The N.C. State men’s tennis team finished off the fall portion of the 2010-2011 season with solid performances from a trio of players at the UNC-Wilmington Invitational over the weekend. Redshirt sophomore Will Rollinson, redshirt junior Julian Sullivan and freshman Ivan Sanchez Gomez each contributed at least one win to the team’s victory total.
Joining the 59th-ranked Wolfpack were host UNC-Wilmington, North Carolina Central University and Monmouth University.
In all, the team tallied five wins over the weekend. Sullivan defeated UNC-W’s Illia Ziamstov, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 on the first day of action, while Sanchez defeated Ziamstov, 7-5, 6-3 on day two. Rollinson would supply the other three wins with a victory over Nat Smiley, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 on day one and defeated Monmouth’s Ian Terpilowski and UNC-W ‘s Chris Cooprider on day two, 6-3, 6-3 and 6-4, 6-2, respectively. Rollinson did not lose in singles play until the finals on day three to Weatherall 6-4, 7-6.
The success is the pay off for the hard work he puts in to better his play said Rollinson.
“It was a pretty good tournament,” Rollinson said. “I did a lot of things I’ve been working on all semester.”
A key element Rollinson credits for his better play is the emphasis on fitness in the program.
“It is a really big deal. In the matches we won this weekend we were in much better shape and personally I never felt tired,” Rollinson said. “An hour and a half in, I was confident, seeing the other guy tired.”
With the fall portion of the season over, the team will focus on training and preparing for the spring season. Coach Jon Choboy says the team will continue to focus heavily on physical conditioning over the next five to six weeks of training but must also focus on becoming mentally tougher in order to constantly reproduce the successes in practice so far this year.
“We have some pretty good results at some big tournaments,” Choboy said. “What we have to do now as a team, is do it consistently. This team has a lot of talent but we have to turn in more consistent performances match in and match out.”
Players and coaches alike believe competition in practice is an important element the team has.
“The competition in practice is probably the biggest reason we had a solid fall,” Rollinson said. “Everyone is pushing each other in practice and everybody wants it, so it’s making everybody better.”
Choboy also sees the availability to practice against top players in the nation as a particular advantage to making every player on the team better.
“We are fortunate to play with nationally ranked players on our team,” said coach Choboy. “We get to train with those types of players everyday in addition to all the hard work we are putting in.”
Choboy and his staff are confident in the progression of the team and believe the goal to compete equally against any team in the nation is within reach.
“Our objective is to absolutely be able to go in there and go toe to toe with anybody and we’re going to have to go in there and go toe to toe with everybody,” Choboy said.
