[ColoradoTree]

"she was a 5-star recruit, and one of those hasn't cracked our lineup in years"

In most sports, a 5-star recruit is the highest rating a recruit can get, but I've seen you refer to blue-chip recruits as the highest categories.  For those of us who don't follow as closely, can you describe the various levels of recruit in collegiate tennis?

BC

I know I've done an explainer like this before, and I just tried searching the site for it, but apparently I've posted too much about topics like this to be able to find that particular one! 

Anyway, the Tennis Recruiting Network (tennisrecruiting.net) ranks players by the usual number of stars we see in other sports, but the number of players within each star rank are lower than, say, football, and there's some grade inflation at the top. 

In football (using the current ESPN Top 300), the top 20 or so players are five-star players, and 21-300 are ranked as four-star players. With women's tennis, the top 25 or so are "blue chips" according to TRN, and then there are about 50 five-star players, and then about 125 four-star players, and then three stars on down after that. In other words, Stanford's lineup exclusively comes every year from players that were top 25 recruits in their particular classes, and usually much higher than that. 

One very big caveat: that only applies to American recruits (and the odd international recruit that is US-based and thus plays enough locally here to be absorbed by the system). It omits international recruits for the most part, and there is no umbrella recruiting ranking system for international recruits. You have the ITF junior world ranking, of course, but that's a point system like the ATP and WTA tours use, so it shows how many tournaments you've played and how many points you've amassed, but it exercises no independent judgment as to how promising of a recruit you are. 

Looking at the class of 2025, Ahn is currently the #2 recruit, Ekstrand the #3 recruit, and Wang is the #4 recruit. (That's behind #1 Akasha Urhobo, who has already turned pro, so we have all top 3 incoming US-based recruits.)

Glozman was the #1 recruit last year. Hui and Yu were the top two in theirs, with Yu #1 for most of the time. The year before that, Blokhina finished at #3 but was more like 5-6 during her senior year, and Emma Sun peaked as high as #10 but was more often in the high teens and twenties. The year before that, Ma was #1, Yepifanova was mostly right behind her, and Xu was toward the bottom of the top 10.

Anyway, long story short, but while five-star football recruits are expected to be instant-impact guys at top programs, five-star women's tennis recruits rarely crack the lineup at top programs because of that extra layer of blue chips on top. And that's before you mix in the international recruits, which dominate a lot of rosters these days.

---

Oh, the preseason team rankings dropped today, and we're #3. I don't know if that factors in Yepifanova or not, but my guess is yes. I think we're a national title contender with her, but not without her. (And fwiw, I have no information as to whether she'll play.)

Here's the top 25, with scheduled opponents in italics:

1. Georgia
2. Texas A&M
3. Stanford
4. Oklahoma State
5. UCLA
6. UNC
7. Texas
8. Michigan
9. UVA
10. Pepperdine
11. Duke
12. Auburn
13. Cal
14. NC State
15. Ohio State
16. Oklahoma
17. USC
18. Tennessee
19. Florida
20. South Carolina
21. Vanderbilt
22. Alabama
23. Miami
24. Florida State
25. UCF

Sad to see that Pepperdine is apparently a scheduling casualty of the move to the ACC. With the Pac-12 having an odd number of teams, we'd been scheduling them the same weekend as we played Oregon, since Oregon State didn't have a team, but now our dance card is pretty full. (Though Cal is making it work--they're playing Pepperdine twice this season, and UCLA and USC are both playing the Waves, too.) And it's their own dang faults that USC/UCLA are off the schedule by bolting for the Big Ten in the first place, but I'm still sad to see the end of those matches, too.

[ColoradoTree]

"she was a 5-star recruit, and one of those hasn't cracked our lineup in years"

In most sports, a 5-star recruit is the highest rating a recruit can get, but I've seen you refer to blue-chip recruits as the highest categories.  For those of us who don't follow as closely, can you describe the various levels of recruit in collegiate tennis?

BC

I know I've done an explainer like this before, and I just tried searching the site for it, but apparently I've posted too much about topics like this to be able to find that particular one! 

Anyway, the Tennis Recruiting Network (tennisrecruiting.net) ranks players by the usual number of stars we see in other sports, but the number of players within each star rank are lower than, say, football, and there's some grade inflation at the top. 

In football (using the current ESPN Top 300), the top 20 or so players are five-star players, and 21-300 are ranked as four-star players. With women's tennis, the top 25 or so are "blue chips" according to TRN, and then there are about 50 five-star players, and then about 125 four-star players, and then three stars on down after that. In other words, Stanford's lineup exclusively comes every year from players that were top 25 recruits in their particular classes, and usually much higher than that. 

One very big caveat: that only applies to American recruits (and the odd international recruit that is US-based and thus plays enough locally here to be absorbed by the system). It omits international recruits for the most part, and there is no umbrella recruiting ranking system for international recruits. You have the ITF junior world ranking, of course, but that's a point system like the ATP and WTA tours use, so it shows how many tournaments you've played and how many points you've amassed, but it exercises no independent judgment as to how promising of a recruit you are. 

Looking at the class of 2025, Ahn is currently the #2 recruit, Ekstrand the #3 recruit, and Wang is the #4 recruit. (That's behind #1 Akasha Urhobo, who has already turned pro, so we have all top 3 incoming US-based recruits.)

Glozman was the #1 recruit last year. Hui and Yu were the top two in theirs, with Yu #1 for most of the time. The year before that, Blokhina finished at #3 but was more like 5-6 during her senior year, and Emma Sun peaked as high as #10 but was more often in the high teens and twenties. The year before that, Ma was #1, Yepifanova was mostly right behind her, and Xu was toward the bottom of the top 10.

Anyway, long story short, but while five-star football recruits are expected to be instant-impact guys at top programs, five-star women's tennis recruits rarely crack the lineup at top programs because of that extra layer of blue chips on top. And that's before you mix in the international recruits, which dominate a lot of rosters these days.

---

Oh, the preseason team rankings dropped today, and we're #3. I don't know if that factors in Yepifanova or not, but my guess is yes. I think we're a national title contender with her, but not without her. (And fwiw, I have no information as to whether she'll play.)

Here's the top 25, with scheduled opponents in italics:

1. Georgia
2. Texas A&M
3. Stanford
4. Oklahoma State
5. UCLA
6. UNC
7. Texas
8. Michigan
9. UVA
10. Pepperdine
11. Duke
12. Auburn
13. Cal
14. NC State
15. Ohio State
16. Oklahoma
17. USC
18. Tennessee
19. Florida
20. South Carolina
21. Vanderbilt
22. Alabama
23. Miami
24. Florida State
25. UCF

Sad to see that Pepperdine is apparently a scheduling casualty of the move to the ACC. With the Pac-12 having an odd number of teams, we'd been scheduling them the same weekend as we played Oregon, since Oregon State didn't have a team, but now our dance card is pretty full. (Though Cal is making it work--they're playing Pepperdine twice this season, and UCLA and USC are both playing the Waves, too.) And it's their own dang faults that USC/UCLA are off the schedule by bolting for the Big Ten in the first place, but I'm still sad to see the end of those matches, too.