College Recruiting in an App? with Heath and Lindsey Waters

Summary

Heath Waters and Lindsey Lee Waters, founders of Match Tennis App, discuss a major new feature within their platform called Match You — a college recruiting tool designed to connect junior players with college tennis programs. The conversation covers the core Match Tennis App functions (tournament calendaring, entry deadline reminders, competitor ranking visibility), then pivots to the recruiting module’s capabilities: player profile creation, school matching based on UTR and academic metrics, guided checklist of recruiting milestones, coach visibility tools, and a “watch me” notification that alerts attending coaches at specific tournaments. The episode is a practical guide to using technology to navigate the college tennis recruiting labyrinth, particularly for players and families outside the top-50 national ranking tier who often lack coaching advocacy in the process.

Guest Background

Heath Waters is the co-founder of Match Tennis App. He played professionally for a period while raising two children and describes the original impetus for the app as needing to manage his kids’ tournament scheduling across 10+ different websites while traveling. He is also the parent of a 12-year-old actively using the platform to track recruiting goals, and a 17-year-old currently in the college recruiting process.

Lindsey Lee Waters is Heath’s co-founder and partner. She handles the mobile-first product development and is described as always on the go, preferring to build from her phone. The two share app development responsibilities and jointly represent the product’s parent-first design philosophy.

Key Findings

1. Tournament Management Infrastructure Remains Fractured

The original problem Match Tennis App solved was the fragmentation of junior tournament management: families had to visit 10+ different sites (USTA, ITF, UTR, sectional, district) to monitor rankings, deadlines, and applicant lists. The app consolidates this into a calendar-based interface with auto-reminders three days and one day before entry deadlines — eliminating the most common and costly mistake of missed entry windows.

2. Applicant and Competitor List Visibility is a Hidden Strategic Tool

One of the app’s most-used features lets families view the applicant list for upcoming events, sortable by USTA ranking and UTR, before entry deadlines close. This allows parents to make tournament selection decisions based on seeding probability, match-up quality, and whether the field is appropriate for their player’s current development stage — intelligence that was previously unavailable without manual research.

3. Match You Targets the “Invisible Middle” in College Recruiting

The college recruiting module is designed explicitly for players ranked outside the top 100-150 nationally — the players who will not be proactively recruited but who absolutely can play college tennis with the right information and visibility. Heath describes two girls at their club who had dreams of playing college tennis, had no guidance at 16, and ended up with full rides to small schools only after a motivated coach intervened and started calling programs on their behalf. Match You automates that advocacy function.

4. Academic Metrics Are Integrated Alongside Tennis Metrics

A player’s profile displays GPA, SAT/ACT scores, and UTR side by side against each target school’s average admission and team standards. A color-coded gap analysis (red/green icons) shows at a glance which criteria the player currently meets and which are shortfalls — motivating academic improvement as concretely as tennis improvement. A 12-year-old using the app could see which schools his current UTR would qualify him for today, creating forward-looking goal clarity.

5. Coach Visibility and “Watch Me” Feature Bridge the Discovery Gap

College coaches can register their recruiting travel calendar in Match You, listing which tournaments they’ll attend. Players can see which coaches will be at any given tournament and send a “watch me” alert — an automated email to each attending coach saying, in effect, “please come watch me.” This closes the information asymmetry where many coaches miss talented players at tournaments simply because neither side knew the other would be there.

6. The Recruiting Checklist Is Chronological and Division-Specific

Match You includes a guided, interactive checklist of recruiting tasks timed to when they need to happen (freshman through senior year, across D1/D2/D3/NAIA timelines). It auto-emails families with reminders for SAT/ACT test dates, financial aid application windows, early admission deadlines, and recruiting compliance milestones. The system adjusts retroactively if a family joins mid-process, filling in past-due items.

7. Junior Coaches Are Largely Uninformed About College Recruiting

Lisa Stone makes a pointed observation: most junior tennis coaches are not up to speed on NCAA compliance rules, program structures, or how to advocate for a player with a college coach. The app partially addresses this by enabling coaches to create and share tournament calendars across their entire roster — and even indicate which events they’ll be providing on-site coaching — but the underlying infrastructure gap (coaches not being equipped as recruiting advocates) remains.

8. Non-Athletic Scholarship Stacking Is an Underused Strategy

A student ranked 150-200 nationally received a full academic scholarship plus a partial tennis scholarship at a Division I program and “was making money going to college because she got so many academic scholarships.” Match You integrates this insight by making academic metrics equally visible in the school-matching process, reinforcing that tennis scholarship money alone is rarely the whole financial picture — especially on the men’s side.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Start building a recruiting profile in a platform like Match You as early as freshman year of high school, not junior year — outside scholarships can be applied for as early as 9th grade and the chronological checklist prevents the most common timing mistakes
• Use the competitor/applicant list feature before tournament entry to make informed decisions about seeding probability and draw quality rather than committing entry fees blindly
• Send “watch me” alerts to every college coach who will be at tournaments your player is attending — many coaches miss prospects simply because there’s no communication bridge
• Do not assume your junior coach is a college recruiting expert — use purpose-built tools and specialist resources (college placement consultants, recruiting apps) to supplement what your coach can offer
• Athletes ranked below top-150 nationally still have viable paths to playing college tennis; the connection infrastructure, not the talent level, is what’s typically missing

INTENNSE Relevance

• Player pipeline visibility: The core problem Match You solves — connecting players to opportunities they can’t access due to information gaps — parallels INTENNSE’s challenge of identifying and recruiting players from the college-to-pro transition zone. A similar discovery infrastructure could help INTENNSE scout emerging players outside traditional agency pipelines
• College-to-pro bridge: This episode illuminates the information environment that college-bound players are navigating. INTENNSE players coming from college will have processed recruiting through platforms like this — INTENNSE communications and outreach should meet them in that technology-fluent context
• Data-driven decision making: Match You’s model of surfacing UTR, rankings, and academic metrics alongside target criteria is analogous to how INTENNSE could think about player scouting, roster construction, and team formation — using transparent, multi-metric profiles to match players to the right team context
• Parent and family engagement: The episode demonstrates how technology can embed parents as informed advocates without overriding the athlete’s development. INTENNSE’s family engagement strategy — particularly for players early in the pipeline — could draw on this model
• Broadcast and technology integration: Match tennis app’s integration of scheduling, metrics, and communication tools into one mobile platform shows the appetite among tennis families for consolidated digital infrastructure. INTENNSE’s fan and player experience design should reflect this demand for everything-in-one-place simplicity

Notable Quotes

“Our mission was to literally take hours a month for tennis parents to minutes a month.” — Heath Waters

“There are so many college coaches that would love to have you — the connection is not there. The coaches don’t know where to find the players, the players don’t know where to find the colleges.” — Heath Waters

“If you’re top 50 in the nation, you’re going to be heavily recruited no matter what. But if you fall outside the top 100, 150, or whatever in the nation, you can still go to college and play tennis.” — Heath Waters

“The majority of junior coaches are not up to speed on college recruiting.” — Lisa Stone