© NCSU Student Media 2011
Men's tennis
Last Thursday the N.C. State men’s tennis team took on Virginia Tech during the first round of the ACC Championships. The hard-fought match ended 4-3 as N.C. State fell to the Hokies.
No. 55 NC State played No. 37 Virginia Tech who was 14-10, 5-6 ACC, ending its season with a record of 10-14. The nail-biting match came down to the last singles match, as the score was tied 3-3.
“It was up and down all day long,” junior Dominic Hodgson said. ”Things were looking bad but Dave and I managed to turn it around in our singles matches. One of those days where we didn’t know what was going to happen. It was a real good match, played in the right spirit.”
In the final match of the day, a sizeable contingent of fans remained towards the end of the day to cheer every point. The team of senior David Chermak and redshirt junior Julian Sullivan topped Patrick Daciek and Corrado Degl’Incerti Tocci, 8-3, to give the Pack an early 1-0 lead with the doubles point. Hodgson added another team point in singles by downing Daciek, 6-1, 6-4,
As the two teams remained deadlocked heading into the final, deciding match between NC State freshman Ivan Sanchez and Hokies’ senior Pedro Graber on the No. 3 court. The pair traded their best shots for three hours and 27 minutes before Graber finally prevailed by a score of 2-6, 7-6 (1), 7-5 score.
Last year the tennis team competed in the first round of the ACC tournament, falling to Miami 4-1. This year’s tournament marked the second time the Wolfpack faced the Hokies. The first match-up of these both ranked teams was won by N.C. State by a final score of 5-2. The second time around, however, the team was unable to close the match.
“It kind of sums up our whole season.” Hodgson said. “We are close but just not enough to finish strong.”
Consistency has been a key factor that the team has been working on all season. All players have won matches during the season, however the fact that they were won on separate occasions hurt the Wolfpack in the season.
”For the ACC tournament, some of us played good on Thursday and some fell short,” Hodgson said. “That’s how it has been this season. We need to move forward and look towards next year.”
As the season comes to an end, the team begins to transition towards off-season conditioning. The off-season also leads the way for new recruits to familiarize themselves with the team and prepare for the season ahead.
“Well we got three new recruits coming in and are excited about them,” Hodgson said. “We need to look back on the season and see what we did wrong. There are other reasons why it happened.”
The team will continue to practice and improve on the court through August, where the team will begin its fall season early September. The team has a small idea of what will be focused on in the off-season, and that is to be consistent with wins as a team.
“We will need to train harder as we take some time off competitive play,” Hodgson said. “It’s going to take some time to get over this season. We get to keep most of our players, which is good, but we need to make up for the losses this season.