That Was The Week That Was In The UIL.

Well, we finally finished the infamous "week of UIL district tennis tournaments" in which we saw hundreds of matches, hundreds of hours worked, and lots of happy winners and sad losers--but that's what makes the Texas UIL tennis season the absolute best in the nation!

I personally scheduled 13 UIL district tournaments and utilized the many gifts and talents of over 25 different officials--and what a great job they did!  The brought order to a chaotic world and even spiced it up with some really strange rulings--but then, that's UIL tennis at its best...

Here are a few of the fun moments of last week:

*  Officials and coaches wondering if they could default a player for using an E-cig during his break.  (Thankfully they didn't.)

*  Some of our collegiate officials putting a far side-linesperson in a UIL match.

*  Some coaches and officials got to enjoy a feast at noon from Hard 8 BBQ.  Sadly, I wasn't one of them.

*  We don't keep stats but there were a lot of footfaults called but very few code violations issued.  Just goes to show that parents and coaches are doing a good job.

*  A female played enjoyed a nice long text from her Dad during a changeover while the official on the court saw nothing.

*  An unhappy Mother was permitted to totally interrupt a match (see previous blog post.)

*  An official invented a rule that it is a code violation to cheer with your teammates after you win a point.

And all of that is just from a week of district tennis tournaments.  Imagine what will happen when the regional tournaments begin on April 17th.  We'll be sure to keep you posted...

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Do No Evil

We are the midst of the ITA and UIL season and things are really heating up everywhere!  Players and coaches are putting the officials to the test--and the vast majority of the officials are doing great--but then there is that small percentage that is failing, and failing badly...

When you have a tennis officials blog people all over everywhere call and email you with all kinds of stories about officials.  Some are hilarious, some are sad, and some make me embarrassed for our profession.  Here is one of them that I received from a coach today...

SCENARIO

In a tournament finals match between two girls doubles teams, team A was serving in the latter stages of the third set.  When team A served a fault, then the Mother of one of the players on team B shouted out between the first and second serve.  No action was taken by the official standing by the court...

Team A then served the next serve and served a fault.  Then as she was serving her second serve, the same Mother clapped loudly during the service motion.  Again, no action by the official...

Finally, Team A was serving the third time and after serving a fault, she was serving her second serve and the same Mother shouted out for her team to "Go, go, go."  Again, no action by the official...

The coach of Team A called me and asked what recourse he had.  I said, "Basically none except that you probably shouldn't hire that official again."  My explanation didn't really satisfy the coach.

And this is one of the reasons we get a bad name--and in this case, rightfully so.