When looking at schools as a prospective student-athlete, a recruit oftentimes gets a good idea of the general information on a school, but doesn’t really get a full view of what it would be like to actually attend the school. Recruiting trips show a student the most “fun” night that they could have, but again, the small sample size prevents the recruit from having full knowledge of the school they may be about to attend. Here at the Blog, our goal is to give each and every recruit an idea of what it really is like to go to many of our DIII schools. Across the entire blog team, we have approximately 75 years of combined experience playing, watching and covering D3 tennis. The school profiles are designed to give prospective players additional information that they may not be able to read in a book or online (or at least concentrate information that would take a long time to search for). Below we provide explanations of each category that you will find in the individual school profiles. Individual recruits have different priorities, so we attempted to touch the entire spectrum of a tennis program.
Explanation of Recruiting Hub Categories
3-Year Average ITA Ranking – Arguably the most important purely tennis measure of a program, the three year average ranking is simply the average of where a team finished in the national rankings in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Power 6 – The Power 6 is a measure of college tennis teams by using the individual Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) of their six singles players and adding them up. The blog team has found this as a very useful tool in predicting the outcome of matches.
Academic Reputation – This score was derived using the US News Rankings with an equal weighting for national universities and liberal arts colleges.
Tennis Program & Tradition – This score is based on the legacy some top teams have built over several decades. Many programs have improved significantly in the past few years (and have correspondingly high 3-Year Averages), but these teams may not be as strong in this category as teams that have been good for fifteen years.
Development – For many recruits, tennis development can be the thing they look for most in a D3 program. The motor for player development is the head coach and team culture. Throughout the past decade, we have seen multiple teams turned around by simply adding a motivated coach. The tenure and success of the coaching staff in helping their players improve is reflected in this score.
Facilities – There is substantial variety among the tennis facilities of the top D3 programs. Many urban schools may not have indoor facilities on campus, while other schools in warm climates have gorgeous outdoor facilities. Access to courts is a contributor to practice time and the student-athlete experience (and the availability of match streaming may be an important factor for parents).
On Court Persona – Instead of assigning a score in this category, the bloggers decided to brainstorm a few words that best described each team. While each year’s team is different, programs have tendencies that often mirror the personalities of their coaches. We are attempting to give recruits insights into the inner-workings of the program and inform them about the things you may not see unless you are an avid follower of D3.
Sample Starter Profiles – These are meant to give prospective recruits an idea for the Tennis Recruiting rankings of current players who are having success in the starting lineup. It can be used as an alternative method to the UTR to judge a player’s fit at a given school.
Where Are They Now – There are over 100,000 NCAA student athletes. Most of them will be going pro in something other than sports. One of the main reasons students go to college is to prepare for their career. We have attempted to take a sampling of former players who are a few years out of school to give prospective recruits an idea of career paths after graduating from a specific school. All of these players played a key role in the starting lineup during their tennis careers. Keep in mind that these are three randomly selected players out of numerous alumni.
Given these categories, please direct your attention to the Recruiting Hub Index Page to navigate to the school you would like to review.
when are you going to update this site?