In January, the NCHSTCA conducted a survey of NC high school tennis coaches with regard to several issues concerning the 2025 realignment to eight classifications.
Ninety-two coaches responded to the survey, from all areas of the state and from all eight future classifications. We believe the results reflect an accurate picture of the feelings and beliefs of NC high school tennis coaches, and we have shared these results with NCHSAA staff.
On the primary issue of whether to shrink the state individual tennis tournament fields from 16 to 8 participants, the respondents were overwhelmingly in support of keeping the state individual tournaments at 16 entries as at present. Eighty-one percent of coaches favored a 16-entry draw at the state tournament, and, of those, 75% rated the issue as either "very important" or "extremely important".
Coaches also endorsed the NCHSTCA proposal for regional qualifiers to determine entries for the regional tournaments, again, by a wide margin. Slightly more than two thirds of the coaches responding endorsed this proposal.
Finally, coaches want to see the future 1A and 2A classifications to have their own brackets, as opposed to being combined into a single championship. This was true of both the individual tournament and the dual team tournament. While a large number of coaches of schools unaffected by this issue expressed "no preference", three fourths of the coaches with an opinion voted to keep these classifications separate. This was especially true among 1A and 2A coaches, who voted 13-2 in favor of separate championships.
Click here for the complete survey report.
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