On Monday, April 27th the Morgan boys tennis team officially became Shoreline Conference champions. I am both a captain for the team as well as the one singles. When our fourth winner stepped off the court that day, excitement immediately rushed through our team. This was an achievement our school hasn’t achieved since 2018 and had fallen just short of twice in the last four years. Our whole team was thrilled, but as we began talking about it, we realized how strange it was. How is it that we were shoreline conference champions halfway through the season? And, does that diminish our success?

That question brought up an interesting issue within the conference regarding the way the boys and girls teams decide their champions. The boys have already crowned their champion while the girls won’t know theirs until the end of May. 

This issue occurs, almost every year, because the boys teams count their first match against each team in the conference toward the shoreline championship, whereas as of a new rule last year, if the girls play a team in conference twice the second time counts. 

The reason the way the boys decide their champion is an issue is because tennis sees some of the most improvement throughout the season. A team can start off a year poorly; kids can individually improve drastically in the first month and come back significantly stronger the second time they play a team. But in our conference, the change can come too late.  

One such example of this comes from our boys tennis coach Christopher Zawadski, who recalls placing senior Nick Hicks at two doubles at the beginning of his junior year; however, by the end of that same year Hicks was one of if not the top four singles players in the conference. 

Now, a year later, Hicks continues to improve –  being one of the top three singles players in the conference with only one loss. With so much improvement taking place during a season, it seems right for the champion to be decided as late in the season as possible, like the girls are doing, rather than early on like the boys.

I’m not the only one to believe this. My co-captain for the boys tennis team, senior Nick Vetrano said, “Yeah it helps us this year. We still have some tough matches left and it’s nice to know we won regardless of the outcome of those matches. With that being said, just because it helped us this year doesn’t mean that is how it should be. If champions are decided later in the season, it gives everyone the best chance for the progress throughout the season to be shown, which I think is better for everyone.”

The best way for a champion to be determined is through a single elimination team tournament like every other conference in the state. Tennis remains one of the only sports in the shoreline that doesn’t have a post-season team tournament and instead has a postseason individual tournament. I am currently the only one singles player in the shoreline conference left undefeated. If the season were to end today, and there was no individual tournament, I would be given the “conference player of the year. I am also a captain for the Morgan boys tennis team who just won the shoreline conference. This puts me in a really unique position since I have a great shot at winning the individual tournament and already won the team title which has led me to see the importance of both.

Unfortunately both is not an option, as there isn’t enough time left in the school year for all the statewide tennis events to occur. With events happening between the 26th all the way through the 10th, there is no time to have both a team and individual tournament.

The individual tournament is how our all-conference teams are decided. For example a player who makes the second day in the one/two singles bracket would be a first team all conference athlete, whereas someone that was eliminated on the first day would either be second team or an honorable mention. 

While I think this is a cool aspect that not many conferences have, I believe it is more important to have a team tournament. Conferences like the FCIAC and SCC have no problem determining their all conference teams without an individual tournament and so do college tennis teams. I personally believe that it is easier to determine top players in a conference through the regular season scores and record than it is to determine the best team in a conference halfway through the season.

Ultimately schedule changes have nothing to do with players, but I hope that my viewpoint can inspire some change within the conference and help those who don’t believe a team tournament brings more value than an individual tournament does to at least see the reasons as to why it might be.