DecoTurf High School Tennis Team Championships

Summary

Lisa Stone visits the 2017 DecoTurf High School Tennis Team Championships in Chattanooga, Tennessee — a 10-year-old national team event that draws 64 teams from 13 states to the Champions Club. The episode features a series of on-site interviews with tournament director Brandon Feissner, players, coaches, and parents that collectively paint a picture of what a well-designed youth team tennis event looks like. The UTR system’s decision to incorporate high school team results is discussed as a transformative development for events like this one.

Guest Background

Brandon Feissner is the creator and tournament director of the DecoTurf High School Tennis Team Championships, now in its 10th year as a team event. The tournament partners with UTR for seeding and has sponsors including DecoTurf, IcyHot, Dunlop, Coca-Cola, Papa John’s, and others. A coach from Trinity High School in Louisville won four US Open tickets at the player party — held at the Tennessee Aquarium — as the evening’s top prize.

Key Findings

• The UTR incorporation of high school results is a structural breakthrough. The tournament has used UTR for seeding for two years. With 64 teams from 13 different states, there was previously no common ranking denominator — state rankings don’t cross state lines. UTR solved the cross-state competitive calibration problem and dramatically improved division balance and match quality. UTR’s announcement to expand high school match inclusion nationally will amplify this.
• Team competition creates qualitatively different player experiences than individual tournaments. Multiple interview subjects — players, coaches, parents — independently describe the team format as creating something individual tournaments can’t: genuine shared investment, social bonds across schools, and competition that is both high-stakes and community-generating. Players compete hard against each other during the day and socialize together at night.
• Sponsorship enables the experiential differentiators. Feissner is explicit: without sponsors (DecoTurf for 6 years, IcyHot for 3 years, Coca-Cola, Papa John’s, Dunlop, Rebounces), the extras that define the event — the Tennessee Aquarium player party, quality t-shirts for every coach, prizes — are impossible. The budget to run the event itself is a baseline; sponsors fund the experience that makes players want to return.
• The Tennessee Aquarium player party as best-practice event design. 200+ players, coaches, and parents attended; activities included an underwater tennis dive show, animal interactions, and a prize raffle. Feissner’s framing: “My favorite part is seeing the players get to be teenagers and have fun without the pressure.” The social experience around competition deepens the competition’s meaning.
• Chattanooga as an underrated tennis geography. The Champions Club facility, the tournament’s 10-year institutional history, and Tennessee’s central location make it a natural hub for a national high school event. Geography matters less than institutional investment in event experience.

Actionable Advice for Families

1. Register for the DecoTurf High School Team Championships as a priority event — the UTR visibility, cross-state competition quality, and team experience are difficult to find in any other single event.
2. If your child is a high school player who doesn’t play USTA circuits, invest in UTR registration and high school match tracking — it’s now the most widely used player evaluation tool for college recruiting.
3. If you’re a coach or tournament director, study the DecoTurf event as a template for what player-centric tournament design looks like in practice.
4. Understand that team competition builds a competitive identity that individual tournaments don’t. High school team tennis should not be dismissed as a distraction from the private circuit.

INTENNSE Relevance

• The DecoTurf model is the most direct analog to INTENNSE’s event design philosophy. Team competition, high-quality experiential programming around matches, sponsor-funded extras, and UTR-style competitive calibration across different participant pools — these are INTENNSE’s design principles applied to high school tennis.
• “Players get to be teenagers and have fun without pressure” — the off-court social experience as part of the event value — maps directly to how INTENNSE should think about the non-match experience for players and fans.
• UTR as universal calibration tool is directly relevant to INTENNSE’s player evaluation and recruitment. The league should be explicitly integrated with UTR data for all player assessment.
• Sponsorship enabling experiential differentiators validates INTENNSE’s sponsor development strategy: sponsors don’t just fund operations, they fund the moments that create loyalty and memory. This is the business case for sponsor investment beyond logo placement.
• Chattanooga/Tennessee geography surfaces as an unexpected competitive tennis hub — a data point relevant to INTENNSE’s geographic expansion strategy.

Notable Quotes

“Ten years as a team event in high school tennis years is an eternity. To survive ten years as an event means we’ve earned the trust of the players and coaches who keep coming back.” — Brandon Feissner

“When UTR came in and we started seeding with it, the event got dramatically more competitive. Now every match means something. The kids know it and they play harder.” — Brandon Feissner