Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - Printable Version
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RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - Jamesy - 09-08-2024
(09-08-2024, 03:03 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: My point in highlighting the international players on the rosters of other top tennis teams was that recruiting statements such as "Stanford has commitments from 3 of the top 5 recruits" may not be as meaningful as if the rankings included international players.
When Bernard Muir hires a new head women's tennis coach, I hope that he gives consideration to their experience recruiting internationally.
That is an interesting point. Do international tennis players comprise more of the top collegiate players now than in years past? (I have no idea personally). We've been very successful historically in women's tennis, M/W water polo, and more distantly men's tennis, relying mostly on US players. Is part of the reason for our decreased success in men's tennis due to better international players playing in the US or our diminished recruiting prowess with US players? Is our current 5 year (and counting) gap in women's tennis championships for that same reason? We've been selectively successful in getting international women's tennis players over the years (Barnes, Zhao, Arbuthnott) who are key contributors to our lineup.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - Sakibomb25 - 09-08-2024
(09-08-2024, 10:10 PM)Jamesy Wrote:(09-08-2024, 03:03 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: My point in highlighting the international players on the rosters of other top tennis teams was that recruiting statements such as "Stanford has commitments from 3 of the top 5 recruits" may not be as meaningful as if the rankings included international players.
When Bernard Muir hires a new head women's tennis coach, I hope that he gives consideration to their experience recruiting internationally.
That is an interesting point. Do international tennis players comprise more of the top collegiate players now than in years past? (I have no idea personally). We've been very successful historically in women's tennis, M/W water polo, and more distantly men's tennis, relying mostly on US players. Is part of the reason for our decreased success in men's tennis due to better international players playing in the US or our diminished recruiting prowess with US players? Is our current 5 year (and counting) gap in women's tennis championships for that same reason? We've been selectively successful in getting international women's tennis players over the years (Barnes, Zhao, Arbuthnott) who are key contributors to our lineup.
For women's tennis, we still get the cream of the crop, consistently landing Top 10 players in every class (often multiple Top 10 players). And while the international players have definitely affected the game, the new darling of women's tennis, UNC, had no international players in its championship season two years ago. When Texas won three years ago, they had two international players, with one cracking the doubles and singles line-up.
International players in tennis have long been a cheat code for a lot of universities. When all the top tier universities (i.e. Stanford) are signing all the top American talent, a lot of universities use international players to help build up their program rather quickly. Once you start winning, then you can start attracting the top American talent. A lot of sport due this, but I think it's more prevalent in tennis.
With the men, we are also getting top tier talent, but for whatever reason, it's just not translating. I think the top international talent supersedes the top US talent... otherwise I think Stanford would be doing much better. Than again, in recent years, Stanford has signed top international talent in men's tennis as well.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-09-2024
Lots of great comments on here, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway:
* When we're speaking of just top US recruits, then a top 50 player has a very small chance of beating a top 5 player, and a top 100 player has barely any chance at all. The Tennis Recruiting Network seems to generally have about 25 or so players rated as "blue chip" prospects at the top, but even within that tier, you get some players who are far below others as far as being prospects goes. For example, Emma Sun was a blue chip just like Alexis Blokhina was in the same class, but they're lightyears apart, prospect-wise.
* No, there's no unified ranking of American and international youth tennis players that allows us to compare apples to apples, sadly. In theory, an ITF juniors ranking could be a proxy for that, but like all tour ranking systems, it benefits those who play more tournaments (and go deeper in those tournaments) under that umbrella. So if you've decided to play only a handful of those tournaments while focusing on domestic USTA competition, then your ranking won't reflect your level.
* With UTR and the newer World Tennis Number, the powers that be seem to be trying to get a quality level in place that we can figure out relative quality, but those numbers are often behind paywalls, so to the extent they're used to create rankings, they're not public-facing.
* Yeah, Stanford Women's Tennis takes the odd international student, but the team is predominantly made up of American players, while other top teams often have no Americans in the lineup. On one hand, you could look at our hesitancy to add international students as a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation, as we're in the mix for a national title darn near every year doing it this way. And perhaps our coaches are hesitant to commit to a player who might just be here for a year or two or three, and they feel they've got a better chance of keeping a player here four years if she's American, as international players do seem to leave earlier more frequently. This program has long effectively recruited itself, so I can understand some resistance to change, but to whom is the program recruiting itself? The American players who have grown up with the backdrop of this program being the gold standard. There are certainly more excellent students among the elite international players out there, and it does seem like we've never made much of an effort in breaking through to that group. And absolutely, we can't just keep effectively ignoring such a massive talent pool. We'll never become a program that relies solely on international players, and we'll always be in on the top domestic talent. But it does seem that a better balance is there to be had.
* As for whether the top collegiate players these days include more international players than they used to, I think that is undeniably true. Of course, "these days" and "used to" are doing some work there, as we'd need to define what exactly we mean to look at the data. But in the current ITA preseason top 25, #2 is Czech, #3 is French, #5 is Japanese, #9 is Israeli, #11 is Belarussian, #13 is Ukrainian, #16 is Mexican, #18 is Spanish, #19 is Ukrainian, #20 and #21 are Canadian, #22 is German, #24 is Japanese, and #25 is Ecuadorian. That's 14 out of 25.
* Some schools start to build pipelines with certain countries because the coaches build connections, and that's seemingly something we've never done (or rather, if we've done it, we haven't seen it bear fruit). Comfort with a coaching staff is obviously massive in any recruiting situation, but it's an even bigger deal internationally. And our most recent international players (Canadian, English, Argentinian but with an older brother here, too) don't exactly indicate that culturally, the tennis team is equipped to support an international player. (Obviously, Stanford as a whole should have a much easier time making that case; but we need people out there making it.)
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - GK3 - 09-10-2024
(09-09-2024, 10:51 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote: Lots of great comments on here, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway:
* When we're speaking of just top US recruits, then a top 50 player has a very small chance of beating a top 5 player, and a top 100 player has barely any chance at all. The Tennis Recruiting Network seems to generally have about 25 or so players rated as "blue chip" prospects at the top, but even within that tier, you get some players who are far below others as far as being prospects goes. For example, Emma Sun was a blue chip just like Alexis Blokhina was in the same class, but they're lightyears apart, prospect-wise.
* No, there's no unified ranking of American and international youth tennis players that allows us to compare apples to apples, sadly. In theory, an ITF juniors ranking could be a proxy for that, but like all tour ranking systems, it benefits those who play more tournaments (and go deeper in those tournaments) under that umbrella. So if you've decided to play only a handful of those tournaments while focusing on domestic USTA competition, then your ranking won't reflect your level.
* With UTR and the newer World Tennis Number, the powers that be seem to be trying to get a quality level in place that we can figure out relative quality, but those numbers are often behind paywalls, so to the extent they're used to create rankings, they're not public-facing.
* Yeah, Stanford Women's Tennis takes the odd international student, but the team is predominantly made up of American players, while other top teams often have no Americans in the lineup. On one hand, you could look at our hesitancy to add international students as a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation, as we're in the mix for a national title darn near every year doing it this way. And perhaps our coaches are hesitant to commit to a player who might just be here for a year or two or three, and they feel they've got a better chance of keeping a player here four years if she's American, as international players do seem to leave earlier more frequently. This program has long effectively recruited itself, so I can understand some resistance to change, but to whom is the program recruiting itself? The American players who have grown up with the backdrop of this program being the gold standard. There are certainly more excellent students among the elite international players out there, and it does seem like we've never made much of an effort in breaking through to that group. And absolutely, we can't just keep effectively ignoring a of immense proportions talent pool. We'll never become a program that relies solely on international players, and we'll always be in on the top domestic talent. But it does seem that a better balance is there to be had.
* As for whether the top collegiate players these days include more international players than they used to, I think that is undeniably true. Of course, "these days" and "used to" are doing some work there, as we'd need to define what exactly we mean to look at the data. But in the current ITA preseason top 25, #2 is Czech, #3 is French, #5 is Japanese, #9 is Israeli, #11 is Belarussian, #13 is Ukrainian, #16 is Mexican, #18 is Spanish, #19 is Ukrainian, #20 and #21 are Canadian, #22 is German, #24 is Japanese, and #25 is Ecuadorian. That's 14 out of 25.
* Some schools start to build pipelines with certain countries because the coaches build connections, and that's seemingly something we've never done (or rather, if we've done it, we haven't seen it bear fruit). Comfort with a coaching staff is obviously massive in any recruiting situation, but it's an even bigger deal internationally. And our most recent international players (Canadian, English, Argentinian but with an older brother here, too) don't exactly indicate that culturally, the tennis team is equipped to support an international player. (Obviously, Stanford as a whole should have a much easier time making that case; but we need people out there making it.)
Thanks, that is the type of info I was looking for. I had assumed that this was probably way it was. In almost all sports now days if you do not make an effort to recruit internationally, you will lose out on some very good talent. Soccer, Basketball, Gymnastics, Swimming and Golf are pretty obviously sports played at a high level by men and women around the world. Mexico is developing a pretty good softball program and Latin America and Japan have produced excellent baseball players over the years. So any coach who doesn't work on developing international ties is missing out.
This NYT article on the development of softball in Mexico is interesting. It shows that even in a country where Machismo rules in many things, things can also change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/americas/softball-mexico-womens-sports.html#:~:text=Officials%20settled%20on%20softball%20because%20of%20its,Olympics%20appearance%20at%20the%202021%20Tokyo%20Games).
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-10-2024
FYI, the schedule is out, and as we transition to the ACC, we need to make a separate adjustment, and that's having the individual NCAA championships at the end of the fall season rather than the spring season.
* Sept. 21-29: ITA All-American Championships (Cary, NC)
* Sept. 27-29: Cal Fall Invitational
* Oct. 11-15: ITA Northwest Regional Championships (in Berkeley)
* Nov. 7-10: ITA Conference Masters (San Diego)
* Nov. 7-10: ITA Sectional Championships (Los Angeles, at USC)
* Nov. 19-24: NCAA Individual Championships
Another change is that for the first time in forever, we're not hosting the Northwest Regionals. I assume that's down to the Taube renovations, so that makes sense. Hopefully that tournament returns to its rightful home next year.
But all of this seems to be a funneling system toward the individual championships at the end of November, except for the Cal Fall Invitational, which will likely be where players further down our lineup get some fall matches.
First comes ITA All-Americans, where ten players will qualify for the NCAA singles championship (the eight quarterfinalists and two consolation finalists), and four doubles teams (the main draw semifinalists) will qualify for the NCAA doubles championship.
Then at Northwest Regionals, the two singles finalists get tickets to NCAAs and so does the doubles champion. With 13 regions, that's another 26 entries to the singles tournament.
Then comes the Conference Masters, where each D-I conference designates one singles player and one doubles team to participate, so that should be 28 AQ conferences plus a few wild cards, presumably of the highest-ranked players who haven't yet qualified for NCAAs. The conference can choose to use a tournament, but I haven't seen one scheduled, so I'm assuming they'll just nominate the highest-ranked player who is yet to qualify. The semifinalists of this tournament will go to NCAAs, while in doubles, the top 3 teams will go to NCAAs.
If you haven't qualified yet, your last chance is one of the four Sectional Tournaments, which will send the final 24 players to the singles championship (6 from each section) and 12 doubles teams (3 from each section) to NCAAs. The singles semifinalists make it plus two "quarterfinal playoff winners," so presumably they take the QF losers and pit them against each other and the the two winners of those matches get the last tickets. Ours is hosted by USC.
But let's say Connie Ma does well enough to punch her ticket at All-Americans--what does she do the rest of the fall? My hope would be that various invitationals get added, or at least our players go and participate in lower-level professional tournaments.
We'll get a separate Spring Season thread going on in a few months if it seems necessary, but for the time being, here's our spring schedule (with season-ending rankings from last year):
Jan. 16: vs. UC Davis
Jan. 24: vs. #51 Memphis (ITA Kickoff Weekend)
Jan. 25: vs. either #44 Ole Miss or #49 Utah
Feb. 7-11: ITA Indoor Nationals
Feb. 22: vs. #9 UCLA
Feb. 28: vs. #52 UCSB
Mar. 7: vs. #62 Syracuse
Mar. 9: vs. Boston College
Mar. 14: vs. #34 SMU
Mar. 15: vs. #10 Cal
Mar. 21: at Virginia Tech
Mar. 23: at #8 Virginia
Mar. 28: at #18 Miami
Mar. 30: at #22 Florida State
Apr. 4: vs. #7 UNC
Apr. 5: vs. #23 Duke
Apr. 11: at #43 Wake Forest
Apr. 13: at #16 N.C. State
Apr. 15-20: ACC Championships (Cary, NC)
May 15-18: NCAA Team Championships
So, our annual non-conference matches with Texas and Pepperdine fall by the wayside, as our increased ACC load means fewer dates we can fit in non-conference opponents. We keep our UCLA match as a non-conference tilt, but no USC on the schedule. (Of note, the ACC teams not on our schedule are #25 Georgia Tech, #32 Notre Dame, #56 Clemson, and unranked Louisville.) There is potentially room that weekend of Feb. 22-23 for another home match, and we've also got just the one match the following weekend when we play UCSB on the Friday. But it'll be a tougher schedule on average, especially with another couple of good matches in the ACC tournament and at Indoor Nationals. Plenty of opportunities to get ten valuable wins for the rankings, that's for sure.
I bet Eleana Yu has April 5 circled. I bet we do, too.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-11-2024
Well, that was a quick interim tag; Frankie is now the official head coach.
https://gostanford.com/news/2024/09/11/frankie-brennan-named-peter-and-helen-bing-director-of-womens-tennis
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - BobK - 09-11-2024
Excellent choice.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - cardfan77 - 09-11-2024
I would have been shocked if Frankie was not named the Head Coach.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-12-2024
A soft start to the fall season today as #77 Valencia Xu plays in the Battle in the Bay at the California Tennis Club in San Francisco. She's one of the 5-8 seeds, and she gets started at 5pm today against TCU's Raquel Caballero Chica, who played from 4-6 singles last year for the Horned Frogs. The other seeds in the tournament are (1) Ange Oby Kajuru (#5, Okla State); (2) Anastasiia Lopata (#13, UGA); (3) Amelia Honer (#14, UCSB); (4) Anastasiya Komar (#11, Okla State); (5) Emma Charney (#15, USC); (5) Sofia Rojas (#106, UGA); and (5) Jade Otway (NR, TCU). Good luck to Valencia!
I'm excited to see if she takes a jump this year.
You can find live streaming links here: https://www.battleinthebaytennis.com/tournament
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - martyup - 09-12-2024
Xu's match live:
https://web.track.tennis/#/@public-QQLN_g9kpvE/@public-QQLN_g9kpvE/evt-ihmGDkjaK7k/145370
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - Jamesy - 09-12-2024
Some interesting tidbits from Troy's interview with Lele. Team skips the indoor nationals because the players didn't like missing that much class mid quarter. ACC travel definitely played a role in Lele's decision to step down. She also did not like what they are doing with the tennis construction and this also played a role in her decision.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - martyup - 09-13-2024
Xu got beat by Chica of TCU 6-0, 1-6, 6-7.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-13-2024
(09-13-2024, 06:04 AM)martyup Wrote: Xu got beat by Chica of TCU 6-0, 1-6, 6-7.Xu apparently has not, in fact, taken a leap this offseason. Yikes.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - martyup - 09-13-2024
(09-13-2024, 11:05 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:(09-13-2024, 06:04 AM)martyup Wrote: Xu got beat by Chica of TCU 6-0, 1-6, 6-7.Xu apparently has not, in fact, taken a leap this offseason. Yikes.
I watched a little of the match on livestream. She is a very loud player. Lots of grunts and shouts.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-19-2024
Whoa! Big news on the staffing front--former player and NCAA champion Janice Shin joins the program as an Assistant Coach! Welcome back, Janice!
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - BobK - 09-19-2024
https://gostanford.com/news/2024/09/19/alumna-janice-shin-hired-as-womens-tennis-assistant-coach
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-20-2024
As ITA All-Americans kick off, here are the event pages for that tournament:
https://wearecollegetennis.com/ita-womens-all-american-championships/
https://colleges.wearecollegetennis.com/Competitions/ITA/Tournaments/Overview/99ac22fb-6f27-407e-b570-66c41fbab1db
While we don't yet have main draw or qualifying draws, we do know from the entry lists that Ma, Xu, Blokhina, and Glozman are present in singles. Houghton, Okpara, Sun, Hui, and walk-on* Morgan Shaffer are not there; Yepifanova is also absent.
Pre-qualifying starts tomorrow, but none of our four is in that draw. Ma will surely be seeded in the main draw, but you could see the other three need to go through qualifying.
* I'm assuming she's a walk-on because she was a 3-star recruit (recall that the TRN system has Blue Chips at the top, then 5 stars, then 4 stars, etc.), and this program just doesn't give scholarships to recruits at that level.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - ColoradoTree - 09-23-2024
Qualifying draw getting going today, and Blokhina and Xu will play in singles--Blokhina is the 4 seed and Xu is the 12 seed--while Xu/Glozman will get going in doubles.
Live scores here: https://ioncourt.com/tournaments/66eaddef3c78a1ac37916643/live-score
Live streaming here: https://web.playsight.com/facility/town-of-cary/home
* Xu is on court right now against NC State's Maddy Zampardo (who played between 3 and 6 for NC State last year, but mostly at 5), and Xu is leading 6-4, 2-1 (up a break in the second)
* Blokhina will play UGA's Sofia Rojas (a transfer from Oklahoma State who has played throughout the Cowgirls' lineup) at 10:00am PT
* Xu/Glozman will play a duo from Texas at 2:00pm
Xu dropped the second set 6-3 as Zampardo went on a bit of a run, but Xu has started the third well, going up 2-0 so far.
Scoreboard stopped working for Xu-Zampardo, but Xu pulled it off, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, so that's a solid win for Valencia!
Meanwhile, Blokhina just broke Rojas to go up 3-2 in her first set, so we'll see if she can consolidate here and build some momentum.
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - Lorcan - 09-23-2024
Blokhina took the first, 6-4 but is in danger in the second at 3-4 15-40. We'll see if she can pull this set out.
Blokhina did indeed get broken, but breaks right back to keep in touch in the second. Blokhina to serve 4-5 in the second.
Blokhina breaks again, and has a chance to serve this out at 6-5 in the second!
RE: Women's Tennis: Fall 2024 Season - M T - 09-23-2024
Seems the Lorcan scoreboard also stopped before showing the final results
Blokhina did win the 2nd set 7-5.
Xu/Glozman won 6-3, 6-3.