September 14, 2023 - Universal Tennis and the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) announce that the UTR Rating is the official tennis rating of the GHSA.
Created by Universal Tennis, the UTR Rating system rates all players – professional, collegiate, high school, junior, and recreational – on the same 16-point scale, regardless of age, gender, or location. A player’s UTR Rating reflects their current skill level based on actual performance.
The GHSA is the largest sports organization in Georgia, encompassing 450+ high schools and more than 197,000 student-athletes. Tennis ranks as the Top 10 most popular sport amongst Georgia high schoolers, with 370 boys and 379 girls teams across the state.
“GHSA is pleased to be part of the Universal Tennis community, which will be of great interest and benefit to our teams, players, and fans,” said GHSA Tennis Coordinator Steve Figueroa. “The UTR ratings have become increasingly popular with many of our teams the past few years and we think this relationship will become more and more important in the future.”
Recent Wimbledon quarterfinalist Christopher Eubanks is an alumnus of Westlake High School in Atlanta. He would go on to play college tennis at Georgia Tech before turning professional. With the UTR Rating being widely considered the gold standard of college recruitment, the GHSA partnership opens up more opportunities for student-athletes.
“Universal Tennis is thrilled to have the GHSA on board. Georgia represents a large number of high school tennis programs and players and we are excited to be the official rating of the GHSA. We look forward to working with coaches across the state to help innovate and elevate high school tennis,” said Chase Hodges, Universal Tennis Vice President.
The adoption of the UTR Rating as the official rating system in Georgia ensures all high school tennis has one universal system for tracking player development, analytics, and discouraging roster stacking.
The Universal Tennis analytics will be shared as content on @OfficialGHSA social media and GHSA.net tennis page, but will NOT be used to determine post-season playoff lineups or brackets. Regions can decide on how to use the UTR ratings during the regular season and will continue to determine how they will choose their top four (4) teams, as stated in the GHSA Constitution and By-Laws.
