2015 Finals / season in review

RTL concluded it's 10th season last weekend. All three finals were played on Sunday at Mayo HS . Congratulations to the champions and runner ups

Women's singles

2015 Champion Anita Mohan

2015 Runner up Amy Heitz

Men's singles 

2015 Champion Tuan Truong

2015 Runner up Carl Gustafson

Men's singles level II

2015 Champion Jamie Niesen

2015 Runner up Michael Gottsch

Session III scores and final standings can be viewed on our web site www.rochestertennisleague.com

These standings will be used to form divisions for the next session starting in May 2016.  

Thank you all for participating in the league this year . I have been hearing a lot of positive comments about RTL and it's nice to see that our players are  spreading  the word about the league.

 RTL set up over 900 matches this year  across our three branches (men's singles, women's singles and doubles). In session I, we had 96 players in singles , 30 in doubles  and about 15 in the casual division. After 9 years  of continuous growth our numbers  seemed to stabilize  in 2015. 

Casual division

A casual division was added to RTL this year . This group consists of players who are looking to play occasionally without deadlines, schedule to follow or scores to report. Players list their name, gender, age group, skill level and contact info. The list is passed to all other casual league members and they are free to contact each other for unofficial matches. Casual league is also open for those that would like to play more often then just one official league match every week. I believe we have 16 players on this list now. 

Inter-league

Unfortunately we were unable to set up any inter-league meets with Farmington league this summer. Hopefully their new leadership will be more interested in this next season.

ARCH open

As some of you know,  I helped organize first annual Arch Open charity tennis tournament this summer. We had a great turnout and the event was  a total success. We are hoping to set it up again on May 21st  2016. Hope to see many of you sign up for it next spring.

Match completion rates

Success of the league is measured by how many scheduled  matches we actually complete. Our match completion percentage has been solid this year , I believe we are around 82-85% .  Session III started great . Only  handful of matches were missed in the first two weeks but unfortunately it seems like enthusiasm faded away as the session went on , especially in level II  men's.  Level I men's managed to complete 89% of the matches  , women's singles were at 75% and  Level II men's  only 71%. 

Session III format

With this many  matches missed towards the end of session 3  we might need  to  consider switching  back to the old setup  when session III had single match elimination format  (only winners advanced to play next round and players get eliminated after one loss). A few years back we added consolation rounds to offer everyone more tennis to play (one match every week) through September rather then have half of the league already eliminated after week #1 in late August. 

 Looking at level II numbers it would certainly make sense to revert to the single match elimination format. We had less then half of the matches completed in the  last round (level II) . On the other hand level I men's players seemed very interested in playing consolation rounds and they ended up with a great completion rate. We will revisit this issue next spring.

Facebook page

Tuan is  setting up a Facebook group for RTL players. He thought it would be a nice way to connect RTL players , especially those interested in playing additional matches. 

To join that group you can go to this link

https://www.facebook.com/groups/342191225905009/  

Please  email Tuan if you have questions about it. I don't use Facebook so won't be able to help you much with that. 

All  official communication, updates and news  about the league will still go through email, this blog and RTL web site.

Playing indoors

Dan Schraufnagel is going to be organizing indoor singles Sunday mornings at Rochester Tennis Connection. You can email him for additional info or to get on his list schraufnageld@gmail.com  

 Thank you all for participating in the league this year and big thanks  to Dave P, John F, Merry ,  Chris J and  Lisa for helping us update scores and standings. 

I will be getting in touch with you regarding the next season sometime in March. So long for now, hope to see you all back next year. 

Maksim Lecic