D3RegionalNEC’s All-Inclusive Fall Wrap Up

I texted our Group Chat today that I’m experiencing withdrawal symptoms now that there’s no more D3 tennis for a while (with the exception of BORIS and Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico at D1 Nationals next month). I don’t know what is sadder—the fact that there’s no more D3 tennis for a while, or that I’m this distraught over that fact. Anyway, what better way to deal with the “loss” of a love than by writing about MY FEELINGS. I won’t get too emotional, don’t worry. There’s just a few things on my mind since I last wrote that I want to bring up before we all put D3 tennis completely on the backburner for a while.

The ITA Cup is a very cool event that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Shoutout to Trinity TX, CMU, and Caltech for the reliable scoring updates on Twitter, but overall I felt like I had to work way too hard to keep up with what was happening at a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. I understand it’s not NCAAs and it shouldn’t be treated as such, but I wish us fans had a bit more access to what was going on. Come to think of it, the same could be said of the grass court event last month. Besides the people that were actually there, does anyone have much of an idea about what that event was like, on or off court? And don’t get me started on the new ITA Results website. It makes Sports Illustrated’s current website design (curse you, autoplay videos) look slick and functional.

Anyway, back to the ITA Cup. First of all, I love the fact that a guy who played #3 last year won the whole damn thing. D3NE waxed poetically about Boris Sorkin earlier this week, but I also have to give him some props of my own for a sick run. Hopefully more people will get a chance to watch him play this year—he moves incredibly well, plays smart, and keeps remarkably composed. My big question is whether his thin frame can handle the rigors of a spring NESCAC schedule. Hopefully the Jumbos have a good offseason GAINZ program.

Moving to my guys—what a wonderful sight it was it have Hobart and Hamline both in the draw. Shoutout to Concordia TX as well—it’s not my coverage area, but I love the little guys no matter what region they come from. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect, but I was not going to be surprised if either Dubrovsky or Trondson finished eighth, so for them to come out #4 and #7 is pretty impressive. Dubrovsky’s straight set win over Chaz Downing on day 1 was probably the highlight of the tournament for the little guys, and felt like a nice little “F you” to everyone that just treats the Northeast ITA like it’s a joke.

Another aspect of having guys from teams like this at big tournaments that is so huge is that this definitely has a trickle down effect on the program in so many ways. I guarantee you that interest from family, alums, and the campus community went up at Hobart and Hamline after these results. I also am certain that when these guys returned to campus, both they are their teammates were more fired up to keep building and getting better. It’s great and impressive that UChicago and CMU (just to use examples) send guys to this tournament every year, but after a while it’s just expected, and not as big a deal. But for the Hobarts, Hamlines, and Concordias of the world, having All-Americans, competing at a national championship, and (soon) having guys ranked in the top 10 in the country is a massive deal for the entire athletic department, and as a fan of the little guys, I love it!

Few more ITA Cup thoughts—for as much as I admire and enjoy the underdogs making appearances because it’s such a special, rare occasion, let’s not overlook the most predictable, expected thing to happen, and that’s Emory’s Jonathan Jemison being in the draw. We Bloggers had a good laugh regarding Mr. Jemison’s comment a few weeks ago asking about how many people have reached the regional final in singles and doubles all four years (which his son has now accomplished), but all kidding aside, it’s extremely impressive. Much like Emory as a whole, the younger Jemison is a polarizing figure in the D3 tennis world, but I respect the hell out of the fact that he lets the racquet do the talking. It’s going to be weird to have one of these tournaments without him next year.

And finally a quick word about the doubles. I love seeing the 2 out of 3 sets for doubles and wish we could see more of it, though it’s obviously tough to do in a dual match (unless you do some very different format like 2 doubles + 5 singles where all matches go on at once….which I am very much in to). Very cool to see some new faces, but I want to recognize the guys that have made this draw multiple times. Doubles is often a crapshoot and the regional tournament is an 8-game pro set until the final, so getting through the draw once is tough, and to do it multiple years (sometimes with different partners) deserves a hat tip. So here’s to you Patrick Whaling, Wilson Lambeth, Jeremy Yuan, Tyler Raclin (3rd time!), Jonathan Jemison, Adrien Bouchet, and Jerry Jiang, all of whom made their second (or third) appearance in the Fall Nationals doubles draw last week.

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Yeah, I didn’t mean to write that much about the ITA Cup, but I guess I just have a lot of THOUGHTS. Let’s take a little break and watch probably my favorite highlight reel tennis shot of all time. Craziest part of this video? Probably that it is from 2002 and Federer is still winning Grand Slams today. The current freshmen were still wearing diapers when this happened.

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What’s the future of UC-Santa Cruz? As time goes on, fewer D3 players are aware that UC-Santa Cruz has among the most illustrious histories in D3 tennis. Even for me it’s easy to forget that they used to be a national championship contender every year and set the bar for D3 excellence. For MANY reasons (I could probably write a book on this) the D3 landscape has changed dramatically, and I legitimately don’t know where the upper limit for the Banana Slugs success is these days. Can they win national championships again? Can they be a top 10 team?

One of their biggest struggles since the departure of Coach Hansen has been finding a coach that is hungry and able to stick around for a while to build the program back up. With the UC system as a whole having financial issues, the pay for this position has surely been pretty bad. Just this week, though, I noticed that the head coaching job is open and listed on the NCAA website. I’ve got to think that this is going to be appealing to some motivated, aspiring coach who wants to live by the beach in a beautiful place. Shoot, I’m tempted to apply! Here’s hoping that the Banana Slugs find a coach that lead them back to the glory days—D3 Tennis just feels more right when UCSC is good.

Okay, I really don’t have anything more to say about any specific teams, so just a couple general thoughts and questions.

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Who is going to make the biggest strides this offseason? Let’s be honest—a lot of D3 players aren’t going to play much tennis for the next few months. The weather starts to suck for most, school gets tougher, and it’s very easy to stay busy with things besides tennis. This might even be the norm. It’s fine. BUT, this reality also presents an amazing opportunity for some people to put in a ton of work and close the gap between themselves and others. That can be within a team (moving up on the depth chart), or for a team as a whole in the rankings. It’s pretty clear cut that if you put in hard work day in and day out for the next few months, you can set yourself apart from the pack and make significant strides. It’s one of those things that everybody knows, but not everyone does anything about it. In simple terms—who’s going to put in the extra work this offseason? We’ll find out come springtime when the racquets do the talking.

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Are we starting to see a shift in D3 recruiting? Last year (high school class of 2018), for the first time in a while, we didn’t have any 5-stars go D3. And while it’s still early, there are again no 5-stars committed to D3 schools for 2019 and overall it feels like this year’s class is not going to have as many kids from the Tennis Recruiting top 100 national list. Is this a coincidence? Or is the consistent improvement in D3 recruiting classes over the past decade-plus starting to level off? I certainly don’t have the answer, but it’s something I’ve thought about and will continue to watch. A couple years ago I thought we were getting close to seeing a Blue Chip go D3, and now that seems like quite a stretch (though I could still absolutely see it happen). I don’t feel like the level of D3 tennis has gone down, though it’s obviously hard to compare teams from different years, but once these recruiting classes have more time to develop and take over, it’ll be interesting to see what D3 looks like. One of my hopes from this (perceived) trend? That we see more 1 and 2 stars develop into All-Americans!

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Feels good to get all that out of my system! Not sure when we’ll be back blogging, but you can definitely look for some season previews to be sprinkled in over the next couple of months. I’ll still be tweetin’ and am always happy to discuss anything via twitter or email. Thanks for reading this rambling!