Fiend at Court Unplugged
A couple of weeks ago a player posted a question to the Facebook group of the active USTA tennis tournament players in Texas. The fundamental question is whether it is fair for a single person to captain multiple teams within the same league that play in the same flight. The hallmark of this site is using these types of situations to dissect and analyze the individual and organizational dynamics involved. This is a terrific case study to examine the rules and incentives in the USTA League framework.
I am completely uninvolved with the specific situation, as it occurred in a USTA Community Tennis Association (CTA) league that I have never played in. The league where this debate occurred is the Capital Area Tennis Association (CATA) which is in Austin, Texas. This exercise has induced me to read through the CATA League Regulations, which is necessary background information required for this exercise. In the course of doing so, I discovered that that CATA has some unique rules on the books which will be wonderful fodder for future Fiend at Court Unplugged series diatribes.
General Comments on Captaining
I need to preface this conversation with the general statement that I believe that there should be a requirement within all league regulations that no player should be permitted to criticize a USTA Tennis League Captain unless that player has previously been through the experience of captaining a team themselves. My experience is that players generally underestimate the time that it takes to captain as well as the complexity of organizational and personality dynamics.
I have borderline violated that concept myself, believing that I had some insight through osmosis of observing the captaining of the umpire who gave birth to me as well as the Fiend at Court spousal unit. There is no substitute for the experience of actually captaining a team.
I was forced into captaining a USTA league team, by dint of an NTRP level bump beyond the point where the seasoned captains in my area actively ply their trade. I had to start captaining a team simply to help make league exist. In my first season as a captain, we had seven matches rained out. Seven. I earnestly believe to this very day that the tennis gods were punishing me for my prior transgression of not fully appreciating all the captains I previously played for.
Non-Playing Captains
The first question that needs to be examined is whether USTA League rules should allow a team to have a team captain who is not rostered on the team. There are three tiers of governance in play: USTA National League Regulations, USTA Texas Section League Operating Procedures, and the CATA League Regulations. None have a restriction on who can captain a team.
The Fiend at Court Spousal Unit was first exposed to USTA League play via recruitment to a 3.0 men’s team. The previous season, the sponsoring CTA did not have a men’s league at that level. The 3.5 captains were understandably very concerned that the pipeline of players required to sustain their own leagues was drying up. Players at higher NTRP levels revived play that season through active involvement with the fledgling new teams.
I need to foot stomp the point that people who captain teams that they are ineligible to play on, for the sole purpose of creating playing opportunities for others, are the true heroes of league tennis. The fact that there was a potential downstream benefit of rebuilding the player pipeline for the higher NTRP levels does not diminish the importance.
For this reason alone, I cannot imagine that any CTA would consider a rule that prohibits non-rostered captains. Even if there was a provision for waving that rule for scenarios such as the one above, it increases the friction and pain level for making that happen. People who are willing to captain teams are the lifeblood of league tennis participation. Organizations should remove hurdles rather than creating new ones.
Professional Captains
I have never experienced this for myself, but my understanding is that at some clubs a teaching pro on staff may serve as the team captain. In that case, captaining the team is literally a part of their job. I do not think that whatever compensation is in play even begins to cover the challenge that is associated with captaining in this scenario.
I have a close tennis buddy who spent many years teaching at high end tennis clubs. This sometimes put him in the position of administrative oversight for the teams that played out of his clubs. He relayed a story that illustrates the challenge of captaining under those conditions.
When my friend was director of tennis at a club in Arizona, they had more women at a certain NTRP level than would have been reasonable to place on a single roster. His first proposal was to divide the teams as evenly as possible across two teams. To his surprise, the players were unanimously in favor of structuring the teams into an “A” team and a “B” team to give the club the greatest opportunity to win the local league.
It was only after the teams were divided that he realized is the reason why all the players wanted the teams divided by skill level is because every single player assumed that they would be on the A team.
I do not think that leagues would ever want to legislate out professional captaining situations. On the other hand, some of the tennis professionals and administrators in that position might quietly lobby for that provision.
Conflict of Interest
If you squint hard enough, these two examples of captains can create conflict of interest scenarios. In the first example, a player at a higher level may captain a team not so much to create playing opportunities, but to build relationships with the up and coming players so that the more athletic players can be identified and recruited to specific teams at higher levels. I don’t see that alternate motivation as much of a problem.
It can be even dicier in the professional captain situation. Delicacy is required to navigate that process very diplomatically. It is never a good idea to alienate the wife or child of the guy that was instrumental in getting the previous tennis pro fired. That scenario sucks for people in the industry, but I do not see that as a problem in the USTA purview either.
These are the easy cases. Tomorrow we will look a little harder at other potential conflict of interest scenarios. In doing so we will wander squarely into some gray areas.
- 2020 USTA League Regulations, https://www.usta.com/content/dam/usta/pdfs/190517_2020_National_Regulations.pdf
- 2020 Operating Procedures USTA Texas Section Tennis Leagues, https://www.usta.com/content/dam/usta/sections/texas/pdf/2020_League_Operating_Procedures.pdf
- 2020 CATA League Regulations: A handbook for captains and players, Capital Area Tennis Association, https://www.austintennis.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CATA_League_Regulations.pdf
Great analysis!