When the ITA Regional Championships weren’t a direct qualification event for the NCAA Tournament, the format worked just fine.
The ITA National Fall Championship title, while prestigious at the time it operated, wasn’t an NCAA title. And while the regions had to contend with dominant schools, the modern era of college sports—with NIL, seemingly arbitrary extra years, and quasi-professionals donning a school uniform—the lack of parity across the entire D1 field has never been more evident. There are ways to ensure fairness in the sport, but as it stands, the regions aren’t one of them.
For the team tennis NCAA Tournament, the winner of each conference tournament receives an automatic bid, just like most college sports. But the individual season doesn’t operate in the same way, instead opting to base a decent chunk of qualification on regions. While conference representation matters and gives non-Power 4 schools a chance to shine, regional representation isn’t really an issue. Instead, problems arise in some draws featuring little to no ranked players, while others are chalk-full of them.
And then there’s the Atlantic region, which might as well be rebranded the Virginia region. On the men’s side, four of the top five seeds were from Virginia, and No. 4 seed was preseason No. 109 Ilyas Fahim of Virginia Tech, the only non-Virginia ranked player present in the entire tournament. Predictably, the semifinals featured the four Virginia representatives, and the Cavaliers took the doubles title as well. Oklahoma has a similar dominance in the Central region, with six of the top eight seeds in the men’s draw. They too took up all four semifinal spots.
The top singles seed in both the men’s and women’s Mountain region can’t be found in the preseason rankings. The women’s Northwest regional has four ranked players while the men’s Northwest regional features just two. In New England that flips, with four ranked men and two ranked women.
A look at the stronger regions shows the lack of balance. The Midwest region has six ranked men and seven ranked women, with plenty of room for more Ohio State players who would have played had they not already qualified for NCAAs. The Southeast region features seven ranked men and eight ranked women, and the Texas region has five ranked women and a whopping 14 ranked men. Plenty of players in these regions missed out on a spot in the NCAA singles draw when they would have fared far better dropped in the Mountain or New England regions.
While it’s important to give underrepresented conferences and schools a chance to compete on the national stage, the NCAA Tournament is ultimately meant to feature the 64 best players in the country. But this format makes that impossible as luck of the regional lines is deciding a decent amount of these spots.
The fall officially became college tennis’ premier individual season just a few months ago, following a two-year pilot program. But no changes have been made, and the fall schedule remains a mess, with many players skipping it altogether to play pro events—both Dylan Dietrich and Lucciana Perez, the preseason No. 1s, have opted out of every college event so far this season.
Of course, the regional format isn’t to blame for all of college tennis’ problems, but it isn’t helping either. When a ticket to the most important individual event in the sport is based on location, it feels less like a fair and equal opportunity for everyone and more like the most surface-level convenient option. Ultimately, that’s not the way to create a successful, sustainable, and high-level championship.
