By Joan Marcinko, Senior Day Leagues Vice President
As you read this, your season of spring Senior Day tennis may be finished! But as I am writing this article, our season is just about to begin. I’d like to make you all aware, again, that a lot of work goes into scheduling a season for an ALTA tennis league. First, captains submit rosters, and every captain also has a chance to write an RFR (Request for Review) with their roster. After all rosters are submitted, our system analyzes and organizes the teams with values from low to high, based on a team’s past record of success and on the addition/deletion of players to their roster. Our software also accounts for other factors such as a team’s past winning percentage and if a team was a City Champion or City Finalist. Then, the fun begins.
As I write, the ALTA senior team of volunteers has again spent hours organizing your spring tennis season. Our senior “team” included me, both the men’s and the women’s overalls, several of our league coordinators, and our incredible ALTA office staff. A huge “thank you” to all of them! This new year brought us several new Senior Day women’s teams, a total of 297 teams. On the other side, we were down a few Senior Day men’s teams, a total of 82. Oh, how we would LOVE to have some additional men’s teams join us for this Wednesday morning league!
It is such a unique time at the ripe old age of 55+ to be playing tennis. The first word that comes to my mind playing in a senior league is “grateful.” The daytime Senior Leagues are so much fun and it is a pleasure to play and enjoy the company of players with whom we have some commonality. The opportunity to play just three lines on a weekday morning at 10 a.m. is really a special treat for most of us.
We hope that you had a good season with competitive matches and some fellowship. As an ALTA Vice President, I’ve tried hard to grow this league by ensuring that our knowledgeable and experienced coordinators along with myself, provided you with great customer service. I hope that you will let us know if your questions and issues this season were attended to promptly. ALTA appreciates our captains and co-captains and the jobs they do to manage a team for seven weeks or more. Thank you to all of you who have provided this service to our senior teams.
As you reflect over this past spring season, it is never too late to think about sportsmanship nominations. Was there a team or captain or player(s) that did anything out of the ordinary to make your matches go more smoothly? Anyone just make your day on the tennis court? ALTA now has an easy process to nominate a player (or team) on our website, altatennis.org. Please consider doing this if you have the opportunity!
Again, as we get ready for summer tennis, be thinking of ways we can improve your fall Senior Day experience. You can call or email anytime with your thoughts. Have a great summer, seniors!
