Challenge Ladder

Last update: 1/29/09

Welcome to the SDTA High Performance Competitive Player Challenge Ladder. We encourage everyone to participate in order enhance your current training routine with unlimited practice matches throughout the year. This is a great way to implement what you are learning in drills, improve and understand your game style, practice new tactics and hopefully put it all together in tournaments. It is a critical aspect of your overall junior development process, as players that do this more often tend to improve performance in tournament competition at a faster pace.

To report challenge results or if you see a mistake after you have played a match in your ladder position, please contact Jason at jrpatti@comcast.net

Challenge Ladder Rules

1. You can challenge up to 5 players above you in the ladder.
2. You are only require playing 2 matches per month but can play many more if you liked. A match played in a sanction junior tournament does count.
3. You can play 2 out of 3 sets, or 2 sets and a 10-point tiebreaker, but players must decide prior to start of the match.
4. It is best to save your challenge matches for non-match play day unless one of the players resides far away and is best to do it during match play.
5. If planning to play at a club or subdivision, challenger goes to higher position player's court. You can also use a neutral site like HTC if is convenient for both competitors.
6. If a player avoids a challenge and they haven't played their two matches per month, they will eventually be lower at least 4 spots from month to month. There is an exception to players at the top that can't challenge or players at the bottom that won't be challenged.
7. A player that has been challenged needs to respond within 4 days and try to schedule the match within two weeks. The challenger must bring a new can of balls.
8. Since this is a competitive but friendly activity, it is important that parents don't get involve during matches with coaching and allow players to figure things out on their own. This is an important part of the mental, strategic & emotional learning process of development just like in tournaments.
9. It is also important for all competitors to act professionally, support each other and show sportsmanlike conduct. Remember, we are all on the same team and must look out for each other.
10. Because of different game styles, mental and physical attributes, results do not indicate which group or court the player should be on. It will be considered once you have beaten many of the players in a group above you. That decision is made by the coaches.
11. All players that are committed to high school tennis don't need to be involved in the challenge ladder during the high school season. We will consider them "Inactive" since they are very busy with drills and high school tennis team commitments. Once they are done sometime in April they will be "Activated" and must begin to get involve like everyone else.

We would like the "Competitive Player Challenge Ladder" to continue throughout the year. Our goal is to help students become more responsible for their development by setting up their own practice matches and make tennis a big part of their weekly routine. We encourage all parents to help us and support us on this matter as students need to take more accountability for their own tennis as they get older. Again, we look forward to a great year.

Stephen Diaz & Jason Patti
USTA High Performance Certified Coaches