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With 2021 ITA Championship Wins, Women’s Tennis Seniors Finish What They Started

 


The fifth ITA National Team Indoor Championship victory of the North Carolina women’s tennis teams, sealed by a 4-3 win over Texas earlier this month, was unlike any other.

But before that, the team, which was ITA Indoor 2020 Champion, rode high in March 2020. They got off that victory without losing a step. After beating UCLA to win the 2020 Championship, UNC also won the next eight games. However, unbeknownst to the Tar Heels, the rest of the season would be cut short and the off-season would be much longer.

That’s when men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and his wife, Wanda, stepped in to provide scholarships to the senior athletes whose seasons ended prematurely because of the pandemic.

For the women’s tennis team, Sara Daavettila, Alexa Graham and Makenna Jones chose the extra year in which they qualified, and look forward to having another shot at another full senior season.

We felt we still had something to prove and something we wanted to finish, ”said Daavettila. It really was a no-brainer that we would all come back and finish what we started.

Of course, Graham was grateful for the opportunity she and her teammates got to compete again for another ITA Championship, the third of her Daavettila and Jones careers.

However, the experience as a whole was different from the previous seasons. The team was unable to explore the city as they normally would. Eating together in restaurants was no longer an option. The players spent most of their time together during the tournament.

UNC head coach Brian Kalbas made it a point to make sure that the COVID-19 regulations were respected by the team and that they prioritized safety.

Normally we get our team into a tight-knit group, and we do some chants and cheers and just support each other, Kalbas said. We no longer do that during COVID. We try to be very smart.

The rest of the team also saw what was at stake, as having everyone available for the ITA Championship was a major goal for the Tar Heels to be at full strength.

Especially in the run-up to the tournament, it was so important for us not to get a COVID, because that’s not just any match, Graham said. That’s the national championship. We all wanted to be for it, and we all wanted to play.

Not that many players were able to travel to the tournament during every game. With the returning seniors and incoming freshmen, the squad was larger than 10 players. Under ACC rules, only 10 players can travel with the team in a normal season. Making decisions about who can and cannot travel presented Kalbas with difficult choices.

In the past, the entire team had the option to travel to every game, but the larger roster size got in the way of that option.

“I feel bad and frustrated for some who are unable, trip-to-trip, unable to support the team,” said Kalbas.

Although challenging at times, the increase in the number of players was a welcome change for the team in general, it changed the dynamics of the training and the camaraderie of the team.

By playing with more teammates, Daavettila said she could get better as a player.

I love it, said Daavettila. I think it’s so much more fun, and there are so many more different personalities on this team, especially adding a few more girls. It just makes the training that much more competitive. We have a very deep team and many talented players.

But in the end, all players were given the opportunity to travel to the ITA Championship, an opportunity for which Kalbas was grateful. After one of the most difficult periods in program history, his entire squad was together when the Tar Heels returned to Chapel Hill for the first time ever as back-to-back ITA National Team Indoor champions.

We were lucky to be able to bring everyone, Kalbas said. Our administration was very kind to find some more resources to take everyone so they could experience a national championship.

@ jerem11ah

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