Tennis Recruiting Network is a site that ranks kids independently of the USTA. If your child wants to play tennis in college, then Tennis Recruiting Network is one of the most important places to be. It will not put your child in front of college coaches but will also give them a better idea of where they stand compared to their classmates. In this article, we will be going over the Tennis Recruiting ranking system and how it works.
Tennis Recruiting is based off a head to head rankings system and ranks your child within their national graduating high school class year. However, wins over kids outside of their class year will also count towards their ranking. This system is much different than the USTA which uses a points per round system. Head to head systems give points based on the quality of your child’s opponents and not just how far they get into a tournament. In other words, if your child has to play someone with a much higher ranking than them in the first round of a tournament, they would not be penalized if they lost. At the same time if your child plays against a player ranked lower than them in the first round and lost then they would be penalized much more than by the USTA rankings system. This type of system is useful for both you and college recruiters because it allows you to see how your child is doing even if they get unlucky draws and play against high ranked players. It allows you to see where they are in direct comparison with the kids who will be graduating the same year as them.
There is only one sure way to improve a Tennis Recruiting ranking. Your child must beat players that are ranked higher than them. The easiest way to do this is to have them play tournaments often to give them the most opportunities to improve and beat better players.
Now the next question is how do you get your child on the Tennis Recruiting Rankings List? For your child to be eligible for the recruiting list, they must have competed in at least three Tennis Recruiting eligible tournaments over the past year and have won at least three matches over other Tennis Recruiting ranked players in those tournaments.
Whether or not a tournament will count towards a Tennis Recruiting ranking can be a little confusing.The tournaments that count are national USTA tournament, “National Showcase Series” tournaments (You can check out which tournaments these are on the Tennis Recruiting website), any sectional tournament that will count towards national USTA rankings, and any tournament where 20% of the players are “National Players.” A “National Player” is anyone with USTA national ranking points. So matches played in any tournament that gives USTA national ranking points or has multiple players with national ranking points in them will most likely be included in the Tennis Recruiting rankings system.
The last thing we will cover on Tennis Recruiting is their star rating system. Stars are given out twice a year to the top 800 ranked players in a class year to label and recognize the best kids. These ratings come out in mid-September and mid-March. They are based on the two highest rankings achieved on the College Recruiting Lists over the eight-week period before the postings. If a player reaches a ranking threshold (shown below) twice within that eight-week period, then they are granted that star rating label.
The thresholds are as follows
Rank 1-25- Bluechip
Rank 26-75- 5 Star
Rank 76-200- 4 Star
Rank 201-400- 3 Star
Rank 401-600- 2 Star
Rank 601-800- 1 Star
For national high school graduating class years with fewer than 800 ranked players, thresholds are scaled down proportionally. So if a class only had 400 players, then the 3 Star threshold would be the top 200 players. On the other hand, if a class has more than 800 players then the 2 Star and 1 Star thresholds are increased.
If you want to read more about Tennis Recruiting Network and their ranking system you can check out their FAQ HERE.
I hope this article was helpful! Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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