Arizona opinion: College tennis is losing American families

Eight years ago, I fell in love with tennis.

Not elite academy tennis or professional tennis. Just the sport itself — the discipline, the challenge, the community and the feeling that hard work still mattered.

Since then, tennis has become central to my family’s life. I now regularly compete in the United States Tennis Association and local leagues. I co-founded Arcadia Tennis and Sport here in Arizona. Most importantly, I’m raising three boys in the game. In our family, tennis is nonnegotiable because it’s a lifelong sport and builds resilience.

One of my sons dreams of playing Division I tennis someday. He trains more than 20 hours a week and often practices twice a day. Like thousands of tennis families across Arizona and the country, we organize our lives around lessons, tournaments, travel, conditioning and sacrifice because we believed there was still a meaningful pathway for American kids willing to work for it.

Increasingly, families are beginning to wonder whether that pathway still exists.

That is why the recent statement from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, headquartered here in Tempe, was so disappointing.

Again and again, the ITA framed college tennis around globalization, roster competitiveness and the pathway to professional tennis. CEO David Mullins emphasized the importance of maintaining strong, globally competitive rosters and warned against limiting international participation.

What the statement barely addressed was the American development pipeline underneath those rosters.

That is the real issue.

This is not anti-international. Tennis is a global sport and should remain one. International players have contributed tremendously to college tennis and American tennis more broadly.

But there is a difference between healthy international participation and overwhelming imbalance.

In the NCAA Men’s Tennis Sweet 16, American players made up only about one in five singles starters. Outside of two programs, fewer than one in 10 starters were American.

In a healthy American development system, those numbers should, in my view, look almost exactly the opposite.

Four out of five players on these rosters should be American boys and girls pursuing opportunity through an American college system — not one out of five fighting for what remains.

And this is not because American kids are incapable of competing.

At many top programs, American high school juniors are now competing for shrinking opportunities against players who often arrive after years in elite academies, national systems or professional-level training and competition abroad. In some cases, American teenagers are effectively competing against older, more developed players with years of high-level experience already behind them.

Parents see this dynamic. Coaches see it. Young players certainly see it.

And when families raise concerns, the response too often feels dismissive — as though questioning the current balance somehow means opposing international athletes or fearing competition.

That is a false choice.

You can support global competition while still believing American player development matters.

You can value international participation while still believing American families deserve meaningful opportunity in a sport they invest enormous amounts of time, money and sacrifice into.

Right now, many families no longer believe college tennis truly prioritizes developing American players.

That should alarm everyone who cares about the future of the sport.

Because if American families stop believing there is a pathway for their children, they will leave tennis. Participation will decline. Fan interest will weaken. Local clubs and businesses will struggle. The pipeline itself will continue deteriorating.

Some college tennis programs are already disappearing.

A healthy global sport still requires healthy domestic development.

Yet the ITA statement treated preserving globally competitive rosters as the central mission while largely avoiding the broader question of how to sustain American tennis long term.

That is backwards.

The question should not simply be: “How do we maintain the strongest possible rosters today?”

It should also be: “How do we ensure American tennis is still thriving a generation from now?”

President Trump and the NCAA have at least begun acknowledging that eligibility and developmental fairness matter. That is a step in the right direction. But the ITA should not wait to be forced into action. College tennis leadership should be leading the effort to strengthen the American pipeline, not merely defending the status quo while it erodes.

If college tennis leadership continues prioritizing imported replacements over rebuilding the domestic pipeline, the sport in America will continue weakening underneath the surface — no matter how strong the lineups look on paper. And as American families leave the sport, the financial pressures already hitting college tennis will only intensify.

Arizona families understand tennis. We invest in it. We support it. We build businesses and communities around it.

We are not asking college tennis to stop being global.

We are asking whether it still believes American kids deserve a meaningful place in the future of the sport.