Tennis team management

There are a variety of options for a tennis team captain to manage their players; each of them makes it easier to put together lineups etc. than e-mail or – Heaven forbid – the telephone.

I have some experience as both a player and a captain using several different on-line tools for tennis team management.  Three that I’m familiar with are TennisPoint, Netcord and NetLineup.  Each of these websites enables a tennis captain to compile a team, put together weekly lineups, send out e-mails, etc.  The cost for players to join is free; the captain has to pay $15 to $25 per season, or more per year.

When I looked into deciding which site was best for my purposes, I chose TennisPoint.  At the time, it seemed to have the best interface and the most “bang for the buck”.  Even though I knew that I’d only be using the system – as a captain – twice this year, I opted to pay for the annual, unlimited number of teams option.  Because I could assign other team captains on one account, my Senior mixed captain is using the same account to manage his team.

Each player registers for free and manages their own contact – e-mail & phone – information, freeing the captain from having to maintain these for all his players.  The captain can then build ‘his’ team by typing in their e-mail address; the system finds the registered player and, with one click, the captain can add them to their roster.  Sending practice reminders or other team e-mails is a simple process; the system maintains an e-mail distribution list for every team that a captain manages, or plays on.  There is an easy way to connect TennisPoint to ALTA’s website that enables one’s schedule to be imported vs. manually input, and full control of editing the schedule is possible after the import (e.g. to add playoff matches, etc.).  The lineup feature also enforces ALTA’s sandbag rules so that you can’t accidentally put together a lineup that would cause you to forfeit matches.  There is also a column for food assignments that makes this loathsome task simple; it even remembers your previous food assignments, making the next time that much easier.  One of my favorite features is the automatic statistical tracking of every player’s matches, which tell you how everyone does with which partners, at which line, etc.  If every captain of every team you play on uses TennisPoint, then you have only one place to go (as a player) to see how you’re doing, improving, playing with a particular partner, contributing to your teams, etc.

As a tennis captain, I highly recommend using one of these on-line tools to manage your team.  Tennis is already an inexpensive and less time consuming sport than golf, and these websites make tennis team management simpler and more efficient than ever for a nominal cost.