Pre-season

Hello everybody


We reached 40 players for the men's division. This is a number I was shooting for when we started the sign up. It would expand us from 32 players last year and 40 would still work good for our regular session I format. This would continue our trend of expanding the league by 8 players each year. We have 28 players coming back from last year and we added 12 new players to the group.


I am still getting new contacts interested in joining. In the past we were placing these players on waiting/sub list until we get an opening. Last year everyone on the waiting list had chance to get in for session II. We will probably have some openings again especially in between sessions so it's always good to have alternates who are ready to get in.

This year I plan to do it a little different. If we get enough new players I will create a challenger division where they would play each other until an opening comes up. This division would run parallel with our regular league and it would be an overflow division. I will keep registering new players and they will start playing each other once we gather enough players. The challenger division rating would determine what level they will be covering in case we have someone injured or quitting.
Session I format
I have started working on the schedule for session I . I plan to have an 8 week long session. 40 players are divided in 8 groups. Each group would have players of all skill levels. I will try to make the groups evenly balanced taking into account your past results and level claimed for new players. First 5 weeks you would play everyone in your group. After the group phase, we would have playoffs / classification rounds for 3 weeks. Group winners will play each other for places 1-8, second places will play each other for places 9-16 and so on.
After the session I is done everyone will be ranked from 1st to 40th place and everyone will complete 7 matches. Top 10 players will qualify to play division I in the next session, 11th-20th place will play division II, 21st-30th place division III and bottom 10 players will play division IV.
So the group phase will determine session II placement for some, and some will earn it through playoffs.


Since we are having unusually nice spring weather this year, I am thinking about starting the league earlier than planned. We already have 40 players and I am getting close to be done with the schedule, so if the extended forecast looks good we can even start as early as next week. This would be two weeks before originally anticipated May 3rd start. I hope everyone would be ok with this, if not let me know.

This way we might get a week off in between sessions later in the summer and also it would help us finish the season while it's still nice out. Another option would be to start April 26th, one week before planned start. This would give us a little more time to play some warm up matches.
Please let me know what you think about the early start, I will make a decision in next few days.


Donations
Thanks for those of you who made donations to the league last week .
I plan to give out some awards and trophies this year. I will keep you updated about this. Our donate button which you can use to make a donation will stay on the right side of this page and also on our main web site (bottom of the home page).


Pre season tourney


I plan to get us together for a pre season tourney this Sunday around 4pm at Mayo High school. It would be a similar gathering like last fall where we make two teams who compete against each other in various doubles and singles. Everyone from men's and women's league is invited. It was a fun meet last fall and it would be a great opportunity for our group to get together and have some fun playing tennis. I will send you another e mail about this to see who would be interested.


So long for now, please let me know what you think about the early start . You can e mail me your input or leave a comment on this blog (see below)


Max