College tennis coaches are to meet with N.C.A.A. officials today and tomorrow to discuss potential changes to rules regarding the amateur status of international players.

Among the proposals to be discussed are limits on the number of professional events that an international player can compete in before entering college and uniform rules on the amount of expenses a player can claim to offset prize money. Some coaches also plan to ask for more severe penalties when foreign athletes are found to have violated rules on amateur status.

"We want to look at what rules are in the books that make sense and those that do not," said David Benjamin, the executive director of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. He will lead a group of 10 men's and women's coaches for two days of meetings at the National Collegiate Athletic Association's headquarters in Indianapolis. "We want to see if there is some way to make the system work better," he said.

N.C.A.A rules say that athletes who have accepted prize money beyond their expenses in any tournament, or who have played for a professional team in a sport, cannot compete collegiately in that sport. Over the past 12 years, however, coaches have contended that scores of tennis players from other countries had routinely violated those rules and joined American colleges and universities as failed professionals.

They say that such players are older and more experienced than college players from the United States and that it is unfair that they are granted scholarships at the expense of true amateurs.

The coaches have also been critical of the N.C.A.A.'s response to their complaints, describing it as lackadaisical and saying it has emboldened some colleges to make loose interpretations of amateur status.

In April, after an article in The New York Times about how college tennis is dominated by older international players with a wealth of experience on professional tours in Europe, Vanderbilt's chancellor, Gordon Gee, asked his fellow university presidents to address the issue.

The rest of the story

By JOE DRAPE