So how much do junior players really improve as they get ready to make their college choices?
At the outset of our engagement with a client, we suggest a list of schools that are sensible ones to consider given the recruit’s level of tennis, his or her academic level and other factors potentially under consideration such as an expected major in college, as well as a particular size and location of school. Recruits, rightly so, often start the process highly motivated and optimistic about how much they will improve, and how much their ranking and rating will go up, and how that will afford them an opportunity to play for their dream school, or at least one of their top choices. One of our tougher tasks is making sure recruits are being realistic about how much progress they can expect to achieve during the recruiting process.
We looked at the commitments for the fall of 2024, noted where their UTR was at the end of the summer prior to the start of their senior year, and went back 18 months to February of the sophomore year to determine how much players’ UTRs increased (I should say how much their UTR changed, as in a few cases it decreased). While there are other rankings and ratings, such as the Tennis Recruiting Network’s (TRN) national rankings and the World Tennis Number (WTN), we used UTR since it’s been around longer than WTN, and because it’s weekly history of past UTRs over many years perfectly fits the data we wanted to evaluate. We did use TRN extensively for its listing of commitments for the 2024 class. We also find TRN’s rankings of players within each graduating class to be highly useful in assessing a prospect’s options, but for the scope of this project we focused on UTR.
This exercise was not intended to be a scientific, statistically significant analysis, but more anecdotal in nature. A few more notes and disclaimers about the project we undertook:
- The 18 months leading up to a recruit verbally committing to a school should be the time when he or she is fully engaged and highly motivated to do well in order to have more and better options for colleges and college programs. This really should be when you see a player maximizing his or her progress.
- We chose August prior to a recruits’ senior year as the time to note UTRs of committed players, as we feel that more commitments across all three NCAA divisions happen around that time. We’re aware that some of the verbal commitments of players we looked at happened well before August (even as much as 10 months before), and some happened well after August.
- If you look back at UTR’s from 5 or more years ago, they have gone down across the board for junior players, likely by as much as a full point or more. At one point in time it was becoming obvious that junior players’ UTRs were inflated compared to college players’ UTR, so a tweak of the UTR algorithm was necessary. If you were to look back at 2018, for example, and look at the UTR of the players at certain TRN ranking levels, you would find that their UTRs were quite a bit higher than recruits today with that same TRN ranking. We have not noticed as much of a downward trend in the period of time that we looked at, so we don’t believe that this explains the UTR numbers we saw in this exercise.
- We looked at a handful of conferences in all three NCAA divisions, along with the top 25 teams in each division at the time of the project (there was far less info available in D2), and some other noteworthy schools outside of those conferences and outside the top 25. In all we looked at 70 programs on both the men’s and women’s side. Since the numbers were fairly consistent across the various conferences and groups we looked at, we would hypothesize that the data would be similar if we expanded the number of schools looked at.
- We are not able to factor in whether someone had an injury during that 18 months stretch that slowed their rating progress.
Without further ado, here are our findings:
Women
- Of the 155 female recruits we looked at, the average UTR increase in the 18 months leading up to August just prior to the start of Grade 12 was .35. The median was .34.
- The largest increase by an individual player in this 18 months period was 1.84. The largest decrease was .85.
Men
- Of the 162 male recruits, the average UTR increase in the 18 months leading up to August just prior to the start of Grade 12 was .82. The median was .80.
- The largest increase we saw in this 18 month period was 2.13. The largest decrease was .29.
As we reviewed the information, the first thing that’s evident is that the increase in most players UTRs was not as drastic as they thought it would be at the outset. The second thing we noticed is that boys’ UTRs went up more than twice as much as girls’ UTRs.
Big progress can happen, as we saw with a few boys jumping slightly over 2 UTR points and some girls jumping between 1.5 and 2 UTR points. Many DTS clients were on the list of commitments at the schools we examined, but one boy in particular illustrates this point. Like most recruits, he was ambitious and confident that he would make huge progress and was hopeful that he would get his top choice school. With a 2.1 UTR increase in 18 months—second highest of the 162 boys we looked at—he did indeed get a commitment from his top choice school…one that looked like a big reach at the outset. It can happen, and recruits should aspire to be one of the ones on the higher end of the improvement scale. The reality for most, however, was that progress in terms of UTR was slower and more modest than what many of these players and their families hoped, or perhaps expected.
Based on the data from this research, we have a few pieces of advice for recruits:
- Don’t wait. We often hear “I’m not going to reach out to college coaches until my UTR has gone up to _____.” As we can see, UTRs on average don’t go up enough to warrant this approach. Once you’re into your junior year of high school there’s no reason to delay. Having time to build relationships with coaches and to fully explore lots of schools takes time. You don’t already have to be the perfect candidate to start reaching out to coaches and building relationships.
- Have a sensible and realistic list of schools. Having a few reach schools on your list (where your UTR would need to go up on the high end of what we saw in the data) is great. This can inspire and motivate you to work your hardest. The majority of schools you pursue, however, should be ones where the (eliminated the word more) average progress we saw with UTRs would be sufficient to make you a serious candidate to get an offer (meaning that UTR would make you a candidate to be in a team’s starting lineup). Also include a few options that would cover you in a worst-case scenario where you miss significant time with an injury and your UTR goes down over the course of a year.
- Keep tennis fun. Enjoy the competition. No one match will make or break your chance to be recruited by a certain school. One plausible explanation for why UTR’s don’t go up as much as you might think prior to verbal commitments is the pressure and stress many players feel while in the throes of the recruiting process. You think every match will determine your college tennis options. While it’s easier said than done, enjoying the game and keeping it fun, while still working hard, almost invariably leads to better play, better results and improved ranking and rating…which then hopefully gives you the college tennis choices you wish for.
Donovan Tennis Strategies
Donovan Tennis Strategies has been helping prospective college tennis players and their families navigate the recruiting process since 1997. In addition to consulting services DTS runs three College Prospects Showcases to help players get exposure to college coaches.
