<p>After my daughter got recruited for volleyball we thought we were done. Now my son has announced that he would like to play tennis in college. This spring will be his first year playing on the high school team. He is a sophomore. He played freshman football last year but now has decided to play tennis. He practiced with the girls team in fall and helped out as manager. He has been taking lessons for about a year. Several people have told him that he should make the boys travel team. The coach for the girls team is also the boys coach and at the end of the girls season reminded my son that the boys team plays in the Spring and he expects him to be there.</p>
<p>I have no clue what goes on with tennis recruiting. What do coaches look for? Do you make skills videos?</p>
<p>Depending on how the high school progresses he will begin contacting coaches and asking questions.</p>
<p>Academically he is doing well. GPA is 3.7-3.8. He ranked in the top 10% of class out of about 850 students. There are close to 4000 students in the school. He has honors and AP courses this year.</p>
<p>Any help would be appreciated. I am a babe in the woods on this one.</p>
<p>Take a look at [The</a> Tennis Recruiting Network](<a href=“http://www.tennisrecruiting.com%5DThe”>http://www.tennisrecruiting.com) - the heart of college tennis recruiting. There is a lot of free info. If you join their Advantage program for $50 you will get access to a variety of tennis recruiting articles. They have their proprietary rankings that coaches use for recruiting. You will be able to see the levels of junior players that were recruited by various colleges.
For your son - he has to start playing USTA tournaments and winning. He will have to figure out which tournaments will be reflected in tr.net rankings and mostly play these. High school tennis does not count unless he is in the last rounds of his state HS tournament. Many top players do not attend regular HS and do not play HS tennis. He still has 1.5 years to obtain tr.net rankings and then he will have to find colleges where he is an athletic and academic match.
Generally speaking a relative beginner may be able to join many non-ranked DIII or NAIA teams. Men college tennis is very competitive and most decent players started very young and practiced and competed almost every day for 10 years. There are a lot of foreigners too. If your son takes private lessons you should talk to his coach about recruiting. HS coach may also have local connections.
On the positive note many big schools have club teams that travel and compete against other schools and there is also intramural tennis. So even if he may not be able to capitalize on his tennis for college admissions he can continue playing in college and beyond if he likes the sport. This “beyond” part is what is best about tennis. Obviously if he becomes a captain of his HS team it will look good on his resume.</p>
<p>I agree with CCDD. With many sports including tennis how you perform in high school competition may be unimportant, but how you perform in regional and national competition is very important for college recruitment. I would start looking at D3 schools and lower D1 schools. I would also cast a very wide net. You may end up filling out 50 or more online recruitment forms.</p>
<p>For tennis, the bulk of the recruiting will be done at the USTA. As in, there’s no such thing as a travel team (well if you count club teams I guess they are but these teams have to be really good to go anywhere). He must do well individually in tournaments. These tournaments can be quite expensive so be prepared to shell out some dough.</p>
<p>Also, if your kid is up to the challenge, try to play up in age group.</p>
<p>The big thing here is that you want your kid to play the “qualifier”, which comes in May for each district. If he wins a lot of matches there (and that’s really difficult, I play) then he can go to the regional tournament. This is where the scouts can potentially be. And if he does well here, he will go on to the national tournament at Kalamazoo, where there are sure to be scouts.</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s thinking pretty far ahead. Tennis coaches tend to be lazy and will heavily rely on kids’ playing records for recruiting. So cultivate ranking; if your kid is in the top 5 in the district, he’s got a shot.</p>
<p>High school play can be useful, but only if your kid can go to states and do well. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter.</p>