Sportsmanship on Sunday's

My letter of concern to my ALTA (Atlanta Lawn & Tennis Association) tennis league Coordinator in regard to the lack of sportmanship my and I experienced on Sunday during our 2nd round playoff match.

Hi Laura,

I am writing this email as a follow-up to our earlier conversation. As I told you earlier, I played line 3 and we had a lot of problems with our line 3 opponents. My partner and I found the behavior of one of the players, Chris, to be very unsportsmanlike, obnoxious, inconsiderate and distracting, not to mention she was very loud when she was talking. Chris played line 3 with the captain, Tina, but that did not seem to alter her behavior at all. Chris kept voicing her opinion about line calls aloud. She wanted to make calls on both sides of the court. She did not simply say, “are you sure about that call”, instead she would voice out loud her doubt about our line calls.

There was one occasion when I was receiving a ball on the baseline and I called it back, and Chris said aloud, “oh, o.k., if it’s close, then it’s out – I see how they are so remember that when we have close balls - its out.” She just kept repeating – “if it’s close, then it’s out.” While I may have called the ball out, I also returned the ball and my return landed in. I didn’t make the call because I missed the return; I made the call because the ball was actually out. After Chris made her statement, my partner and I said to each other that until today we had never before heard anyone admit out loud that they would intentionally make a retaliatory call.

There was also another call where our opponent, Tina was serving to my partner Leisa. I was watching the service line and it appeared that the ball caught the back of the line, so neither my partner, nor I called the ball back, instead my partner made a good short cross court return. It was a good shot, and the server (Tina) could not have gotten to the ball. Instead of saying nothing or “good shot”, Chris chose to once again voice her disagreement aloud. She told her partner, “that was way back honey”. She went on to say to her partner, “your serve was way back.” She also informed us that it is our job to make good line calls, and then she said but it’s your call to make. I approached the net while she (Chris) continued to make her statement loudly from the service line. I told her that we understand the procedure and advised her we were making good calls and then went back to the baseline. Basically, she was insinuating that we were making bad calls. We never questioned any of their line calls at any point in the match and that doesn’t mean there weren’t any questionable calls. We just chose to move on to the next point and not worry about a call that was never ours to make.

We had another instance with Chris when my partner, Leisa, was serving late in the match. It was my partner’s second serve and she didn’t see that Chris wasn’t set (ready), so when Leisa served the ball Chris sent the ball back and asked her to serve again because she wasn’t ready. I turned to my partner and said, “Leisa, do it again she wasn’t ready”. This time Leisa waited until she appeared to be set and served the ball again, but Chris once again returned the ball and said "no, no, do it again". So for the 2nd time Chris claimed she wasn’t. Leisa asked her to please put her hand up and signal that she wasn’t ready next time because she appeared to be set and that is why she served the ball. Leisa served the ball again but this time she double faulted. I was watching Chris when Leisa served the ball the 2nd time and she appeared to be ready…she had no problem returning the ball to ask that it be served again for the 3rd time. After Leisa double faulted she took longer to serve because she was trying to re-focus, even then Tina (captain) said aloud "are we playing games now"... this is while Leisa was trying to serve.

At some point, late in the match, Chris even decided to animate playing an air guitar on court while she was waiting for us to play the next point. I can’t even explain what the air guitar playing was all about.

There were breaks being taken after almost every game. At first I didn’t really think about it. When they walked to the sidelines so did my partner and I until I realized the breaks were occurring after almost every game. I asked my partner why we were breaking after every game and she said she hadn’t even noticed that it was every game and that she was only going to the sideline to break because they were. I told her not to take another break unless it was an end change because we were not supposed to. When my partner and I mentioned to our opponents that they could not take a break between the games because there was no end change involved, Chris spoke up and said “well we are” and then she and Tina remained on the sideline to complete their break. Leisa and I just stood on our end of the court and waited for them to finish.
We were not the only people that found Chris to be distracting – one of my players from line 4 who was also playing at the same time made mention of it after the matches had completed. I had at least three of my teammates mention that they also thought she was a distraction and she was loud. I had been sitting near Chris before we ever got on the court to play, but I moved after she kept making a lot of negative comments about on court events during the line 1 & line 2 matches. After our match Danielle Charles (our Captain) was speaking with some of Chris’ teammates and they stated that this was normal behavior for that line.

My partner really found her behavior to be mentally distracting and was very annoyed with the entire situation. I instructed her to not make a big deal about Chris’ behavior and to do her best to ignore any comments and definitely not make any comments back.

I’ve met many players who are bubbly and have talkative personalities, but that is not what we were dealing with here. I really don’t know what her problem was, but there was something definitely wrong with her behavior. I have never experienced anything like it, and hope to never experience anything like it again. There was no end to the behavior we were subjected to and the captain (Tina) didn’t help or attempt to rein it in.

I know there may be no way for ALTA to punish this behavior, but at the very least, it should be noted and brought to the attention of the Captain (Tina) and Chris as unacceptable & unsportsmanlike conduct. Thank you for accepting my call to discuss this matter and for asking for an email to document this complaint. Any assistance that you can provide to prevent or deter this type of behavior from occurring in the future would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Chequetta Allen