Another moment that sparked joy for me this year was being handed a couple of stickers while I was at Intersectionals last month. One came from the captain of the Southwest 55+ team, and the other was custom artwork created for the event by one of my own teammates. This is the perfect opportunity to discuss the (now defunct?) tradition of team gifts at National Championship events. Additionally, it is a chance to pull back the curtain on another geeky aspect of my life: sticker culture.
I have never made business cards for this site. Instead, I hand out “Fiend at Court” stickers bearing the site logo and URL. That was a very natural thing for me to do since my day job has a deeply ingrained sticker culture. There is no place where that is more apparent than at DEF CON, where stickers are used as a form of currency that sparks connections. When someone hands you a small gift, it is an impetus to engage in a brief conversation.
It used to be a long-standing tradition for players to exchange a token before starting each match at USTA League Nationals. When I advanced to the Championships in 2018, the USTA provided a “color wars” silicon bracelet bearing each Section’s name. That eliminated the obligation for teams to provide their own gifts.
When I competed at Nationals last year, no tokens were exchanged. Abandoning the practice is a reasonable modern evolution. Team-purchased gifts were always awkward because roster sizes vary widely, which is probably why the protocol was necked down to only players in the actual lineup. Additionally, depending on whether teams advanced to Championship Sunday, gifts would be needed for either 4 or 6 matches.
The USTA-provided bracelets sidestepped all those issues. They were also coldly impersonal. I found it weird to give out something I had no part in selecting. It was the opposite of the idea that “it’s the thought that counts” because there was none of that on either side of the exchange.
When I was handed a USTA Southwest sticker at Intersectionals this year, it sparked the idea that this might be the small token of exchange that works for tennis in the modern era. Stickers are a tiny canvas of personal expression. They are easy to make and inexpensive to produce in large quantities. Stickers are also extremely easy to transport to and from events.
For USTA League Nationals, each Section office could possibly provide a default sticker for the teams. Each Section could conduct a contest to design the sticker as an engagement mechanism. I also like the idea of each team working up their own sticker design. It can be a great team-building exercise.
I will probably be making more event-specific custom stickers in the future.
