Newsletter #10

We are two weeks away from the end of the 2011 tennis season. Next two weeks will determine final placement for the co-ed league. Hopefully the weather will cooperate just little bit longer. This turned out to be our longest season. We started April 5th and finishing off 6 months later on October 2nd. I think we stretched the tennis season as much as we can for Rochester's climate.

Women's league is already done. Congratulations to Cherisse Kellen who ended up winning the women's division.

Interleague meet

Our inter-league team lead by Keegan Hakala went to Cannon Falls for another meet versus FAT league. Both teams put strongest lineups yet. We had 11 players on our roster. FAT league ended up winning this one 4-3. It was a lot of fun and hopefullt we will keep organizing these in the future.

Here are the scores:

1S Will Stott vs. Tom Olmscheid L 0-6,1-6

2S Dave Pewowaruk vs. Josiah Hakala L 2-6,4-6

3S Maksim Lecic vs. Marlo Pranke W 6-7,6-4,(11-9)

1D Keegan Hakala/Dave Hodge vs. Jim Chanthakhoun/Nit Chanthakhoun W 6-4,6-3

2D Bob Hubert/Tony Lillie vs. Joseph Emond/Jeff Engebretson W 6-2,7-6

3D Ethan Lillie/Matt Rothschild vs. Rob Hamidi/Doug Larson L 4-8

4D Shruthi Naik/Lisa Rothschild vs. Rob Hamidi/Della Rizzo L 2-8

End of the season event

Just like last year, our end of the season event will be held at the RAC . As of now, it looks like it will happen on Saturday October 1st, at 3 pm. I will send you an e mail soon with exact details, and to see how many of you are coming. The event will include the championship match, trophy presentation, doubles play for all participants, and food provided by RAC .

RAC will charge us $7 per person. A court for championship match will be booked for 3 hours, and the rest of us will have 1.5 hours of court time reserved for doubles. Hopefully finalists will be available on this date.

It should be a great opportunity for us to get together one last time this season. Hopefully we will have a good turnout again.

Session 3 format

New session 3 format has worked well. We had single match elimination format for the past 5 years, so only winners kept advancing to play next round. Consolation rounds that we started this season worked well. We get to play a lot more tennis this fall so I think this session 3 format will be used in the future.

Format change for 2012

As most of you know, we have been talking about changing session 1 format , so it mirrors session 2. If we do this everyone will be placed in divisions (levels) from the start next spring. We would use this year's results to set up the divisions. After session 1 is over, top two players in each division move up and bottom 2 drop a level down. This way we would avoid having a lot of loop sided matches in the session I and matches would get more competitive throughout the season.

Currently , session 1 has everyone starting from scratch each year. Players are placed in groups. Each group has wide range of players (from beginners to advanced). Group stage results determine what division (level) you get to play in session II.

This system allows us to easier integrate new players. We get around 15 new players each year, so if we want to set up divisions from the start, we need to figure out where do we put these new players? Do they get placed ahead of someone who earned their placement previous year, just because a new player claims higher skill level?

On the other hand, if we put all new people in the bottom divisions, and make them earn their way up, we will get loop sided matches again because some high level people would get mixed up with ones that normally play bottom level.

Some suggest setting up pre-season qualifying matches for new people so we can use those results to place them where they belong. It's not a bad idea, but our season starts in early April and schedule needs to be done at least a week before we start. So these matches would have to be done in March and we all know that playing tennis in march doesn't happen too often here. Unless we move the league start date to mid April I don't think qualifying matches can happen.

So this leaves us with either placing new guys at the bottom, or just going with whatever level they claim to be, maybe do some scouting as well in case new guys played against someone else who is already in the league.

Any suggestions or feedback about the session I format change is appreciated. You can post your opinions in the comments box below this blog, or you can email me directly at maksimlecic@hotmail.com

I might set a poll later this month to see if more people would be in favor of changing the session I format or keeping it as it is.

So long for now, have a great week.