Welcome to Season 9, Episode 17, of the ParentingAces Podcast! Our conversations around college tennis and COVID-19 continue this week with guest Scott Handback.

Lawrence "Scott" Handback is a junior tennis coach, junior tennis official, and tennis director in North Carolina. He has developed over 70 players who have gone on to play college tennis and understands the unique nature of junior tennis development.

According to Scott, there will be a new equilibrium in college athletics and it will not look anything like what we are used to.

For tennis, there will be big changes coming. Those that continue the collegiate sport will look for new conferences to reduce travel costs or reduce the amount of scholarships offered by the programs. You may see NCAA Division I programs having to do the fundraising that small DII and DIII schools have to do to provide uniforms for players.

As a positive, there will be fewer international players coming to the U.S. to play collegiate tennis. With the current immigration hold and the reduced staffing producing visas for international student-athletes, anyone who does not already have a visa to attend college this fall will not get one for the foreseeable future. This fall season will be a great opportunity for American junior tennis players to have opportunities to play collegiate tennis that they may not have had prior.

Whatever ends up happening, the landscape of college athletics will be significantly different in the future. How quickly those changes occur - only time will tell. What will the long-term impact be? No one knows....yet.

As the COVID-19 pandemic is changing daily, please know that ParentingAces is committed to continuing to bring you information and support as it relates to junior tennis and college recruiting. We have created a page on our website specifically dedicated to sharing useful tennis-related resources. You can visit it here.

As always, a big thank you to Morgan Stone, aka STØNE, for our NEW intro and outro music this season. You can find more of his music at SoundCloud.com/stonemuzic. If you’re interested in House Music, please be sure to check out his social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. 

If you’re so inclined, please share this – and all our episodes! – with your tennis community. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the ParentingAces website. If you haven’t already, be sure to become a Member of ParentingAces – we have 4 options for you – by clicking here.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices