitizer to both teams, which players must use at the start of the match, during every changeover and for the duration of the match.
Practices should be conducted in pods and coaches are responsible for taking attendance. Handshakes will be replaced by a simple tap of the racquet. During the match, players should avoid crossing over on the same side on the changeover, players who are not playing should exercise proper social distancing and only the home team should handle the scorecards.