Senior Amanda Rebol looked at the scoreboard, awaiting the results of the ongoing matches. She had beaten her singles opponent and was cheering her teammates on from the sidelines. The match was deadlocked 3-3, with only one singles match remaining. Enduring a grueling, back-and-forth match, junior Anna Rogers finally broke through and won, clinching an upset over No. 11 Florida for the NC State women’s tennis team back on Jan. 28.
“When you’re ahead, you want to try to get the match off the court quickly,” Rebol said. “You want to get the match off quickly because you know how it can affect the rest of play in a positive way.”
Rebol had done just that against the Gators; she trounced her opponent in straight sets, including a 6-0 second set, and by doing so she helped a program that had endured serious struggles in the recent past knock off a top-25 team on the road. This win was a highlight in what has been a great year for both Rebol and the team as a whole.
Rebol’s journey to collegiate tennis started around middle school. She had played soccer and tennis up to that point, but decided to commit fully to tennis around the time she was 12 years old.
“For a long time I played tennis and soccer,” Rebol said. “I guess when I was about 12 I missed a soccer game for a tennis match, and my soccer coach told me I needed to pick one. I picked tennis, and not too long after that my mom was working at a tennis club, and I did a summer training session there and I fell in love with it.”
Rebol began homeschooling that year and began to travel around to play in various tennis events. She started taking the sport more seriously and focused on improving her game and began to envision a collegiate career.
When Rebol first came to NC State, the women’s tennis team was undergoing a major transition, and the program was seriously struggling. The new head coach, Simon Earnshaw, had joined the previous year.
“She was one of my initial recruits,” Earnshaw said. “When she came here she obviously wanted to be a part of something that was going to change.”
Since then, Rebol has seen the team go from a Division I afterthought to a top-25 team. NC State is 10-3 with three wins against teams ranked in the top-25. The team is ranked No. 11 in the ITA Division I rankings, the highest ranking in program history.
“It’s crazy to see where we’ve come as a program altogether,” Rebol said. “When the freshmen came in it was Simon’s first real recruiting class, we were ranked like 140, so we’ve had a lot of success since then.”
Rebol has been a key part of the team’s success. She is 18-9 on the year and has improved steadily over the course of her NC State career. Her stellar play as of late has been a key reason why the team has improved, both since her arrival and from last season.
”I feel like I understand my game more than I did in the past,” Rebol said. “My personal success recently is really nice, but at the same time it’s been more of a team thing. If I can get that point on the board and help the rest of my teammates, then that’s really achieving my biggest goal.”
Earnshaw has praised her team-first mentality and rock-solid work ethic. He describes her as a very resilient individual and someone who is always looking to improve.
“I don’t think there’s really been any time when you ask Amanda to do something and she won’t do it,” Earnshaw said. “If we ever ask her to host a recruit, its yes. If we ask her to this or that, its yes. Its always yes. Those are the types of people you just can’t do without. As a coach, you want people you can trust and people who are responsible. I think [Amanda’s] been as good of a representative of our program as there could be.”
