A MESSAGE TO ALL LEAGUE CAPTAINS!

Captaining a USTA League team is a labor of love for those ambitious enough to take on the position. The captain’s job involves recruiting players, setting lineups, arranging practice sessions and a lot of communication!  It is often thought of as a “thankless job”.

It can be time-consuming but there are some simple things you can do to help.

What can I do? Once your roster is set, have your players who have signed up for the team log into their Tennislink account,this is where players are able to see the teams they have signed up for, click the arrow to the right of the team name then click “availability” and the players can fill in their availability from there.

Captains can also create a Google Sheet with the scheduled match dates to share with the entire team so they can check off their availability either week by week or the entire season.  Once you share the sheet your teammates can change it as their schedule changes and it’s a good way to alleviate some of the thousands of emails and/or text messages that go back and forth to find out everyone’s availability. After you send out the lineup based on the Google Sheet, request players to confirm a day or two before matches. 

Find a co-captain that can assist! If you’re trying to handle everything by yourself, you could easily spend 5-10 hours / week in-season on captaining activities (not including the time you’re on-court playing or practicing). Find a co-captain, someone on the team you can rely on to assist.  

Yes, captaining is a lot of work. But it can be incredibly rewarding on so many levels. You can get to know your teammates better than when you are only playing together once a week

EVEN IF YOU DON’T WIN ENOUGH MATCHES TO GO TO SECTIONALS OR NATIONALS……  

SOMETHING TO REMEMBER: If you have 10 teams on your schedule and play 10 matches, coming in 8th from the top is better than being 2nd from the bottom!!

To those who captain and co-captain teams for our Hawaii Pacific leagues, we thank you and couldn’t do it without you!

Mahalo from the USTA Hawaii Pacific section staff:  Ron, Jony, Sara, Maddy, Oceane, Valeriia, Kailuhia, Rhoda, Karen, and Angela