An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
I am not originally from the DFW area. I was born and raised in Wichita Falls, Texas. Every once in a while, as I contemplate my options as I near retirement from my day job, the idea pops into my head to consider moving back to my childhood hometown. The complete absence of organized adult competitive tennis always quickly dispatches that option. I simply cannot live in a tennis wasteland.
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As I wrote about yesterday in “Surveying Borders USTA Texas Style,” players who live in the DFW area have a lot of opportunities to play tennis by virtue of being classified as local within both the Dallas and the Fort Worth playing areas. To emphasize this point, today’s post enumerates those opportunities. It is truly an embarrassment of riches.
In “Geography Lessons from USTA Texas,” we learned the secret locations of the center of each of the five large cities in Texas as officially designated by USTA Texas Section office. This makes it possible to draw those circles on a map with a high degree of precision. As a player in the DFW area, I have always been very curious about what that map actually looks like.
As the USTA works through the ongoing effort that re-imagines the structure of the organization to get closer to players at the local level, I think that the concept of “encourage and foster” has to be one of the primary guiding principles.
Yesterday we discussed that USTA National league regulations enable the local sections to create residency rules to encourage and foster local league play. We wound up on a rule from the Texas Section regulations that I believe was created under that general umbrella. It should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly follows this site, that I have some questions about this rule. Today we are going to focus on the definition and determination of a city center.
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From Warren Kimball’s Raising the Game USTA history book, it is apparent that USTA League tennis blossomed despite an absence of attention from the USTA National office. As I examine the rules and regulations of league play, I am doing so with the understanding that the popularity of leagues preceded the national structure and regulation. I think that is critical to understanding the relationships.
Non-profit organizations are required to file IRS Form 990 every year which is open to public inspection. USTA National, USTA Texas, and all of the CTAs are independent non-profit organizations. As such, they are required to file Form 990 with the IRS. They are also required to make these forms available for public examination. Hey, that’s me!
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As I wrote about yesterday in “Mowing the Grassroots of the USTA House”, I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between the USTA national office, the individual USTA sections, the local USTA Community Tennis Associations (CTAs), and the local league players. Today I want to focus very specifically on the CTAs. I suspect that a lot of players are only vaguely aware of CTAs and the purpose they serve in the USTA ecosystem.
The USTA is in the midst of a restructuring effort that has been accelerated due to financial strains brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic. Currently the USTA is re-imagining the structure of the organization to get closer to players at the local level. The restructuring of the USTA was previously covered in “Job Cuts at the USTA.”