June Check In

It has been 110 days since Covid-19 turned the globe upside down, or what I like to call "doomsday" when sports were basically shut down. However, here we are at July 1 the beginning of the second half of 2020.  It has been quite a crazy first half of the year with so many things that have happened, headlined by Covid-19. We got rocked over the last six months and hopefully we can have a great second half of the year. Time will tell, and until then let's check in on the state of tennis.


College Tennis Programs Cut 

The pandemic has created a lot of financial struggles for many people, businesses and organizations across the world. One of the things we have seen a lot of over the last couple of months is collegiate programs being cut. Unfortunately, tennis leads the way with the most programs cut across the college landscape.


224 programs -- Cut, Dropped & Suspended - *Suspended with no timetable for return
*48 are tennis programs

7 programs -- Suspended - Sports announced as suspended with a named timetable of return or re-evaluation
*4 are tennis programs

231 programs -- Season/Year Cancellations - Schools that have bagged athletics for the '20/'21 academic year or specific seasons
*3 are tennis programs

There is a website that is keeping track of all of the college sports being cut throughout Covid-19, you can view that here: http://almanac.mattalkonline.com/

Tennis has been the most popular cut, specifically the men's programs over the course of the pandemic. Just last week we saw UCONN and Northern Colorado announce their decision to discontinue their tennis teams (M for UCONN, M/W for UNC). Two former Iowa HS players were on the receiving end of this terrible news, Rami Scheetz ('19) of Cedar Rapids Washington and Luke VanDonslear ('20) of Linn-Mar. As of now, both Scheetz and VanDonslear are on the lookout to find a new school they can call home and continue their tennis careers. We wish both young men the best as the navigate their options over the next few weeks.


USTA Tournaments

Over the past month, it appeared that only two of the scheduled USTA tournaments in Iowa were cancelled (1 adult, 1 jr). No doubles is being played as far as I can tell, and we have seen nearly 180 entries into the Jr tournaments in June. With the high school season cancelled, it is a tremendous opportunity to have some of the tournaments be able to go on.

Congrats to our HS players, and all June tournament champions!

Ankeny-Coach Hoefle Memorial 
B18s - Declan Galligan (Pre-Freshman)
B16s - Quinn Monson (Pre-Freshman, Waukee)
G18s - Arunadee Fernando (Ames)

Lifetime Athletic
B18s - Quinn Monson (Pre-Freshman, Waukee)
G18s - Allison Szalay (Dowling)
G16s - Courtney Carstensen (Xavier)

McCullom Jr
B18s - Will Ecklund (Waukee)
G18s - Mira Keeran (Cedar Falls)
G16s - Maya Mallavarapu (Cedar Falls)

Looking ahead as we kick off July today, the big news is the Baird Jr Open, a district championship and L5, is cancelled. One of the largest Jr tournaments in July in the state will not be held this year. However, there are a lot of opportunities to get out and compete this month, from Muscatine to Dubuque to Ankeny and to the newest tournament on the schedule, Waverly played on Wartburg College's recently resurfaced courts.

As always, message or email me anytime if there is something you may want to see me write about or if you want to talk tennis or anything really! Stay safe, social distance and wear a mask!