As every sports team nears the end of the regular season and prepares for CCS, it seeks to perfect its starting lineup and the strategies it has been practicing. Yet everything will change for the girls’ tennis team in preparation for the CCS playoffs beginning on Nov. 9, less than three weeks away.
On Oct. 19, the CCS league representatives at the Board of Managers meeting voted to implement a new format for high school tennis within CCS and immediately make the change for this year’s competition.
Instead of having four singles players and three doubles teams playing their respective opponents from other teams, competition will now feature three singles players and three doubles teams in a round robin style. Thus, each singles player from one team will have to play one set against every singles player from the other team. The same applies to the doubles teams. One high school match will conclude with 18 total sets played, and the team that wins the majority of sets wins the match.
This format discards the lineup for the team. No longer are there true “No. 1 singles” or “No. 2 doubles” players, but only singles and doubles players. A team then has an advantage even it has only a few strong singles or doubles players rather than a depth and balance to the team lineup, as was favored in the previous format.
If two or three strong players win each of their three sets against weaker players from the other team, they potentially sway the whole tide of the match. Then the match does not depend on the team as a whole but on a few players, undermining the point of “team tennis.”
Regular tournaments in the USTA (United States Tennis Association) include single elimination draws, with the winner decided in a best out of three-set match. Only some novice tournaments for juniors use the round robin style to allow players to gain more experience through more matches. In this manner, high school tennis has totally defected from the customary format.
The use of one set in the new system in replacement of a match gives a skewed impression of the ability of players. In a set, which requires six games to win, a player who falls behind quickly in the beginning of the match has little chance of coming back to win.
This hurts players who usually exemplify both mental and physical toughness in long matches and come back to win the second set after losing the first set. Players who take time to adjust to the playing styles of their opponents will also be disadvantaged. The competition becomes a race to gain six games first instead of a true game of skill and patience.
Each player will need to play three sets in the new format. Playing three sets on a regular basis is both tiring and time-consuming. If one player finishes, she may have to wait for a long time while her next opponent finishes up her previous set.
It was argued that the format would combat stacking of the lineup. Stacking is the process of putting stronger players lower in the lineup in hopes of gaining extra wins. However, teams can still possibly stack the odds by playing strong singles players in doubles teams to win while giving up a few sets in singles.
Implementing the change near the end of the season hurts teams since they have to juggle around players. The No. 4 singles player no longer has a position and will have to step down to play doubles, while one doubles player will no longer have a spot on the regular lineup, giving the teams little time to practice in their new positions before the competition begins.
The new format will be utilized in this year’s CCS competition but not in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) NorCal competition, in which the top two teams in CCS advance to. The NorCal competition will still use the four-singles, three-doubles format, which teams in other Northern California sections will continue to use.
It had been rumored that the format, taken from Southern California high schools, would not be utilized until the 2012-2013 school year. However, the boys’ spring tennis season will now use the changed format for CCS but not for the regular league season.
The sudden change was hardly necessary with the season already drawing to a close by the middle of November. The representatives seemed to put little consideration into both players’ feelings on the change and the short amount of time that all teams have to adjust to these changes. The old format, used for many years, hardly had problems and did not call for immediate change.
League representatives may have voted in their own interests for their teams instead of their true desires to improve the section, as certain teams will benefit more from the change while weakening others that succeeded with the previous format. If winning is an issue, they should not have to change a sport’s format to defeat their opponents.
