Boone, Iowa - On August 12, 2024, the Iowa High School Athletic Association and Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union have collaborated to reduce spring schedule congestion by moving boys’ golf and girls’ tennis to the fall sport seasons starting in the 2025-26 school year. The changes address decades-long concerns from member schools over scheduling and were approved by both the IHSAA’s board and IGHSAU’s board following discussions at a joint meeting in early July.
“Our member schools have been asking for ways to relieve the crowded spring sports seasons for years” IGHSAU executive director Erin Gerlich said. “The new changes provide relief in an already busy spring, and an opportunity for the IGHSAU and IHSAA to enhance the state tournament experiences for tennis and golf.
After much speculation over this last tennis season and over the summer, the move has been made official. Iowa will join Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri & Ohio as midwest states with girls tennis being held in the fall, and boys tennis being held in the spring. According to the joint IHSAA and IGHSAU release yesterday, among nine other peer state associations in the Midwest, all nine separate tennis seasons. The increased availability of facilities, coaching, and school resources, plus the reduction of scheduling conflicts are the top cited reasons for those successful season separations.
How could the fall season look?
A new season means a new schedule will be put into place from first practices, to first competitions, as well as dates for the state tournaments. Taking a look at some surrounding states, here is what the fall season structure could look like:
Fall 2025
First practices: August 11
First competitions: August 16
Individual Regionals: October 1
Team Regionals: October 4 & 8
Team State QFs: October 11
Individual State: October 17-18
Team Final Four: October 25
This would allow for 7 full weeks of a regular season, and only 3 missed days of class for postseason. With the improved court space now, teams have better flexibility with practices and putting together a JV schedule. With 14 dates of play available, teams could theoretically play on 7 Saturdays opening up opportunities for double headers and invites. I could see a universal schedule of competitions being Tuesdays and Saturdays only, which would allow 14 dates of play during those 7 weeks, and cut down on missing class time. This would be super advantageous for a conference like the MVC where they hardly ever get an open date with all the conference teams. While I don't think that is what will happen, I can only hope!
Questions that would also need to be answered include; would the state tournaments be scheduled inside or outside? Wisconsin and Minnesota schedules girls inside in the fall, while Illinois schedules them outside. What happens to the Co-ed state tournament?
The University of Iowa would be the obvious choice to host the state tournament indoors. The biggest obstacle about HTRC is the viewing indoors is limited, and when a state tournament has been there inside, it is absolutely packed upstairs. The IGHSAU will have to really step up their game in scheduling and event management and not waste open courts and time should they be scheduled inside ahead of time. They could schedule outdoors at HTRC and have the indoor courts ready to go like it already has been the last few seasons. I don't think there is any other facility that could do it as well. Not to mention, 2A and 1A are split as well, you may have to get Drake for 1A, which has 6 courts. Will be interesting to see if they go inside or go outside with the indoor backup.
What happens to coed? Your guess is as good as mine. I posted on twitter yesterday in a comment reply that I feel there is 3 main options to do this. Eliminate it, have only in fall or spring, or alternate between fall and spring following each gender every other year. The obvious choice is to eliminate it as the logistics become a nightmare. Iowa is maybe the only state with a coed state tournament in the country for tennis. Maybe someone has a creative solution that works well!
Scoring Format
The IAHSAA tried to sneakily slip in a note about the postseason scoring format for boys tennis. A consistent format is coming to the postseason, with both singles & doubles and the team tournaments now featuring ad scoring, best two out of three sets, with a 10-point super tiebreaker instead of a full third set. All consolation rounds and the coed state tournament will remain no0ad scoring. UTR will become a required statistical entry point for Class 2A and team entry location for Class 1A in 2025.
There is a lot to unpack here. After reading it again this morning, it appears this scoring format is for the boys only as it is not listed on the IGHSAU release. With this postseason format, boys tennis is now no-ad all of regular season, with only the singles/doubles state consolation rounds and coed being no-ad during postseason. After an entire regular season of no-ad, the postseason flips to ad scoring for districts, team regionals, and state tournaments.
This seems to be a swing and a miss by making things even less consistent. No-ad and ad are very different games. No-ad favors players who can play the big points well and execute their game plan, whereas ad puts emphasis on fitness and grinding it out as the game was designed. I personally would have loved to see no-ad everything and full third sets for postseason, 10 pt tiebreaks for regular season. Either way, it should either be ad all season, or no-ad all season.
That is all for now. Hope you all enjoy the last bit of summer as the new school year is about to begin!
-Iowa HS Tennis
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