Well everyone, as we wind down another great year of DIII Tennis, I wanted to reach out to all of you regarding the future of the blog. I think this year was again our best year yet, and I am really not exaggerating. The site stats tell us so! We’ve done a few things this year by adding Women’s, the beloved D3Regional, and added a few new types of articles that we like doing. We’ll always stick to our roots, but we always want to know where you guys think we can improve! If you all could provide some feedback for us in any of the bulletpoints below, that would be great and potentially something we look into next year! We will take all feedback, we’re not afraid to stick our necks out! Don’t be afraid to write a comment, good or bad. It’s great to hear you all.
Feel free to also email me at d3atlanticsouth@gmail.com if you have suggestions you’d like to keep private. Thanks to all of you for a great year, and we still have 4 great days to go!
1) Constructive Feedback for the blog – anything from writing styles, types of articles, etc
2) Suggestion Articles – anything that you would have loved to see that we can explore for next year?
3) Praise! – What did we do well this year?
4) Twitter Presence – any feedback regarding our twitters. Too many tweets, too much commentary, etc, etc? Anything else you’d like to see?
5) The Site – we’re not site masters, so let us know if you think you can improve the site!
6) Misc. – Anything that came to you during the year and you wanted to let us know but were scared to.
Additionally, I would like to update you guys that we WILL be back next year for another round of great DIII Tennis blogging. I have a few additions in mind and some site maintenance to do, but keep that in mind as you guys comment! Thanks all and as always, ASouth, OUT.
Really enjoy the blog. Check it out every day during tennis season. Have especially enjoyed your big-picture insights about what it takes to field a strong program (recruiting X%, training Y%, etc.), and would be interested in further analysis along these lines. For example, what kind of facilities/institutional commitment does it take to field a contender? How do players manage the balance between high-level athletics and academics? It’s interesting that this year’s quarterfinalists (indeed, most of the top-DIII teams) are also top academic schools. How do coaches help their players manage this balance?
Power rankings are always interesting and provocative.
Constructive criticism? If I might be so bold, you are talented writers and analysts. But the intros to some of your posts suggest a jokey, clubhouse familiarity among the writers (a kind of verbal towel-snapping from one writer to another) that seems a little immature. You guys are good enough not to need the goofiness.
Allright. Enough stone-throwing. But when someone asks for constructive criticism, I try to oblige. But great work. I find this site more compelling than any of the pro-tennis commentary I follow. Gracias!
Haha, thanks for being so nice about the criticism. I agree that our intros are often a little frattish, as we try to work our way into the post.
Andy! Thanks for the comments and the constructive critique, we appreciate it! We’ll definitely look into some more “out of the box” articles like you mentioned above. Always growing!
In terms of your constructive critique, I must say I am a bit surprised! The feeling of the blog or at least my vision is that this is a place where we really connect to the players in DIII – and with that comes a bit of informality both in articles and on twitter. I can say that I love working with my fellow bloggers – and I go way back with D3NE, who I’m sure you’ve noticed I have the most banter with. Overall, we’re not looking to make this site some “ESPN-style” commentary where everything gets a bit boring. I personally love Grantland(ESPN blog) and think that the laidback style of that blog fits the type of thing we are looking for. Either way, we will definitely take this feedback into account!
Again, thanks for the comments! Glad you find this a bit more interesting than the pro blogs 🙂
Now that I reread my constructive criticism above, I can’t help but think, Damn! What a jerk I am!
I understand the feel you’re going for, and the tone does give readers the sense that they’re sitting in on a conversation among knowledgable insiders. I’m on the dark side of 30, so chalk up my earlier comment to old man crankiness.
Looking forward to the season-ending coverage.
I have really enjoyed this website and the all the engagement with the players and fans. I think D3 tennis is on the rise and this website contributes to that. One thing I would love is to have links to the big matches box scores or something easier to access without having to go to each schools website. Again great job and thank you.
We’ve been trying to get that done, but it’s a lot of busy work and none of us bloggers wants to do it, haha. I agree that it’s the biggest thing that we’re missing. I tried doing something like it with the #d3tennisscores, but that fell through
AWESOME callout! We’ve been getting similar requests for hte past two years. I will dedicate this summer to trying to find a way to get this done for you guys. We realize it’s a huge opportunity.
Thanks for your support!!
Been reading the blog since Fall of 2007 and it gets better every year. D3Regional has been a fantastic addition and everyone else is great too. I especially enjoy the match previews; even when I disagree with a prediction or how a player is assessed, the evidence is always sound.
Looking forward to following the blog next year.
Guru:
For the love of all things D3tennis, help us out with a little Settles v Hansen historical take now that the finals are set for tomorrow! Pretty please!
I really want to do this, personally, because Cruz/CMS used to be hands down the best rivalry in DIII tennis, and while Hansen and Settles have always respected each other immensely, they’ve also had some pretty heated disagreements in the past. I remember a year where there was rain in Santa Cruz, and the Cruz guys spent a bunch of time squeegeeing the courts then things got salty. Long story short, Hansen gave a Pacino-esque speech and the Slugs won 5-0 or something like that. Another good story is the time CMS finally got the monkey off their back when they went to Cruz and beat the Slugs on their courts for the first time in the finals of the Sweet Sixteen. I apologize that I can only give you this stream-of-consciousness rant on how awesome the rivalry was, but just go to ITATennis.com and look through the box scores of the matches they’ve played. Ridiculous.
I would love to see more of the women’s coverage. We had a bit at the beginning of the semester, but whoever covers it seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I wish the women’s had equal coverage as the men’s because all of the recent (interesting) posts have been about the men…otherwise it’s great!!
In response to this and the “Idoc” comment below, duly noted!! We were using this year to kind of test out the Women’s appetite and see where we could get with the commitments we had. Next year, now that some of the writers have a year under their belt, we will try and ramp up the coverage to be closer to the Men’s. While I cannot guarantee that we will ever be as big as Men’s, we will certainly have a better product coming next year.
Stay tuned and thanks for being a loyal reader! You rock! (You too, idoc!)
Great commentary all year round. Now if you would just do the same for the women’s as you do for the men’s this would be the best blog ever! There must be just as many parents alumni and former players on the women’s side as there are on the men’s side. What you gave us for the women was good though. We want more!
Said it before but this blog is really great, read it all the time! In my opinion the best part is going individual match by match! I think it’s a great way to find out more about the lower line-up players and teams depth. So if possible do that more although obviously it takes a lot more time. Also you did a pretty good job of this but it’s really great when you start the year going over each of the top 40 teams or so and the strengths of each of those teams and key players they have and acquired. Great Job keep up the great work on Nationals Coverage!!!
Thank you Tyler!
Another huge thank you for the incredible amount of work that you guys put into the site. It is extraordinary and we are all enormously lucky and grateful for what you do.
I would love to see UTR analysis incorporated more into your articles. In particular, I’d love to see a piece that does an after-the-fact comparison of actual results vs those predicted by UTR. Also, I’d love to see some sort of analysis that follows recruiting classes for four years and evaluates how good a predictor UTR was for actual success.
Absolutely! UTR has been on the rise and we decided to use it, albeit sparingly, as it went through it’s beta phase. There have been some debates about UTR in general and we will continue to look into those debates to see what we can post, as well as adding UTR’s more into our analysis.
Thanks for the feedback!! We really appreciate it.
My #1 website!!!!
Thank you for all of your hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm!!!!
WOW!!! Thank you! Glad to be your #1!
The blog is AWESOME!!!! My now 85-year-old cousin and I literally “followed the tennis bus” for two of the three years that my son Austin was on the Kenyon team. (GO LORDS!!!) She’s had her health challenges but my sister retired early and stepped in for his last year, along with my friend Nancy, while my husband held it down in Gambier, OH, once until the wee hours of the morning. Again, big fun on and off the courts and great players and people. I forward stats and news articles from the blogs and we reminisce about those we know and how things are changing in the DIII world and how some things (thankfully) never change. Like the nice lady in Cary NC who sent pictures she took of my sister and me there in 2012 celebrating with Austin after what turned out to be his last collegiate match. So I’m sure others will have good suggestions for improving the blog but I just wanna say THANKS!!! ….and GO LORDS!!!!
Jeanne! You are one of the bloggers’ favorite commenters! Thanks for all your continued support, and of course, GO LORDS! Inspiring to see your family/friends have been reading the blog! Thanks so much!
Just wanted to say that you guys are awesome. As a former DIII tennis player, I was always frustrated with the lack of coverage of the sport. You guys are doing more than just cover it. You know the history, the schools, the rivalries, the venues, the coaches, and the players. And of course it seems obvious that you all played DIII tennis yourselves. As a result, you all make incredibly insightful and entertaining comments. It is a pleasure to read what you have to say. And the fact that you are all doing this on your own time, in such dedicated fashion, is amazing.
Thank you very much for all that you do. Looking forward to the rest of this season’s coverage!
Glad to hear from the DIII tennis family! Appreciate your compliments and loyalty as well!! We’ll keep trying to get better and improve the site where we can!