Special from
Zoo Tennis
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Virginia men's head coach Andres Pedroso went viral last February when he overruled his own player's line call on the first point of a tiebreaker that would decide the doubles point in the Cavaliers' Intercollegiate Tennis Association Men's Team Indoor Championships semifinal with Ohio State.
Virginia Head Coach Andres Pedroso
© Zoo Tennis
While Pedroso was praised for his sportsmanship on social media, the ITA was working behind the scenes at Columbia's Milstein Family Tennis Center that week to eliminate the need for a decision like Pedroso's, a position every coach wants to avoid.
The 2024 Men's Team Indoor was serving as a shadow testing event for the PlayReplay electronic line calling challenge system, which was deemed ready to deploy at this year's men's and women's Division I Team Indoor Championships in Texas and Illinois, after pilot programs at the Men's All-American Championships and two ITA Sectional tournaments last fall.
For Pedroso and the other participants I spoke to at the Men's Team Indoor last week in Dallas, that initiative instantly changed the atmosphere and perception of Division I college tennis, the highest level of the sport still relying on players making their own calls.
"I just think it takes a lot of the drama and a lot of the confrontation out of college tennis," said Pedroso, whose teams won NCAA team titles in 2022 and 2023. "It takes these kids out of the position of making line calls when there is so much going on, the expectations are there, it’s a heated environment. It’s not fair that these kids have to call lines in that type of environment, when they care so much, playing for the school. We’re the only sport in collegiate athletics that’s making our own calls. Can you imagine a basketball team calling their own fouls?"
