If there’s an unsung hero at the heart of recreational tennis in the U.S., it’s the league-team captain. Recruiting players, making schedules, reserving courts, putting together rosters, and hoping your doubles teams don’t come to blows (just to mention a few).
Here is my top 12 list of USTA and other recreational tennis league captain’s problems:
- Team Set Up: Recruiting, registration, checking registration, collecting league fees.
- Team Philosophy: Making sure all agree on the team’s mission. Rotating players and ensuring equal play time. Is winning the goal, or is it trying to stay at that level? Or is it just playing for fun?
- Match Schedule/Line Ups: Pairing players and determining the order of play, all while giving team members equal play time. And when Mother Nature forces a makeup match, you may have a situation where your original players can’t play so you’ll have to come up with a different (and hopefully) winning team.
- Communication: Requesting availability and getting no response. Players don’t look at the schedule and make other plans. players asking for addresses.
- Uniforms: A real time sucker. Endless discussions on a color or style. Some players refuse to purchase it, opting for a “variation” of the color.
- Complaints: This should be the #1 problem for captains. Pairings, court fees, other players, opponents, the courts, partners… anything and everything 😟.
- Sectionals: This should be a blessing, but it becomes a curse. Who do you invite? Everyone? Who plays? Equal play? Players say they will do what is best, BUT they never mean it, 🫤. This ultimately leads to more of #6 (but the complaining is all behind your back).
- Dealing with conflicts: Being the peacekeeper for everyone on the team, and occasionally, with the opponents.
- Last-minute Cancelations: The worst – even among the backups. Lineups get screwed up, defaults happen, and the entire team suffers.
- Score reporting and score disputes: One says it’s 6-3, and the other says it’s 6-4; in some formats, the percent of games won means a loss or win by 1 game.
- Loyalty: Players jumping ship to play for another team. Ungrateful!!!
- On-call 24/7: Pre-match, during the match, post-match. Basically, you are the team’s personal concierge 24 hours a day. 🤪
If you captain, do you agree? Would love to hear your team’s dynamics, whether you captain or not.
