Appearance of Our New Sportsmanship Ambassadors

Thought I would include this email I received from a local official who encountered one of our new Sportsmanship Ambassadors over the weekend. I am glad he finally introduced himself to the official and I certainly think it would have been good had he introduced himself to the referee.

Here is the email from our local official:

I was working the Dallas Champ tournament at Garland on Saturday. About mid-way through the morning, a gentleman comes over to introduce himself. He had been around all morning long, but had not said anything to the referee (working the desk), or myself. He told me he was on the Junior Tennis Committee started to tell me about their new program. I said "oh yeah, the sportsmanship ambassadors." He seemed to be a bit surprised that I was aware of the program. He told me he was there to help if he could and to let me know if there were any players he wanted me to keep an eye on while I was roving. That day, I had 11 courts and the configuration did not allow all the courts to be monitored at once. Neal (from Austin) came across as friendly and sincere and seemed to understand that officials could not actually observe everything and that the kids knew when to hold off on the shenanigans when the officials were close. I made it a point to check with Neal a couple of times later on during the day to see if he saw anything report-worthy. The only thing he saw was the same kid that I had cautioned earlier in the day. Neal also made it a point to mention that SAs could hand out suspension points (I already knew this...) Overall, I felt like I had someone else there to help observe behaviors and because of the introduction and friendliness, I didn't feel like I was being spied on.