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- Written by: Vic Ramsey
As you may recall, at the end of the women's season last fall, the NCHSTCA conducted an extensive survey of the coaching community regarding a number of issues facing high school tennis in North Carolina.
Those results have been tabulated, and we're sharing a "public" copy of the results here on our website.
This report does not include the coaches' responses to the variety of open-ended questions we posed as part of the survey, since we did not have permission to publish those comments broadly. However, we have shared those comments with our Board of Directors,with the NCHSAA staff members responsible for tennis, and with our liason at USTA-NC.
Click here to access the survey results.
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- Written by: Vic Ramsey
Last August, we published the results of our level-based play survey, conducted in May 2025, and our analysis of the playoff results in all sports from 2021-25. You can find that article here.
We've continued that study, looking at playoff results from the most recent fall season in football, men's soccer, volleyball, and women's tennis. We analyzed every contest in which a charter school and a traditional, geographically based high school played against each other. We wanted to see if the move to eight classifications had an effect on the charter vs. traditional competition.
If charter schools, by virtue of being charter schools, have a significant athletic advantage, we should see charter schools winning these contests a majority of the time, by a statistically significant margin, and across all classifications.
Here are the results from the fall 2025 playoffs, in all four fall team sports, in class 1A through 4A, where all of the charter schools reside.
It's early yet ... only one season, after all. So many of the results are not yet statistically significant. Plus, these results are not "independent" ... the same team may be responsible for several wins in a given sport.
All that said, in tennis, the smaller traditional schools (1A and 2A) held their own, but traditional schools in 3A and 4A struggled against the larger charter schools, which are often based in large urban areas. This corresponds to the results of our 2021-25 study, which isolated the disparity in tennis to the 2A classification, and most of those schools now reside in 3A and 4A.
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- Written by: Vic Ramsey
Greetings!
You've reached the new website, currently under development, for the NC High School Tennis Coaches Association.
While we do not yet have all the content we hope to have, the membership registration process is now live, and coaches can "officially" join the NCHSTCA by clicking on the "Join NCHSTCA" tab and following the prompts.
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- Written by: Vic Ramsey
The NCHSAA Board of Directors met last Wednesday and Thursday at the NCHSAA offices in Chapel Hill to conduct its Winter 2023 meeting.
At the meeting, the Board approved two items specific to tennis that had been recommended by the NCHSTCA Board of Directors.
The first item addressed two issues related to the distribution of berths among the conferences to the individual regional tournaments. Previously, the NCHSAA handbook only stated that the berths would be distributed "on a percentage basis". The exact procedure for determining these percentages, and the number of berths each conference would receive, was not described.
The NCHSTCA proposal placed language in the NCHSAA Handbook that describes in detail how this process works, so that players, parents, and coaches can know how the number of berths received by their conference was calculated.
The NCHSTCA proposal also tweaked the formula by which these berths are calculated, resulting in a more precise relationship between the "percentage basis" and the actual berths the conference receives.
Click here for the complete text of the regional berth distribution proposal.
The proposal was adopted unanimously by the Sports Committee, and by the Board of Directors as a whole. The change in the distribution formula will take effect in the fall 2024 women's tennis season.
The second item recommended by the NCHSTCA was to codify the practice of using alternate match formats during the regular season, should the coaches mutually agree.
It has been long-standing practice for coaches to agree to play a shortened match format, for instance, pro-sets in singles, when weather or scheduling issues made such desireable.
However, the NCHSAA handbook defined a regular season match format, and did not include language allowing for alternate formats.
The NCHSTCA proposal on this matter retained the current regular season dual-team format as the "default format" for regular season matches, but allows coaches, by mutual agreement, to play pro-sets in singles or to play using no-ad scoring.
Click here for the complete text of the alternate match format proposal.
This proposal was also adopted without dissent by the Sports Committee and the Board of Directors. This change in the handbook language, since it merely codifies long-standing practice, was adopted to take effect immediately.
The NCHSAA Board also adopted the 2024-25 Sports Calendar.
Women's tennis teams may begin practice on Wednesday, July 31st, and play their first matches on Monday, August 12th. Dual team playoffs begin on Wednesday, October 16th, and the individual regional tournaments take place on Friday-Saturday, October 18th-19th. The individual state tournaments take place on October 25th-26th, and the dual team finals are scheduled for Saturday, November 2nd.
In the spring of 2025, men's tennis teams may begin practice on Wednesday, February 12th, and play their first matches on Monday, February 24th. Dual team plaoffs begin on Wednesday, April 30th, and the invidiaul regional tournaments are set for Friday-Saturday, May 2nd-3rd. The individual state tournaments take place on May 9th-10th, and the dual team finals will occur on Saturday, May 17th.