Before I begin to discuss the secret Ad Hoc Committee I wanted to share the names of the committee members with you. Some of these are past members and some are current members. I will post much more information about this committee on Wednesday, January 7th.
Here are the committee members:
Bruce Sampley (current chairman of the committee)
Sara Lammerts (current member)
Susan Trautmann (current member)
Jim Robinson (current member)
Cheryl Jones (past member)
Brookie Green (past member)
Randy McDonald (past member)
Stephanie Burnam (past member)
Susan Burns (past member)
As you can see this is a very small and select group that has been entrusted with making basically EVERY major decision for officials--and then those decisions were specifically given to the Officials Committee for their rubber stamp.
The post on Wednesday will discuss in detail many more decisions that were made in this committee that have a direct bearing on your activities and opportunities as an official.
3 comments:
Here's another topic for you to address. It came from Zoo Tennis.
Bob Larson's Tennis News contained a link to legendary coach Robert Lansdorp's denunciation of the prevalence of cheating in junior tennis and the responsibility of the USTA to do something about it. Any of us who attend tournaments regularly know that there is nothing far-fetched about his examples, and can cite our own horror stories. I couldn't agree more that the USTA needs to insist on an adequate number of officials at every tournament, and I think they should pay those officials from a separate fund that is earmarked from the entry fee. In fact, there are very few parents who wouldn't pay something extra if they could designate the amount for on-court officials.
Good suggestion. I'll try to get to it real soon. Some of this problem has been addressed in Texas but not very well. Most would agree that there is too much cheating in junior tennis both by the players and their parents but the first solution that was sent out was a rebuke to us officials for not enforcing the rules fairly and with consistency.
There was a struggle with some of the tournaments in Texas to have enough certified officials at each site and of course they cited the fact that there wasn't enough money. Kind of hard to believe with the amount of entry fees these days and the fact that we have tournaments in Texas where the tournament directors make in excess of $20,000 for the tournament.
Here is the link to the actual article by Bob Larson.
http://www.tennisnews.com/exclusive.php?pID=26799
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