The NC State men’s tennis team hosted its fifth annual Pack Prowl event Monday night in the Isenhour indoor tennis facility.
The event brought NC State students, local youth players and members of the Wolfpack men’s tennis team together for a relaxed evening of games and contests meant to familiarize attendees with the 2015 squad.
“It was pretty fun,” senior Beck Bond said. “I feel like we interacted pretty well with the crowd, and they just had a great time.”
Head coach Jon Choboy said he was especially happy with the interaction between the attendees and his players.
“They come out and get to personally know the players from the people’s perspective, and then they can identify with the guys when they come out to watch,” Choboy said.
The event began with an overview of the team, as each athlete introduced himself on a microphone while adding a joke, story or poking fun at his teammates.
The Wolfpack players then began a king-of-the-hill-style doubles exhibition on one of the courts. Doubles teams lined up on the left side of the court to play a half-minute match against the doubles team that had won the previous point.
The No. 19 ranked dynamic duo of senior Robbie Mudge and sophomore Ian Dempster dominated the competition, eliminating team after team. The only duo that stood in their way was Bond and sophomore Nick Horton.
The pair put up a strong fight against the Mudge-Dempster tandem, even earning king of the hill status for a few rounds.
“We’ve [Bond and Mudge] had a long rivalry,” Bond said. “This rivalry goes back no matter what we do, and it makes us better on the court because we always like to beat each other down. It’s just like playing an opponent. It’s fun.”
Post-doubles exhibition, the Pack team handed tennis rackets to nearly all members of the 100-person crowd for a pair of challenges. Participating attendees lined up on the right side of two courts and participated in a target-hitting challenge and a fast serve contest.
“My favorite part of the event was when all of the people out here were doing the fast serve contest,” Mudge said. They were all chanting, ‘Go Pack!’”
During the serve contest, crowd members would serve a tennis ball one by one while a player stood on the other side with a radar gun to gauge the speed of the shot. Participants with the strongest serves won t-shirts.
The adjacent court hosted a giant crowd of young tennis players who aimed their tennis shots at several spots across the net where t-shirts were laid on the ground. If they were able to hit the shirt, they won it as a souvenir.
The team now looks to kick off its season Friday, when the Northwestern Wildcats visit Raleigh to face off at 4 p.m.
“The team is pretty experienced; we have a lot of juniors and seniors in our lineup,” Choboy said. “We don’t have an easy schedule, but we’re a good team, and good teams don’t have easy schedules. It should be fun, it should be exciting, and I think the guys are ready for it.”
