College Sports Recruiting Blog

I never thought I was gonna be #1 in the nation!

Sebastian Stiefelmeyer was one of 5 players who was at the top of the ITA NCAA-DI ranking during the 2014/2015 season. Since Sebastian's first appearance as #1 of the nation in January this year, he was consistently within the Top 8 of the ranking. His last appearance as a college player is the NCAA Tennis Singles Championship from May 20 to May 25, 2015. Read our extensive interview with him about his experience as a college tennis player, what he will remember the most, and why he recommends young fellow tennis players to get an education at college and play for a team.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-05-21

National Team, Singles & Doubles Championships 2015 in College Tennis

College tennis sees its final highlight of the 2014/2015 season these days. The final rounds of the team championship tournaments are being played as we speak in all divisions across the country: NCAA Division I-III, NAIA, and NJCAA are about to determine their team champions of the season before the singles and doubles tournaments will serve to do the same. Friday Scholarship Guide explains the different events, and recommends you to take a look at some live college action online.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-05-14

No-Ad Scoring Rules in College Tennis Here to Stay?

Will no-ad scoring be the future of collegiate tennis? There is a clear move in that direction, and this week's Friday Scholarship Guide will take a look at what coaches and players think about the scoring format, which had in fact been college tennis standard decades ago. Does no-ad scoring really offer the potential to shorten dual matches and make it more attractive to watch...?

Dominic Tinodi

2015-05-07

5 Variants of Dual Match Play

Tennis rules equal tennis rules no matter what and where in the world, right? You gotta win 2 out of 3 sets and you'll leave the court victoriously. Well, not exactly! What might be a surprise or maybe even a shock for people new to college tennis, actually makes a lot of sense and is common routine during plenty of matches in spring time across the nation: college tennis is different, and we will explain to what extent the rules differ from traditional tennis, seen on the ATP and WTA tour day in, day out.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-04-30

College Tennis Videos

In the last edition of our weekly Friday Scholarship Guide we highlighted the wonderful opportunity of watching college tennis action online. This week we'd like to give you some suggestions of another type of college tennis video impressions.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-04-23

What's happening in college tennis

Two interesting headlines have appeared in the college tennis world recently, which we'd love to share with our readership! Firstly, there are excellent opportunities to watch first-class NCAA D-1 tennis either on national TV or online right now, from April 16 - April 26, 2015. And secondly, the Big 12 conference, featuring some of the strongest of all college athletes, changed its rules about fan behavior quite a bit. You should read on, as they create an atmosphere on the court, which you simply do not know from pro tennis matches.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-04-15

A typical day of a college tennis player

This week's Scholarship Guide will give you some insights into the daily routine of a student athlete. To be more specific - of a college tennis player. Having been a college tennis player myself at one of the United States' top universities for four years, I will show you what it's like, being a student athlete.

Yannick Weihs

2015-04-09

UTR Applied in Match Box Scores

College tennis does not enjoy the same popularity and media coverage as football or basketball. Especially not when it's 'March Madness' and the focus shifts entirely towards basketball. That's why we should all be grateful for any additional coverage our wonderful sport receives, be it in print or online. 'College Tennis Today' does exactly that, driven by the general lack of information on college tennis. The web site has also adopted the UTR, a new level of play rating we're very excited about.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-03-26

College Dual Matches Part of the ATP & WTA Event in Indian Wells

As part of the BNP Paribas Open, 8 men's teams (NCAA D-I) convene on the final weekend of the event to play the 'Collegiate Challenge'. Ticket holders will be able to see some of the nation's best ranked tennis players including top 10 players #4 Julian Lenz, #7 Axel Alvarez Llamas, and #8 Yannick Hanfmann. The Collegiate Challenge offers an excellent platform for college tennis to gain wider popularity and is reason enough to dedicate this week's Friday Scholarship Guide to the action in Indian Wells.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-03-19

College Tennis Players - Now Davis Cup Heroes

The Davis Cup ties last weekend were as usual characterized by excitement and drama, with epic wins and painful losses. Kazakhastan's 3-2 win over Italy is one of the most remarkable ones. Even more so as the third point was pulled off by a former college player who was ITA National Player of the Year and #1 in the nation during his time at Oklahoma State University: Aleksandr Nedovyesov. In this edition of Friday Scholarship Guide, we will take a look at some of the 36 (!) tennis players with a background in college tennis, who represented their countries past weekend.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-03-12

Why College Coaches (Tennis) Care Where an Athlete is From

Where are you (the athlete) from, where do you live and why does it matter? Coaches of men's and women's tennis teams care for several reasons, but foremost because coaches need to identify how strong you are in reality. Find out more about how your residency is an excellent starting point for exactly that.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-03-05

ITA #5 Sebastian Stiefelmeyer: 5 Things I Love About College Tennis

We're extremely happy to have one of the currently best college tennis players give us his personal Top 5 reasons why he loves college tennis in today's Friday Scholarship Guide. You'll see that the team spirit and the mere fact of being part of a team in an individual sport like tennis have played a major role for Sebastian.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-02-26

Why Leave the College Tennis Program Before Graduating?

In Today's Friday Scholarship Guide we will take a look at a pattern, which often occurs once recruited tennis players start taking their bachelor's degree at college: leaving the college and thus the tennis program before graduation. In other words, some players stay less than 4 years at the university, where they received an athletic scholarship.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-02-19

Brand New Explainer Video - Friday's Scholarship Guide

Today's blog article is about a small milestone for us working with Smarthlete. We are finally uploading our first promotion video, explaining to you guys with visuals and voice what it is we're doing. We're hoping most of you will be fully aware of what it is we at Smarthlete stand for. We're hoping many of you know exactly what we offer. And we're hoping most will understand that we're not just creating articles on college sports topics each Friday. But to be entirely sure, we figured it might be a great idea to get a video up and running, for those of you who prefer to watch than read :).

Dominic Tinodi

2015-02-05

22 College Players in the Australian Open '15 Doubles Competition

With the first Grand Slam tournament of the year in its final rounds, let's have another look at the players in the draw. This time we'll provide exciting information about the former college players in the men's doubles event. With 22 out of 128 players having had some sort of college experience, 17% of the total doubles draw are made up of former collegiate players. We will also relate their doubles strength to an interesting ranking phenomenon, some great players have displayed on their way up.

Dominic Tinodi

2015-01-29