Foreign college players

[6460691]

There are many areas to discuss regarding foreign college players; however, as a former foreign ( now a proud American citizen ) college player I would put forth these points.

1) We neeed to develop top juniors in Amerca so college coaches want our guys and not foreigners.

2) The majority of foreign students who stay help the American tennis scene in various capacities, while foreign countries see a drain of their talented young players to the USA.

3) The ITA should keep addressing ways to make sure the playing field is level, so US players do not have to compete with former professional journeymen for scholarships.

[GMann]

Please identify the case or the court

The ITA (Intercollegiate Tennis Association) which is the organization that represents the coaches has been trying to get a handle on this for 15 + years. Actually 15 years ago we proposed a rule that would limit half of our scholarships to international players, but a court somewhere said that we were opening ourselves up to a lawsuit for discrimination.

Dear Tanker sorry for the delay in responding. I really appreciate your message here but I've heard this same vague story before about how the ITA proposed this rule but that some vague and unnamed court or judge got the ITA worried about a lawsuit for discrimination. As an attorney, I would like someone to tell me what court said this because it makes no sense. Such a proposal does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, gender nor even national origin. It's an issue of residency, citizenship and economics which is common practice when a state university charges out of state residents higher tuition or makes it tougher for out of state residents to gain admission. Whenever I hear this legend about a disrimination lawsuit, I can't help but wonder if all that happened is that the ITA got scared that it was challenged on the issue by another party and so they were worried about bad public relations in being tagged "discriminatory" even though there is no real basis for such a claim.

Can you please tell me more about this matter? Perhaps you can give me the name of the attorney that handled the case on behalf of the ITA.

Your assistance would be very much appreciated so that we can finally get to the bottom of this.

[10isDad]

the junior development aspect

I would certainly agree that the development of American juniors is necessary. However, I don't entirely agree that foreign players are hungrier, have better attitudes, etc. Much of the reasons behind why foreign junior players are developing faster/better than US juniors has to do with politics & ???. Like it or not, most European governments are, to a much higher degree than here, socialist, thus the governments there support the development of athletes much more than in the U.S.

I had a very interesting and lengthy conversation with a former instructor of the Swiss Tennis Federation. According to him, there are very distinct differences between the tactics employed in Europe vs. in the US. First, most European countries have a national tennis federation that gets much more involved in the development of juniors. In the US, you're talking about one organization that selects a very limited number of players to financially assist, train, nurture, etc. In the same amount of land mass, there are over a dozen national tennis federations who compensate far more players.

If you look at the USTA High Performance Website, the number of players allowed to train at the National Tennis Center is extremely limited, often only the top 5 nationally in each age group. According to the gentleman I spoke with there may be 50 or more players in each age group for each country that train. The families get financial compensation, the players get free instruction or reduced rate instruction, etc.

He also indicated that in Europe, the various academies cooperate with each other far more. He said there is lots of inter-academy competition outside of tournaments. Here, I feel academies/pros are too worried about players leaving them/defecting to the other academy, etc.

Finally, there's the money aspect. One thing that needs to happen to increase the junior tennis base in America is to make tennis more attractive to those people that may not have the funds to afford good coaching, especially minorities, inner-city youth, etc. That may entail more grants from the USTA, in terms of branching out to these communities and offering cheap, quality instruction.

In order to develop juniors to the degree that the Europeans have, I fear it will take a tremendous outreach by the USTA to seek out potential players and allow more people to train at the USTA National Tennis Center. Additionally, there needs to be less divisiveness between coaches/academies and more of a brotherhood working towards a common goal.

[alechorton]

foreign college players

Great Subject!
I think first we must look at a reality about NCAA DI college tennis.

Fact #1
Since 1946
USC,UCLA and Stanford
Have won a combined 47 national titles.
Since 1985 only Georgia (4 times), Illinois,Baylor and Pepperdine have won besides the big 3.

So what is the problem?
The problem is the following, if you want compete with the big 3, you need the horses. If the very best of the best USA players want to go to USC,UCLA and/or Stanford what do the rest of the teams like Pepperdine have to do to compete?
recruit from other places.

I mean if I am the coach at TCU and my #1 guy is ranked 25 in the nation(boy's 18's) and he is playing Stanfords #1 who is 5 in the nation...uuugh who wins??
Stanford, 7 days a week and twice on Sundays...let's get real.
That makes what Craig Tiley did amazing and he did some great coaching/recruiting that is for sure.

Obviously, any of the "big 3" are awesome schools in their own right apart from tennis and to get a degree there is equally impressive. I think recruiting wise if a player has a choice to go to Stanford perhaps he might choose that over other school in another state that is not as well known or have the reputation.

Certainly, as a Community College Coach in CA, I would not mind having only USA born players. It certainly would make the state title competitive instead of having College of the Desert win every year with their band of international students. In our division you are not even able to recruit out of your County District, but they COD have foreigners(the whole team) every year...amazing. Even Uganda davis cup players.


So if you think it is bad at DI try out Community College on for size.
So Peter, I feel your pain.

IF there is some plan I suggest they start at our level first.


My 2 cents worth,

Alec

Head men's tennis
Saddleback College