Signing up for the USTA

passing a kidney stone must be easier.

u go to the website, browse around for half an hr before discovering that you have to find your section.

they also throw in some distractions such as tennis welcome center ads and find a partner now. the welcome centers are quite far and another beast like the usta site to navigate. about the "find a partner" feature, you can search it but there are hardly any players listed and once you do register before you can see the player's profiles, the email gets lost or spam filtered for aol users like me (tho it wasnt in my spam box).

i find my section (so cali) and then theres options of tournament, juniors, senior/adult, usta league - well, i think i fit half of these so after browsing through each one of those, i find a list for my local area coordinator.

but im between two areas, so i call and email the first one who doesnt get back to me for three days, and the second one gives me only one team to choose from. i hesitate but ask again for a closer team to my place and find that its not that close so i end up asking for a list of all the teams. she gives me the link w/ all the teams and captains which is like more of a stats and records site and you cant find it on the regular site - at least i tried to - then have to go through contacting each one to find the one closest to me because only half of the teams' practice centers are listed.

well, it turns out its the first one she gave me but i have a friend of my brother who says theres one half the distance but its not listed. oh yes, and you have to register once you find a team but need a ntrp rating. to find the ntrp rating guide, you have to search on the MAIN site under faq for some reason, something i found after googling for it.

it shouldnt be this hard to play tennis. someone has to streamline the usta system.

I went through the same thing and finally gave up. You're lucky they got back to you at all - the local area coordinator that I emailed never got back to me.

It shouldn't be that hard, but anyone that has ever dealt with the USTA for awhile knows that they are extraordinarily disorganized....and not very nice.

You think the USTA is bad? :lol:

For all I know, the LTA could be run by a monkey :scratch: ...and that is insulting the monkeys :rolleyes:

I went through the same thing and finally gave up. You're lucky they got back to you at all - the local area coordinator that I emailed never got back to me.

It shouldn't be that hard, but anyone that has ever dealt with the USTA for awhile knows that they are extraordinarily disorganized....and not very nice.

lol that sucks that you gave up. but come to think of it, this is the third time ive tried :D i didnt give up this time because a friend of my bro is in it and i guess thats extra motivation. the other times i wouldve definitely joined if it was easier.

the coordinators i wouldnt say were rude at all but like you said, its like the organization is left up to the individual coordinator or subcoordinator. they need to streamline and systemize everything so that a player can get hooked up w/ a team w/ just a couple of clicks.

at this rate theyre losing alot of prospective players and make the ones who do go through all the hassle feel desperate.