A pair of upcoming high school tennis tournaments could change the way postseason tennis events -- and perhaps the sport itself -- will be played in future years.
That's what Bentonville High tennis coach Nick Nersesian and other tennis coaches hope will happen when the inaugural Arkansas Team Tournaments take place on Arkansas Tech's courts in Russellville. The boys tournament will be Aug. 25-26, while the girls will play their tournament two weeks later.
At a glance
Arkansas Team Tournaments
WHEN Boys, Aug. 25-26; Girls, Sept. 8-9
WHERE Arkansas Tech courts, Russellville
TEAMS Bentonville High, Bentonville West, Bryant, Cabot, Conway, Fayetteville, Fort Smith Northside, Fort Smith Southside, Pulaski Academy (girls only), Rogers High, Springdale Har-Ber, Van Buren.
The tournaments -- the first of their kind in the state -- will utilize a collegiate tennis format, where school teams will play each other in combined singles and doubles competition. The major change will be that players will be allowed to play both singles and doubles matches. Currently players must chose one to compete in.
"A few years back, we were looking at the colleges and how the college format was being played," Nersesian said. "College coaches were telling us 'We see what you do in Arkansas. Do your kids understand this format that we're playing?' We've had to teach them over the years.'"
"Coach (Darin) Phelan at Fayetteville, myself and Coach (Matt) Fulton at Rogers have been instrumental in this, and we've talked about changing the format the last couple of years and seeing what we could do. We went to the Arkansas Activities Association about it."
The result was Proposal No. 2, which allowed schools to play two additional tennis events each year, but they must be played under the collegiate format. The proposal passed by a 122-1 margin during the AAA's 2016 meeting of the governing body, but it didn't become effective until this year -- and Nersesian already had a tournament in place to be played at Memorial Park last year.
This year's tournaments feature 11 boys and 12 girls teams from both the northwest and central regions of the state, and each round of the tournament will consist of nine matches -- six singles and three doubles. Each match is one point, and the first team to earn five points wins.
"These two events will be exhibitions, and coaches can experiment with how they want to put it together," AAA deputy executive director Joey Walters said. "Larger schools may be able to have a full field, while smaller schools may want to try something different because they don't. It's going to provide more flexibility because schools can mix it up.
"I'm excited about it because it's another avenue to experience. It could take some time for schools to figure out how they want to do it, and a lot of it depends on the size of the teams."
Once the tournaments are over, Nersesian said he will take the statistics he compiles from the tournament and do a survey with other coaches to see what they like about the format. He hopes to present this to the AAA in time for the spring meetings and possibly have future postseason tournaments changed to this format.
"We're trying to push this to the next level," Nersesian said. "It's something that not only colleges are doing, but some other states are doing as well, so we're being proactive about moving this to the next level.
"In this event, you have to depend on your team and work your depth a little bit more. The strategy will change some, and I think everybody will like it."
Sports on 08/16/2017