State individual tournament return picks up steam
Could there be a return of the highly-popular State Individual Tennis Tournament this spring?
At Tuesday’s MIAA Tennis Committee meeting, the subject was broached and the prospects for a renewal were warmly received. After a brief introduction to the topic by Quaboag athletic director David Bouchard, Wareham girls tennis coach Geoff Swett pounced upon the opportunity to make his pitch for the resumption of the individual tournaments, which have been dormant since 2019.
“I’ve been lucky to have one of the best players in the state on my team (Brooklyn Bindas) and she has stayed here because she loves being on the team,” Swett said. “There are a lot of really good tennis players in the state who don’t play on their high school team because there isn’t a state individual tournament. They want to use their tennis skills to have an opportunity to go to a good school and having a state champion on their resume would be nice.”
MIAA statewide tournament director Ron Ford knows exactly where Swett is coming from. In his time as the athletic director at Cohasset, he watched as Emma Davis ripped off four state individual titles before heading off to Wake Forest.
“Emma was a four-time champion who never lost a set in her four years here,” Ford said. “Without the option of a state individual championship, the girl who may be the greatest tennis player in state history might not have played here. I really hope something can be worked out.”
Enter the United State Tennis Association.
The USTA recently formed a partnership with the MIAA and committee member Nick Schlierf posed the question to USTA player development director Shawna Fors as to whether they’ve run individual state tournaments. Fors, who was on the conference call, acknowledged that they’ve done it in other states.
“This is something we have been brainstorming and we understand the MIAA’s position,” Fors said. “We are positioned that we could run a large tournament and are willing to work with the high school coaches. We have to work right away at it, but this is something we’re open to doing and moving it forward.”
One of the concerns would be how the players be seeded as the USTA uses a different seeding system, one where most, if not all, of the high school players would be on it. A possibility in the short term would be to have high school coaches get together and help out with the seeding process.
“We could start with singles only in 2024 and see how it works, then gradually add doubles in,” Fors said. “We want to facilitate more play as our focus and goal is to grow tennis.”
As for the state team tournament, Ford said all systems appear to be a go to hold the state finals on June 15 at MIT, with the following day as a rain date.