ParentingAces Discusses TheSol

Summary

Lisa Stone broadcasts from a family beach trip in Destin, Florida to announce and explain “The Sol Tournament” — a junior tennis event she is co-organizing in honor of Saul, a beloved member of the tennis community who died suddenly of a heart attack earlier in 2016. Saul was an employee of Hollebird Sports and a passionate advocate for college tennis preservation and tennis accessibility. The episode features Melanie Rubin — mother of Noah Rubin, then on the ATP tour — and Randy Jinks from Universal Tennis (UTR), who explain the tournament’s design philosophy: low entry fees ($30), open to all juniors regardless of age or USTA affiliation, UTR-rated for seeding, compass draw to guarantee multiple matches, on-court coaching allowed at changeovers, and co-branding with Wilson Tennis for meaningful prize packages. The episode is ultimately about what community-building looks like in tennis: how one person’s relationships, energy, and values can bind a sport’s practitioners together.

Guest Background

Melanie Rubin is the mother of Noah Rubin, who at the time of the episode had spent approximately one year on the ATP pro tour after a year at Wake Forest University. Melanie met Saul through tennis’s Facebook community; he introduced her to Lisa Stone and helped coordinate Hurricane Sandy relief for the Long Island tennis community. She is a member of the Sol Tournament organizing committee.

Randy Jinks represents Universal Tennis (UTR — Universal Tennis Rating), the organization that manages the UTR rating system and was handling the tournament’s back-end registration and management infrastructure at events.universal tennis.com. He articulates UTR’s advocacy for level-based play as a developmental tool.

Key Findings

1. The Tournament Is Built Around Saul’s Values: Accessibility, Abundance, and Connection

Every design decision in the Sol Tournament reflects a philosophy Saul embodied: low entry fees (he considered high junior tournament fees exploitative), guaranteed match play (he hated seeing kids travel and lose in round one and go home), on-court coaching (he believed development happened through coaching interaction, not isolation), and UTR-based seeding (he supported level-based play over age-based sorting). The $30 entry fee, compass draw, and Wilson prize package are all direct expressions of this philosophy.

2. Level-Based Play Dramatically Increases Competitive Match Quality

Randy Jinks provides the clearest statement in any ParentingAces episode of why UTR-based level grouping matters for development: competitive matches (defined as the loser winning more than half the games — 6-4, 6-3 or closer) increase in likelihood to roughly double when players are grouped by level rather than age and gender. At most USTA juniors, the wide variance in skill within an age bracket means competitive matches are rare and decisive lopsided ones are common. Level-based play creates more 5-4 sets, more 5-6 sets, more competitive pressure — which is the training environment that builds match-play skills.

3. Compass Draw Guarantees Developmental Match Volume

The compass draw format — where every player who loses in any round continues into a parallel bracket matched to their actual level — guarantees a minimum of four matches over two days. This is explicitly a response to one of Saul’s pet peeves: the economics of traveling to a tournament, making all the scheduling and financial commitments that requires, and then getting one match before going home. The compass draw treats match volume as a developmental asset, not a logistical complication.

4. On-Court Coaching at Changeovers Is a Deliberate Design Choice

The Sol Tournament allows on-court coaching at changeovers — a feature not available at USTA-sanctioned events. This choice is intentional and explicitly developmental: the tournament creates a teaching opportunity within competition, allowing coaches (including parents acting as coaches) to interact with their player during the match. This is the structure that professional tennis uses and that junior development almost never provides.

5. UTR as Infrastructure for Alternative Tournament Models

Randy Jinks describes UTR’s expanding role: beyond rating individuals, UTR is beginning to host and support events that embed level-based play as a core design principle. The Sol Tournament is one of these. UTR handles registration, seeding, draws, and rating updates. This partnership model — where a community organizer provides the vision and relationships and UTR provides the operational infrastructure — is a template for how accessible, values-driven junior tournaments can be organized without requiring USTA sanction.

6. Saul’s Death Reveals the Invisible Infrastructure of Community Tennis

The episode’s most resonant thread is the picture of Saul that emerges from Lisa’s and Melanie’s accounts: a man at Hollebird Sports who raised Hurricane Sandy relief funds for Long Island tennis pros he had never met, whose son’s Bar Mitzvah project continued that work, who received USTA Long Island’s Good Samaritan Award in 2014, who called into ParentingAces regularly to advocate for college program preservation, and who was fighting for the UMBC program right up to the day he died — the same program that was subsequently cut. Over 1,000 people attended his funeral. The episode argues implicitly that tennis’s community health depends on people like Saul — people who do the relationship work, the advocacy work, and the connective tissue work that formal organizations do not.

7. The Tournament as Model for a Recurring Series

The Sol Tournament is explicitly designed to grow: Lisa and her committee hope to expand to college campuses around the country in subsequent years, using Saul’s values as the organizing principle. The first year is a test case for a format — UTR-seeded, compass draw, on-court coaching, low entry fee, meaningful prizes — that they believe is replicable and scalable.

Actionable Advice for Families

• If your junior player is in the 12–18 range and not yet competing USTA-sanctioned events, UTR-rated non-sanctioned tournaments are an excellent entry point — they provide real competition, build rating history, and often have lower entry barriers
• Compass draw tournaments provide far more developmental value per travel dollar than single-elimination formats — prioritize these when available
• On-court coaching at changeovers should be practiced in training, not just exercised in tournaments — players need to know how to receive and apply coaching information quickly and efficiently during a competitive match
• Parents who are not from the tennis world should look for community advocates like Saul — people who understand the sport and are willing to give time and relationships generously to support others’ journeys

INTENNSE Relevance

• Tournament design as community building: The Sol Tournament’s design philosophy — low barrier to entry, guaranteed match play, on-court coaching, level-based seeding — is a prototype for what INTENNSE’s community tennis events could look like. The league’s format innovation philosophy (unlimited subs, mic’d coaches, rally scoring) should extend into its community programming
• On-court coaching visibility: The Sol Tournament allows on-court coaching at changeovers — the professional model — specifically because it is developmental. INTENNSE’s mic’d coaches format takes this further: coaching is not just permitted but broadcast. The developmental value of visible, real-time coaching is a point of differentiation INTENNSE should communicate actively
• Level-based competition: Randy Jinks’s argument for UTR-based level grouping over age-based grouping is exactly the principle that INTENNSE’s format addresses at the professional level — mixed-gender team competition with unlimited subs means the right player is on the court for the right matchup, not the player who happens to be next in a rotation
• Community as competitive moat: Saul’s story illustrates that the most durable asset in tennis community is relational trust built over years through genuine service. INTENNSE’s long-term sustainability in Atlanta depends on building the same kind of trust — through consistent presence, accessible programming, and leaders who show up when the community needs them
• The UMBC story: Saul was fighting for the UMBC college tennis program right up to his death — and the program was cut anyway. This is a direct data point on the crisis of college tennis infrastructure that INTENNSE’s pathway model could address by providing an alternative professional destination for players whose college programs are eliminated or who graduate without a viable pro pathway

Notable Quotes

“One of Saul’s big pet peeves was these high entry fees for junior tournaments — so we made a commitment from the get-go to keep our entry fee low. $30 it is.” — Lisa Stone

“Level-based play — grouping players in draws by level as opposed to age and gender — increases the likelihood at least double that you’ll have a competitive situation. Being in more 5-4 sets or 5-6 sets throughout a junior’s development makes them comfortable and able to play their game.” — Randy Jinks, Universal Tennis

“As fate would have it, the program that Saul played for and actually worked as a volunteer assistant — the University of Maryland Baltimore County — that program got cut at the end of the 2015-2016 school year. And as of the day we lost Saul, he was fighting for that program.” — Lisa Stone

“Saul was not a man to give up. Heads of state do not have a crowd turnout like the thousand people that showed up at Saul’s funeral. It was a testament to the man that he was and the people that he touched.” — Melanie Rubin