What happened to SoCal's Junior Sectionals?

Junior Sectionals in Southern California used to matter. It was a tournament kids aspired to play and families planned around. Today, it feels like an afterthought—buried at the Lakewood Tennis Center and scheduled in a way that actively discourages participation.

Sectionals are now played in the middle of the school week in early June. That’s not a quiet time for students—it’s finals, graduations, and end-of-year obligations. Asking families to miss multiple school days for the section’s flagship junior event is unrealistic and exclusionary.

The format only works for a narrow slice of the community: wealthier families, home-schooled players, or parents who can take days off work. For everyone else, it’s a barrier. That raises an obvious question—who is this event actually designed for?

It gets worse. The SCTA doesn’t even offer full three-set matches at Junior Sectionals. In fact, Southern California doesn’t run a single junior event with consistent three-set matches. That’s indefensible. Three-set tennis is the standard at the next level, yet our players are rarely asked to play it at home. Development is being sacrificed for convenience.

At the same time, the section seems more focused on Challenger and national-level events like the SoCal Pro Series. While it’s nice that a handful of kids benefit, those events don’t serve the broader Southern California junior community—and they shouldn’t be a priority when basic junior tournaments aren’t being run well.

Other sections are doing better. Northern California, Texas, Arizona—the list goes on—are running better-scheduled, more development-focused junior events. Southern California often claims to be the best section in the country, but its junior tournament experience is increasingly near the bottom.

Junior Sectionals should reflect the depth and diversity of Southern California tennis. Right now, they do neither.

If the goal is to check a box on the calendar, this works. But if Sectionals are supposed to matter—to kids, families, and player development—this isn’t good enough.