NC State women’s tennis came painfully close to winning a national championship in 2023. After winning its first-ever ACC title and making its furthest postseason run in program history with perhaps its most talented team, the red-and-white came up just short against none other than its bitter rival, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Now, the Wolfpack is back at square one. Hours away from its first match of the 2024 season, its team may be different, but its goal of winning a national championship is still the same. 

More importantly, the Pack’s belief in itself is stronger than ever. The first step for head coach Simon Earnshaw and his No. 9 ranked Wolfpack is to ignore the rear-view mirror as NC State’s 2024 campaign begins.

“If you’re looking backwards, it’s going to be very hard for us to be present,” Earnshaw said. “I think that’s really the challenge — looking back at that match and there’s always the ‘what ifs’ because there were plenty of inflection points where it could have gone one way or the other. We’ve got to move on, and we can’t become complacent.”

Despite falling in the title bout, the Wolfpack defeated the Tar Heels one month earlier in the ACC Championship. Handing Carolina its first loss of the season and adding its first conference title to its resume highlighted the Pack’s best season in program history. 

However, NC State’s historic 2023 season may come with some pressure, something a revamped roster will try to live up to this season.

“It does set a high watermark now for the program,” Earnshaw said. “… It just depends on how they leverage that. Do they leverage that as a catalyst? Does that empower them to step forward and step up into roles, or does it inhibit them a little bit because they feel the pressure of legacy?”

Senior Sophie Abrams, who clinched the Wolfpack’s victory over UNC in the ACC Championship, will continue to play a key part in carrying on that legacy. One of the ways Abrams and the rest of her team upholds their high performance standard is by writing down their goals at the beginning of the season.

This year, “national championship victory” was one of the first items on that list. 

“I think maybe in the past when we’ve been doing these goal sheets, it’s kind of been a big question mark in our head of, ‘Is this a stretch to say we want to win ACC’s and win NCAA’s?’,” Abrams said. “But I think this year, when we were doing it we had a lot of belief and confidence like, ‘Yes, this is a realistic goal; this is attainable.’”

Earnshaw is determined to stay focused on the steps his team needs to take day-in and day-out in order to make the NCAA’s in Oklahoma this year.

“Everybody will have the goal of a national championship,” Earnshaw said. “But that’s an end product of many, many, many different, small micro goals and things that you’re trying to accomplish along the way, and we really can’t be focused on that.”

NC State’s roster is composed of four seniors with years of postseason savvy complimented by a handful of freshmen. However, two of its strongest players from last season, Alana Smith and Diana Schnaider, are no longer with the team. 

Smith and Shnaider leave gaps to be filled on the court by Earnshaw’s cadre of seniors. No. 3 senior Amelia Rajecki, who owns the highest singles ranking by any NC State player in program history, is ready to lead the Pack this season with No. 19 Abrams and seniors No. 27 Abigail Rencheli and Gina Dittmann backing her up. 

Other than stepping up in place of Smith and Shnaider, NC State’s senior class will undertake another challenging task — taking the Pack’s handful of new freshmen under its wing. 

“Great leadership from the returning players is absolutely paramount,” Earnshaw said. “They are around the players actually more than we are as the coaches. They’ve got to be able to pass on those experiences and those traditions.” 

While freshmen such as No. 116 Maddy Zampardo are no strangers to the game of tennis, they are strangers to both the rigorous expectations set for them and the experience needed to succeed at the highest level of college tennis. While the Pack can’t replicate those high-intensity postseason matches, it can train for them.

“I think that’s the hardest thing — instilling a level of discipline or focus that they’re making,” Earnshaw said. “… It’s like, ‘Ugh, I got to do this every day to be good? Surely there’s an easier way,’ and there’s just not.” 

While those freshmen have the ability to win, they’ll be thrown into the fire against teams like No. 1 UNC, No. 15 Duke and No. 12 Virginia — all of which come within one week of each other in late March for NC State — and welcoming that adversity is a key part of the Wolfpack’s recent success.

“I think for them, if they can learn to enjoy the pressure and embrace it and know that we have their backs no matter what, I think that’s probably the best way to manage your expectations and manage the pressure situations when we are playing UNC, Virginia and Duke,” Abrams said.

This season, NC State is once again staring down an unrelenting schedule and the lofty expectations that come with the legacy of one of the nation’s best programs. For the Pack’s freshman, it’s a chance to embrace adversity and make their mark. For its seniors, it’s one final shot at its ultimate goal.

The Wolfpack’s journey to the postseason and potentially another national championship starts Monday, Jan. 15, against SMU. First serve is set for 2 p.m. in Raleigh.