No Divisional Crossovers Strikes Again

I am entered in the Women’s 18+ 4.5 doubles division at the upcoming Cotton Bowl Level 5 tournament. As I threw in that entry, I mentioned to the Trophy Husband that I hoped to also find a mixed partner. That’s when he got down on one knee and asked me to play Husband-Wife with him in that tournament. So I am no longer looking for a mixed partner… or am I?

When I tried to enter Husband-Wife in the Cotton Bowl, I received the following error message from Play Tennis.

For those of you without images enabled or people who can’t squint through the screen capture, the error message is that players are only allowed to register for one age category in the tournament. So even though the tournament allows players to enter two events, both must be in the exact same age range.

The USTA considers family events to be “Open” ages. That is different than 18+. To enter Husband-Wife, we would also both have to play open doubles. That probably wouldn’t be so terrible for me and my 4.5 18+ women’s doubles partner. However, that isn’t a viable option for the 55+ 3.5 Trophy Husband. Any resulting match would not be fun for anybody.

One of the Trophy Husband’s friends alerted me to another situation with the age division restriction that is even more absurd. An entry into 55+ NTRP 3.5 men’s doubles prevents him from playing mixed doubles at all. When that player tried to enter 3.5 18+ Mixed (coincidently with his wife) he gets the same error message that I did. The Cotton Bowl tournament only offers 18+ Mixed for NTRP divisions, so finding a partner for 55+ 3.5 mixed isn’t an option at all.

I reached out to the tournament director and believe that he is still working on a resolution for me personally. I would think that it would be as simple as turning off the restriction on divisional crossovers, but maybe the USTA’s Play Tennis platform won’t allow a change in that setting once entries have been received.

While I am committed enough to reach out to the tournament director for help getting a Husband-Wife entry submitted, there are undoubtedly people that would not bother. In fact, there is a chance that prospective players may elect to skip the tournament altogether if a second divisional playing opportunity isn’t available to them. Unless the USTA is tracking aborted entries following that error (which I doubt) we will never know.

There are lessons to be learned here. First, restricting players to a single age division is absurd. Particularly when the age divisions are likely to be combined anyway. The second, and potentially more important lesson, is that tournament directors should be advised to turn off that “feature” within the Play Tennis system unless they are just actively trying to kill participation.

I feel like the Cotton Bowl tournament director will eventually figure out a way to allow our entry into Husband-Wife mixed. At the present moment, there are no entries into that division. It is possible that it is because other prospective teams have encountered the same problem that we ran into. I seriously doubt that the draw will make.

The next time the USTA’s Adult Competition Committee (ACC) brainstorms reasons why tournament participation continues to decline… this root cause needs to be considered. The solution is so simple. Eliminate single age division restrictions as an option.

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I recommend three previous posts from this site for more information on how divisional fragmentation is really bad for tournament tennis:

• How Fragmentation Hurts Tournaments, February 25, 2022.
• How NTRP Tournament Fragmentation Hurts 18+ Players, February 26, 2022.
• Draw Fragmentation Equals Less Tennis, February 27, 2022.