Hurricane Florence Update

Dear Captains,

I so pray that all of you are safe and have not experienced much devastation to your properties.  I know our community has suffered greatly overall.

I am still waiting to hear back from all of the public courts to see when they are playable.  And some of the private facilities have not responded or are not quite ready.

I would like to suggest at this time, that you do all that you can to WORK TOGETHER on make up matches.  Paula Sneeden is keeping a wonderful spread sheet and can send your lineups.  Or, even better, you and the other captain could work together to try to come up with a time the whole match can be played.  And then I will see (once courts are open) if we can find a place to play the match.  Maybe an upcoming match could be played if teams only played a limited lineup and made up one court later.  Until we are assured that folks are back in town, safe and I know some still do not have power, let’s help each other make this work.

I have considered shortening the schedule.  We still have to get winners to State by the original deadlines.  The State Coordinator has recommended a shortened schedule, but several of you have asked that we try to make them up.  I am certainly up for your team’s thoughts, but remember this will be about 1200 people’s opinions.  And….in the big picture…tennis is a great outlet,  but not more important to many at this time of devastation in our South East Tennis Community.

5.0/6.5/8.5 winners have to be determined by October 14th and teams attending state championship all registered by October 15th.

5.5/7.5/9.5 winners have to be determined by October 21st and teams attending state championship all registered by October 22nd.

This does not give us a lot of time.  We could do some shortened formats and play more than one match a day.  Maybe have a tennis evening of round robin play to get them done.  So stay tuned…for now, try to start your make up process, play your matches when courts are playable, and then I will send out a definite plan (by level) and by the guidance from the State office as to how we need to handle this once all courts are playable.

Thank you for your patience, love of the game and care for each other

Anna