0-5 that is all.
SFA Tennis
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Last: 5 yr ago by Sully
0-6 if you include an exhibition loss to Tyler Junior College. Loss today was to a DII school.SFAXE93 said:
0-5 that is all.
Boy our tennis program has plummeted. We were so good.... sad.
Losing to D2 and junior colleges ......
Axe 'Em Jacks - Class of 85'
We have a Tennis team?
Women's. For years and years.
Axe 'Em Jacks - Class of 85'
Had a men's team at one time. Won a D2 national doubles championship around 1985.
I can tell you our Tennis team is very good looking... These girls need to do a playboy Girls of the Southland type thing..
SFAJack_76 said:
Had a men's team at one time. Won a D2 national doubles championship around 1985.
Good memory and indeed we did. Tom Goles & Chris Langford were the D2 doubles champs in 1985.
Steve Riza was the singles champ in 1984 and Neil Smith won it in 1986. Tom Goles finished ranked #2 that year and we had the nation's top 2 players. We never won it as a team but had some strong teams in that era, regularly finishing ranked in the top 5 in the nation.
PS - we cut men's tennis in 1986 after finishing #5 in the country as a team and having BOTH the #1 and #2 ranked singles players and an All-SFA singles final.
I was curious today why we cut/add programs like we do.Sully said:
PS - we cut men's tennis in 1986 after finishing #5 in the country as a team and having BOTH the #1 and #2 ranked singles players and an All-SFA singles final.
I'm sure some of it is to comply with federal rules regarding spending, but I was genuinely interested. For example, adding baseball or women's bowling, cutting men's tennis, but leaving golf.
I'd definitely be interested to hear what the calculus is behind decisions like this.
It is based primarily on money, but partly on number of scholarships.
Pursuant to Title IX, schools have to have the same amount of scholarships for women that they do for men. In addition, to be in D1 we have to sponsor a minimum number of sports, I believe it is 16 but the number may have changed.
Football has a large amount of scholarships, so we need to have women's sports without their men's counterpart in order to balance football out. We either carry the minimum amount of sports, or close to it. We could have men's tennis, but that would mean adding a women's sport with the equivalent amount of scholarships. Being as all sports are essentially money losers, the main issue is money. We are not alone in the fact that we don't have enough money to properly support the sports that we already have, much less adding more.
You can Google our athletic budget and see that the lower priced sports with small participation numbers like tennis or golf aren't really all that expensive, maybe 200K total per year. You could have the same coach over both men's and women's tennis like Corpus and other Southland schools do and the facility is already there so the startup cost would be minimal. The main problem is that you would also have to add a women's sport, I guess you could do the new sand volleyball which would also be a very small cost.
I guess if you were willing to pony up $400,000 or so a year, the new A.D. would probably agree to it But I am certain he would try to talk you into giving the money to football or basketball first! He might not even go for it because you're going to die at some point and then he's on the hook for a huge bill he doesn't want to pay in the first place.
Pursuant to Title IX, schools have to have the same amount of scholarships for women that they do for men. In addition, to be in D1 we have to sponsor a minimum number of sports, I believe it is 16 but the number may have changed.
Football has a large amount of scholarships, so we need to have women's sports without their men's counterpart in order to balance football out. We either carry the minimum amount of sports, or close to it. We could have men's tennis, but that would mean adding a women's sport with the equivalent amount of scholarships. Being as all sports are essentially money losers, the main issue is money. We are not alone in the fact that we don't have enough money to properly support the sports that we already have, much less adding more.
You can Google our athletic budget and see that the lower priced sports with small participation numbers like tennis or golf aren't really all that expensive, maybe 200K total per year. You could have the same coach over both men's and women's tennis like Corpus and other Southland schools do and the facility is already there so the startup cost would be minimal. The main problem is that you would also have to add a women's sport, I guess you could do the new sand volleyball which would also be a very small cost.
I guess if you were willing to pony up $400,000 or so a year, the new A.D. would probably agree to it But I am certain he would try to talk you into giving the money to football or basketball first! He might not even go for it because you're going to die at some point and then he's on the hook for a huge bill he doesn't want to pay in the first place.
Awesome, I appreciate the insight. I knew we had to add additional women's sports anytime we add a men's scholarships. Can see why we carry the minimum number of sports as well, but did not know that some sports could be that cheap every year.
Attempting to keep pace with the baseball team, tennis goes to 0-9 on the season. 0-2 in conference.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Think I'll cry....SFAJack_76 said:
Attempting to keep pace with the baseball team, tennis goes to 0-9 on the season. 0-2 in conference.
We can probably kiss the Commissioner's Cup goodbye this year. Zero points from those two.
Baseball is bad and I get it.... sort of. But tennis??? Really. We have the best facilities in the conference. Some tradition of solid tennis. We can play outdoors Year in year out. Signed Confused in Conroe.
Axe 'Em Jacks - Class of 85'
Funny stuff!!SFAJack_76 said:
Attempting to keep pace with the baseball team, tennis goes to 0-9 on the season. 0-2 in conference.
Sometimes you just have to laugh. Really, more sad than funny, but thanks.Jacks4460 said:Funny stuff!!SFAJack_76 said:
Attempting to keep pace with the baseball team, tennis goes to 0-9 on the season. 0-2 in conference.
Dear Confused in Conroe,BigJack85 said:
Baseball is bad and I get it.... sort of. But tennis??? Really. We have the best facilities in the conference. Some tradition of solid tennis. We can play outdoors Year in year out. Signed Confused in Conroe.
The answer is a 79 TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) requirement for international admissions.
Technically all of the state universities in TX have this requirement, but most either waive it or allow exceptions when it comes to athletes, which SFA did up until 2015ish, when it decided to start strict enforcement with no exceptions. What you are seeing now is the fallout of that decision. It started gradually, and now all of the pre-79 athletes have graduated.
All other TX schools that I know of enforce the rule for non-athletes, but all have some sort of waiver process in which the basic idea is that the athletic department shows that the athlete is a great student in their own language (which they almost always are or why would they want to come?) and "cosigns the loan" by guaranteeing that the athlete will receive the things all athletes get that most students don't (tutors, extra academic support, etc.)...and by letting admissions know that if grades ever do become an issue, athletics will scale back sport as much as they need to in order to give athletes time to focus on school. Sometimes extra remedial English language courses are part of the deal. Pre-2015 women's tennis teams at SFA usually had some of if not the highest GPAs on campus in spite of many of them barely speaking English when they got here.
What's happening now is that girls that are certified by the NCAA to play D1 tennis are not getting into SFA because of an internal SFA decision but ARE getting into A&M and Texas. As if it's not hard enough to compete with the big dogs in the first place.
Ironically, it is still fairly automatic for an American to get into SFA, and you have all known enough athletes to know how remedial academically some kids are in other sports. Can you imagine the stink if some stud FB or BB signee didn't get in because of admissions even though the NCAA cleared them for D1 football and they ended up starting at a P5 school their freshman year? Happens all the time to tennis now, unfortunately.
Irony #2 is that tennis was actually doing a great service to SFA by bringing in diverse international students that A. stayed out of trouble, B. made great grades and C. brought lots of positive recognition to SFA. They are still still doing A and B but not able to do C because the kids that would be winning championships for us are not being let in to school.
That said, the team should not be 0-9 - they are very well-coached and still have plenty enough talent to compete at a much higher level than they have. I'm confident we are going to see a turnaround starting as soon as this weekend and I predict the finish to this season will be at the very least, respectable. TBH the chances of ever being as good as the championship years earlier this decade are non-existent until we are on a level playing field admissions-wise with the competition, not to mention the LA schools that as you can imagine have even lower requirements. I can tell you for a fact that not one athlete in the 2011 recruiting class that was ranked #1 nationally and won 3 total SLC championships...not a single one of them got even close to a 79 on the TOEFL and the team GPA was between 3.25 and 3.5 for their entire careers.
I'll just ask this: How good do you think any sport at SFA would be if for 99% of their prospects the only school harder to get into in TX than SFA was Rice? That's where we are at.
Wow! Very informative and food for thought. Thanks for explaining things, Sully.Sully said:
I'll just ask this: How good do you think any sport at SFA would be if for 99% of their prospects the only school harder to get into in TX than SFA was Rice? That's where we are at.
Wow, I had no idea we decided to do that. And like you said, for what reason?
I've got a friend who obviously passed the TOEFL as a regular student, but who was still working hard to have understandable verbal skills. She absolutely wiped the floor with the rest of us in Finance, Accounting, Math, or Science classes. She could read & write English pretty well, but her other subjects were off the charts.
Last I heard from her, she was applying to Stanford & other schools to work on an advanced finance master's degree. SFA is losing out if we aren't letting students like this in because of their English skills, & if we're able to make that easier for student-athletes, we should do so.
I've got a friend who obviously passed the TOEFL as a regular student, but who was still working hard to have understandable verbal skills. She absolutely wiped the floor with the rest of us in Finance, Accounting, Math, or Science classes. She could read & write English pretty well, but her other subjects were off the charts.
Last I heard from her, she was applying to Stanford & other schools to work on an advanced finance master's degree. SFA is losing out if we aren't letting students like this in because of their English skills, & if we're able to make that easier for student-athletes, we should do so.
Sure thing Ed, I will talk SFA tennis all day long with whoever can stand to listen!
TT your friend is more than rule than the exception. It takes a brave & smart person to come halfway across the world to go to college and many of them are trying to get away from a bad place or don't have much to go back to if they fail...so they take it a lot more seriously than Johnny from Plano who can go work for daddy if he fails out.
I understand a normal student with no support being rejected, but considering the long and positive academic track record tennis has not only at SFA but at other state schools it is baffling that admissions is taking that stance.
I would love to give football players the TOEFL. I know some of those guys are brilliant and I don't want to stereotype but I bet Longhorn legend and Wonderlic star Vince Young wouldn't get a 79.
TT your friend is more than rule than the exception. It takes a brave & smart person to come halfway across the world to go to college and many of them are trying to get away from a bad place or don't have much to go back to if they fail...so they take it a lot more seriously than Johnny from Plano who can go work for daddy if he fails out.
I understand a normal student with no support being rejected, but considering the long and positive academic track record tennis has not only at SFA but at other state schools it is baffling that admissions is taking that stance.
I would love to give football players the TOEFL. I know some of those guys are brilliant and I don't want to stereotype but I bet Longhorn legend and Wonderlic star Vince Young wouldn't get a 79.
I was a high school tennis coach for several years "way back when", so I have great love for the sport, too.Sully said:
Sure thing Ed, I will talk SFA tennis all day long with whoever can stand to listen!
Thanks for the information indeed. It gets clearer and clearer that we need changes in leadership. There have been decisions made by some folks that appear to be set on blocking progress and growth. I enjoyed the heck out of watching those girls win conference when it was held at SFA. I had no idea that none, or nearly none, of them could even get admitted today. Nuts. And, frustrating.edstile said:Wow! Very informative and food for thought. Thanks for explaining things, Sully.Sully said:
I'll just ask this: How good do you think any sport at SFA would be if for 99% of their prospects the only school harder to get into in TX than SFA was Rice? That's where we are at.
You and me both!SFAJack_76 said:
I enjoyed the heck out of watching those girls win conference when it was held at SFA.
0-10 after losing to Nicholls 4-3.
0-11 after losing to McNeese 6-1.
Took down UNO 5-2 at home for the first win of the season! UNO came in 7-4, so not a bad team.
Way to go girls.
Way to go girls.
I'm telling you, this is not a bad team. Some bad breaks and lost confidence but we are about to see a turnaround and they will be very competitive the rest of the way.
Sully. I still don't buy the academic angle totally. Besides we are 1-13. Dead last in the conference. Our record is simply awful given that we have way above average facilities and a more than reasonable academic offering for kids that would play tennis. Maybe I'm wrong but it just seems odd that we are so bad.
Axe 'Em Jacks - Class of 85'
1-14.
1-15 after getting dominated by ACU 7-0. There is just no way to put a positive spin on this.
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