The No. 57 N.C. State tennis team heads to Gainesville, Fla. to play in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association this weekend. The (2-2) Wolfpack will begin the ITA kickoff weekend facing a No.62 (0-1) Troy team on Friday.
In the four team tournament, State is the third seed and Troy is the second seed. The victor of the matchup will face the victor of the No.7 Florida (2-0), seeded first, versus UC Santa Barbara (0-2) matchup on Saturday. The team that wins on both days goes on to the ITA National Team Indoor Championship is Seattle, Wash., Feb. 18-21.
After a 2-0 start the Wolfpack is coming off of two losses last weekend but seem to have actually gained confidence going into this ITA weekend. “We had a lot of chances to do better, it could have just as easily been a big win for us, so I think for the season we are just going to keep a level head when we play and just correct some things that we have done wrong,” said sophomore David Thompson, ranked 106 nationally. “The difference this time is we are going to play with more composure, against Indiana we definitely had chances. We just lost it.”
With a very young team, it is still unknown how the team will respond to a lot of early attention and the ups and downs over the longevity of a season. For now however, confident and optimistic is the mood.
“I’ve really enjoyed seeing from the freshman when they came out to practice, the defeat hurt them and then we had some really good practices. That resilience is what’s going to allow us to go places. Rather than just accepting the losses, they have accepted that they lost and have decided to use it to make themselves better because they don’t want to go through that again,” said Thompson. ”Everyone took losses last week and it’s made us come back more hungry to produce this weekend.”
Junior Jaime Pulgar, the No.61 ranked player in the nation said this weekend will be a measuring stick for the team. “Practice and matches are two completely different things so we will see this weekend,” said Pulgar.
Head Coach Jon Choboy likes what he sees from the young team and believes in its toughness. Choboy said the team just needs to learn how to finish but he guarantees they will compete.
“We had no need to motivate anybody or didn’t have to try to get them to work hard,” said Choboy. “We are going to be on the road for a fair bit here soon and the guys are ready to get back out there. This darn team competes and if we keep competing I know we’ll be fine.”
