so how do you get recruited...?

tikiman53
Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:10:19 +0000

Dude, tennis is tough. To get recruited into top D-1 schools like Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Pepperdine…etc… you need to be extremely good. Not only that, but you need some way to prove it, like a very high USTA ranking or a blue chip on tennisrecruiting.net or something along those lines. I have a friend who is the best player I’ve ever had the chance to play with (he’s a coach now), and when he was younger, he was recruited into a D-1 school with a full scholarship. But it’s really tough because if you’re a core player of the team, you’re always traveling and practicing and whatnot. And you need to find ways to catch up to your peers who are not distracted by sports and are able to focus entirely on their education. Basically, it’s REALLY hard, not just to get in, but to keep it up.

But there’s also club tennis. Lots of schools have some really good club tennis players, and they still travel a bit too, so it’s really fun. If you go to a school like UCLA with a strong tennis program, you’ll see lots of club players who probably could hold their own against some of the actual team members but choose not to because they want to focus on schooling.