Changes and Constants: A Look Back at the D3 Tennis World of the Past

I’ll admit this post is somewhat self-serving. There’s not a ton of action with the teams I cover going on, and I’m a little uninspired to write about them until some actual results happen this weekend. So for now, I thought it would be fun to take a little trip down memory lane and talk about the current state of Division III Tennis and how it compares to my playing days approximately 5-10 years ago. It’s really not that long ago, but there’s already been plenty that’s changed, some for the better, and some for the worse. I don’t really know how this is going to go (note from after writing it: it’s going to make me sound very old and crotchety), but I’m hoping to start some discussion and hear from you, dear readers, about some of your memories of college tennis and how it compares to what we’ve got today. (Also, blame WordPress for the egregious spacing going on throughout this post)

WHAT’S DIFFERENT

• Keeping track of matches online : It’s pretty crazy when I think back to my college days, when I’d be trying to follow matches going on around the country, sometimes during my own matches (hiding my phone so my coach didn’t see me using it). Some teams were early adopters of the Twitter score updates (Carnegie Mellon and Trinity TX come to mind), but compared to today, it was few and far between. And as far as specific live stats pages go, the only one I can think of that dates back more than a few years is CMS. Those Google Sheets live scoring pages that teams like CMU, Brandeis, and others use? Unheard of! Us Bloggers definitely take it for granted now, but it’s really become so much easier to know what’s going on with any match in real time. In fact, in the rare instance there’s a match without any updates, it really stands out in contrast.

• Prevalence of Video Streaming: It used to be a real luxury to have any sort of Live Streaming of D3 Tennis. Gustavus hosting Indoors, CMS, a roving camera at NCAAs that didn’t always show the best match, and some Periscope streams from an iPhone 4 mounted on a fence made up the bulk of the options. Don’t even get me started on FloTennis, by the way. In just a few years, the number of teams that have Playsight and other types of streaming on their courts has gone way up. It’s made our job as Bloggers somewhat easier, as we now have many more opportunities to see players in action, as opposed to just looking at results.  Again, when I think back to how rare quality video streaming was just five years ago, it’s awesome to think about how far we’ve come. 

• Social Media: Keeping with the theme of technology, it’s pretty cool to take a look through my Twitter timeline and see all of the different graphics, hype videos, and other features that teams are putting out through their social media accounts. I can say with great certainty that in my day there were no “Matchday” graphics, something that is now pretty much universal. And remember how big a thing team hashtags were? #ForTheBoys captured the hearts and minds of the D3Tennis world and started a trend that still continues in a lesser sense to this day. There was even a tab on The Blog where we listed all of the team hashtags we saw (and I say we even though I wasn’t a Blogger yet).  I feel like teams have moved beyond just hashtags when it comes to forging a unique online identity, but I’ll always remember how hard I thought about coming up with a good one for my team. 

Coach of the Year award is not only #fortheboys, but more importantly #becauseoftheboys. Thanks guys! #TUTennis pic.twitter.com/hhNrIAjD7z

— Trinity Men's Tennis (@TUtennis) December 15, 2014

• Clinch Videos: Every weekend, my Twitter timeline gets filled with clinch videos. Granted, a lot of them are D1 videos retweeted by Bobby Knight, but it’s pretty much a requirement to post the clinch video of any match that comes down to the last match on. In the recent past, these videos were much more of a novelty, and a cool way to see the excitement of teams pulling off a big win. Now, they’ve pretty much jumped the shark. First of all, they all feel a little staged, because everyone knows they’re being videoed. Second, I’ve seen in person how ridiculous it is when there are a minimum of five people with their phones out recording every match point, then deleting the video when their players ends up losing the point. I can’t imagine it would help me as a player to see all of that going on. I’ve even seen coaches with their phones out, trying to get a video. Really? Clinch videos are the equivalent of storming the court in college basketball.  Don’t just do it for the ‘gram.

• UTR: When I was being recruited, UTR didn’t exist. Now, it’s the number people care about the most. For better or worse, UTR has become a big part of college tennis. A major reason is for it’s value in recruiting, I’m sure, but it also seems to get cited when accusing teams of stacking, seeding players in tournaments, and as a source of bragging rights for players (yes, actually). Regardless of opinion on UTR (and mine is mixed, though skewing positive), there’s no denying how much it has grown and become part of the college tennis landscape in the past few years, and subsequently how far TRN has fallen. While “How many stars do/did you have?” hasn’t completely lost its significance, “What’s your UTR?” is the question to ask these days.

• The Women’s Blog: Just a quick shoutout to my colleagues for expanding the women’s Blog into what it is today. Back when I played, our women’s team used to read the Blog anyway, even though it was pretty much exclusively about the men. The interest and readership has always been there, and it’s so cool to see so many more articles out there giving the women’s game the coverage they deserve. 

• No More Lineup Intros: I used to love the whole dog and pony show of everyone lining up, the coaches thanking everyone for coming and saying where the trainer was, and then reading off the lineups for us to all go down the line and high-five all our teammates. Clearly, this tradition is dying out, as I haven’t seen or heard of it in a few years now. On the whole, it’s not a big deal and saves a few minutes that were quite unnecessary, but part of me is sad that current and future players won’t get to experience the closest they’ll ever get to this.

• (Some of) The Top Teams: No surprise here. But I know that for myself, I was always interested to hear about teams that had gotten a ton better/worse since before my playing days. For example, to today’s freshmen, Brandeis is a top 10 team with a shot at a national championship, but for those of my generation, they’re a team that has spent most of their time ranked in the 20s. Or how about DePauw, a former top 10 team that used to be in the same conference as Trinity TX that is now far outside the top 40 and in the middle of the pack in the NCAC. So, for fun, here are some interesting numbers from the 2015 final Blog Power Rankings  (hopefully new Power Rankings coming next week!) 

• • #4 Trinity TX
  • #9 Johns Hopkins
  • #15 Whitman
  • #21 Trinity CT 
  • #22 Bates
  • #24 Stevens
  • #25 UT-Tyler
  • #26 Wesleyan
  • #29 Cal Lu (Go back a few years earlier and they were much higher!)
  • #30 Brandeis
  • #32 DePauw

WHAT’S (PRETTY MUCH) THE SAME

• Match Atmosphere: I can’t say much has changed when it comes to the cheering and volume that defines college tennis, even at the D3 level. If anything, teams have cleaned up some of the unsavory aspects of the BenchMob, and I get the feeling that on the whole sportsmanship is pretty good, overall. While some tennis purists scoff at how fiery and loud college matches can get, I’m glad to see that it’s just as emotional now as it’s ever been, if not more. 
• Format: An evergreen topic of conversation is whether the match format should be changed. Possibilities include going to no-ad, third set super-tiebreakers and changing the 3 doubles points and 6 singles points to some other system. Thankfully, the only real change I can think of is that doubles tiebreakers are now at 7-7 instead of 8-8, and I don’t think anyone has really been too upset about that. What the ideal format is can be the topic of a whole different article (and it has been), but as of now, the D3 Tennis format has been pretty consistent for a good chunk of time. Does that mean we’re due for a change?

• Massive schedule differences based on conference/region: The most notable thing that falls into this category is the NESCAC’s late start and omission from Indoors every year. I thought it sucked as a player, and I still think it sucks that several of the top teams in the country can’t play in a cool, unique, “National Championship” tournament. But it goes beyond just the fact that the NESCAC is so April-heavy. It seems like the Central Region teams start playing in mid-January and only have a few matches in April before conference tournaments, while the West Coast schools all peak in March when everyone comes out to play them on spring break. I remember as a player thinking how strange it was that the rhythm of my season was so incredibly different than that of some of my friends in different schools in different conferences, and that continues to be the case today.
• The Blog: This one is self-explanatory, and while I’d like to think we’ve gotten much better since my playing days, regardless of that, we are still here! As a player, this website was such a cool part of my experience as a player and one of the first sites I’d check when I was procrastinating doing schoolwork. Checking out the Twitter feeds of the OG writers was essential every weekend during the season and during NCAAs (it still is, by the way), and it was my mission to figure out their identities. I like to think that there are some players out there now in a similar place as to where I was back then. And who knows, if you’re lucky maybe in five years you’ll be like me, writing about Division 3 Tennis on a Friday night!

• (Most of) The Top Teams: While cases like Brandeis or DePauw do exist, for the most part, the top dogs are pretty consistent in this sport. Sometimes I talk to people in their 40s or 50s that played D3 tennis, and they pretty reliably are able to name Emory as one of the best teams, just like they always have been. So in the last 5-10 years, not a ton has changed. Go back a touch further and you’re still in the glory days of UC-Santa Cruz, but to reference that same 2015 Power Rankings list, many of the same usual suspects are at or near the top: CMS, Amherst, Middlebury, Emory, etc. 
• General Awesomness: To put a bow on it, I loved my D3 Tennis experience as a player, and as I continue to follow the game today as a fan and Blogger, it continues to be such a cool, unique experience to so many people. Part of why I wrote this article was just to be nostalgic, especially as the season starts to get into full swing and I’m here with hardly any opportunities to play tennis anymore, much less in a meaningful capacity. When I was in college, my team and college tennis was absolutely one of the biggest (if not the biggest) parts of my life, and I hope players get to experience and enjoy that while they are there, so that when they look back in 5-10 years on their own experience, they can fondly remember the good old days, just as I’ve been able to in this article. 

Thanks for indulging me in a totally different type of post, folks. What similarities/differences am I forgetting? What’s changed since you played (or started following) D3 tennis? Chime in on Twitter or in the comments below. Enjoy the weekend and I’ll be back soon for some coverage of the latest and greatest in the world of NE and Central Regional Action!