The No. 40 ranked Wolfpack women’s tennis team faced off against No. 1 UNC-Chapel Hill on Thursday afternoon at J.W. Isenhour Tennis Center, falling 4-3. The loss was the first conference loss for N.C. State of the season.
“I have much respect for the UNC team, I thought they competed really well and played great today,” head coach Hans Olsen said. “It was a great rivalry with the two schools. Everybody carried themselves beautifully and on the tennis side of it I thought it was a great competition to be a part of.”
UNC-CH earned the first point of the match by winning the doubles matchup 2-1. The team of junior Joelle Kissell and senior Tatiana Illova lost their second doubles match of the season. Kissell and Illova’s doubles record drops to 8-5. The team of sophomore Sophie Nelson and senior Chloe Smith won their doubles match to give the Wolfpack its only doubles victory of the day.
UNC-CH scored the first point in singles play and their second in the match after sophomore Nicole Martinez dropped straight sets, 6-3, and 6-2. Martinez has lost eight of her last 10 matches.
Kissell provided the team with its first point of the day by upsetting fourth ranked Gina Suarez-Malaguti. Kissell dominated the match and won in straight sets 6-3, and 6-2.
The win was Kissell’s fifth in a row and improves her overall record to 15-7.
“I think that Joelle did a great job with improving her game,” Olsen said. “The last two matches she has played her mind set has equaled aggressive play and that has been all the difference, both matches very decisive in her favor.”
UNC scored their third point of the match after 30th ranked Caroline Prince defeated senior Chloe Smith in straight sets. Smith was only able to score one point in two sets and her 10 match winning streak was snapped with the loss.
The Heels clinched the match with the fourth point after 23rd ranked Whitney Kay held off freshman Rachael James-Baker. James-Baker lost the first set 6-1 but bounced back to win the second 7-6 but Kay prevailed in the third set to secure the match.
Even though the result of the match would not change, the two teams finished playing the final games of the match. Illova upset 36th ranked Zoe DeBruycker. The match went to the final set before Illova won.
Sophomore Elisha Hande also provided an upset. Hande defeated 123rd ranked Ashley Dai. Hande won the first set while Dai won the second. The third set was decided in a win-by-two tiebreaker.
“I thought we did a great job today on the circle of things that we are working on it was a good improvement, a huge step forward for us,” Olsen said.
N.C. State’s record drops to 10-2 while UNC-CH record rises to 15-1. N.C. State will host No. 7 ranked Duke University on Saturday at 12 p.m.
“I think we are going to want to build off of what we did today. We had a lot of really close matches and everybody was fighting really hard,” Kissell said. “We want to take that confidence into our next match versus Duke and really show them whose house it is.”