Fiend at Court Unplugged
Tennis on Campus was started by the USTA in 2000 as a way to capture the thousands of former Junior tennis players who had moved onto college, but not onto one of the limited spots on their collegiate tennis team. The program is managed by the USTA in cooperation with the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association. It was supposed to be an important mechanism to bridge former Junior players into Adult tennis.
Tennis on Campus is one of the subcommittees under the USTA Adult Tennis Council. (The 2021 USTA Yearbook includes two additional Adult subcommittees not pictured on my diagram: NTRP Advisory Group and Adult Social Play.) Tennis on Campus is somewhat unique in that it is a program rather than a specific strategic focus area.
I gleaned some Tennis on Campus participation numbers off a recent editorial in Racquet Sports Industry Magazine. At the height of the program, there were more than 40,000 participants at 650 colleges and universities. The same editorial mentioned that more recent participation is about 11,000 students participating at 250 schools.
In 2021, there were just under 4000 universities in the United States. That means that at its peak, Tennis on Campus was only available at only 16% of universities in this country. Currently the program is hitting only about 6% of college campuses.
The Racquet Sports Industry editorial was advocating for revitalizing investment in the program citing among it’s benefits that Tennis on Campus was a breeding ground for future tennis industry leaders. It also claimed that the program had been effective for bridging junior players into adult tennis. I agree that it is probably a good program. I personally have seen no evidence that it had any effect on bringing the participants into the Adult tennis ecosystem.
In the USTA’s own words, this is what the Tennis on Campus program is all about:
Tennis On Campus is the US Tennis Association’s program for college club tennis players. It has been designed for and organized by college students who want to stay involved in the game, make friends, and compete in events all around the country.
USTA Tennis on Campus “About” Page
For whatever reason, the idea that advancing to a National Championship level is an essential part of any program is woven into the very fiber of the USTA’s being. However, by structuring it that way it essentially chokes off participation by players that aren’t strong enough to make their university’s Tennis on Campus “team.”
Additionally, there is nothing inherent in the program that points participants at USTA Adult tennis once their time on campus is done. All it does is to provide yet one more opportunity to let players exit the tennis ecosystem without any effort to retain them in Adult tennis.
Another fundamental flaw with the Tennis on Campus program is the assumption that everybody goes to a traditional college. That is simply not the case. Making tennis more inclusive and diverse necessarily means opening the aperture of participation to people that may never attend a university.
A complete model of collegiate level tennis engagement should focus on placing tennis programming products on campus that center around exercise and social engagement. Live ball drills and social mixers are the way to go. Forming a “team” to compete outside the immediate campus should be regarded as non-essential as well as a distraction.
The Tennis on Campus program needs to be overhauled. The question is in which strategic direction. Regardless of that outcome it should be viewed as a pipeline into Adult USTA tennis products. Marketing and communication need to be oriented around retaining those participants for a long time.
- Lessons Learned? Peter Francesconi, Tennis Industry Magazine, November/December 2021.
- A Guide to the Changing Number of U.S. Universities, Josh Moody, US News and World Report, April 27, 2021.
- USTA Tennis on Campus About Page, tennisoncampus.com, viewed January 21, 2021.
