SPORTIME Port Washington Hosts Eighth Annual JMTA College Recruiting Combine
The John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA) once again brought tennis players and college coaches together at its College Recruiting Combine, this time in a different location as SPORTIME Port Washington hosted the eighth annual event.
Held at JMTA’s flagship location, SPORTIME Randall’s Island, for the last seven years, this year, the event was moved to SPORTIME Port Washington, formerly Port Washington Tennis Academy, the location where McEnroe and his brother Patrick trained when they were young tennis players.
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After an $8 million renovation, SPORTIME Port Washington now features 7 oversized, sub-irrigated, soft-surface, Har-Tru tennis courts, 6 new hard-surface tennis courts as well as many other upgrades and amenities, making it an ideal location for the Combine.
“JMTA is committed to preparing our players for college tennis, and to working with them to identify and to help them to attend the colleges and universities that best suit them,” said John McEnroe.
The Combine was open to rising sophomores, juniors and seniors and featured 50 boys and 50 girls who showcased their technical and tactical tennis skills, and their athletic abilities, in front of coaches from top colleges and universities. The event features match play, both in singles and doubles, as coaches surveyed the courts.
All players are put through a athletic performance assessments and are invited to also take part in Sports Vision Testing. In addition, there were two separate College Coaches’ Panel Discussions which provided players and parents the opportunity to ask questions on a variety of topics, including recruitment, academics, campus life and more.
“The Coaches Panel was very helpful as I got answers to many questions that I had and many answers to things I didn’t even know about, suuch as how long emails to coaches should be, and how often I should be reaching out to a coach with updates,” said Ethan Solop, a junior at Roslyn High School. “My main goal during matches was to show off my game and my ability to compete. My game is based off playing with aggression, going for big shots and getting to every single ball. I believe I did all that very well as I stuck to my game-plan and the patterns I go over in practice. All the eyes watching and the pressure made me play better actually, as I would work harder than I ever had in every single point. I showed my strengths in my game and I believe that the coaches that attended, really got a good understanding of my game and myself as after my matches I was able to talk to coaches and break down my game and what went well and what I’d like to improve.”
College Coaches from Adelphi, Brown, Baylor, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn State, William & Mary, Wake Forest, Bentley, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Stony Brook, Bryant, St. John’s, Hofstra, Union, Colgate and others were in attendance. Matches were live-streamed and each participant receives a Player Portal that allows coaches to access them later, as well as provides access to other coaches from around the country.
“The 2024 JMTA College Combine was one of the highest level Combines in terms of UTRs since we started nine years ago! We also had so many incredible seminars with talks from John McEnroe, Patrick McEnroe, Touby from the College Planning Alliance, Tony from Novella Prep, Ryan from ASM, and of course the infamous College Coaches Panel,” said Jay Harris, Director of Tennis and JMTA at SPORTIME Port Washington and the JMTA College Combine Director. “It was a truly special event and especially because of the move to the iconic SPORTIME Port Washington. Parents and players loved having it there as this facility has truly the best overall viewing capabilities of any facility in the east, and that is of course a key component as it allowed the college coaches to easily view all matches while being able to also converse with the parents. Over 100 college coaches registered to be a part of this year’s Combine with many of them taking advantage of our live streaming option where they could watch recruits from the comforts of their own offices on campus!”
