“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is a phrase I have come to appreciate over the last couple months as the thought of the new captain selection process started to become a reality. 

Last fall, I was elected to be one of the Girls Tennis team captains after a written application and speech. While the application was long and the speech was nerve wracking, I appreciated both in different ways. The application let me fully think through my ideas for the team and different scenarios I might come across as captain, and the speech let me pitch my ideas to my teammates as well as  show them my ability to be a leader. 

The selection process was right after the season ended to provide the new captains the opportunity to plan for the off season and focus on recruitment for next year. This year not only was the vote moved to the spring, 176 days after the official end of the season, but both the speech and application part of the process were eliminated. These changes are just the beginning of a risky precedent being set that can only result in unprepared captains and negative competition during the season.  

The new captain selection works like this: the team gathers during a lunch period and talks for a brief period of time about what a captain’s role will be on the team. Then team members nominate each other or themselves. After nominations, a rank choice survey is sent to the team, and students rank their choices for captain. 

There are many problems with this. To start off, without a speech presented to the team about a person’s ideas, teammates are ranking people and not their ideas, which seems fundamentally wrong and un-Parkeresque. Next, without the application, candidates are not provided a space to think through their ideas or how they may handle certain situations. This could lead to uncommitted and unfit people being elected. 

With the new system, voting will no longer be based on people’s ideas but will instead be replaced by a popularity contest, the exact opposite of what the athletics department said they were trying to achieve. Moreover, without an opportunity to present one’s ideas, candidates will be forced to campaign, working their ideas into conversations with their peers during the season. This would create a negative atmosphere and therefore a dysfunctional team. In addition, if the team is not able to gauge a potential captain’s public speaking abilities, it could lead to problems during the season, such as a lack of leadership skills. Captains are supposed to serve as a liaison between the coaches and the players, advocating and defending one to the other, with unprepared captains a team can crumble. 

Voting in the spring, many months after the end of the season, is another pitfall of the new system. The tennis season is a short two and a half months, and once the preseason begins, it is difficult to make tangible skill improvements. Therefore, off season practice is crucial. Most captains are seniors, and once they finish the season their vested interest in improving the team decreases, as does their commitment to organizing off season practices. Having to rely on seniors to organize off season practices, especially when senioritis takes hold, can only result in lost practice time to the detriment of the overall team. 

All of this is said out of pure love for my team. I want it to continue to do well, not just the next two years, but 10 and 20 years into the future. Furthermore, I want it to be a genuinely positive experience without unnecessary, unhealthy competition. 

We don’t know what the consequences of the new captain selection process will be until next year, and because students planned to fill out an application this year, they will have likely thought out their ideas. However, what about next year and the year after that? The new captain system will set a risky precedent and could lead to a lack of leadership, in addition to creating a negative team atmosphere during the season.