Tar Heels defeat Duke for third straight league championship
Championship Page | Box Score
CARY, N.C. (theACC.com) – In an almost surreal match of ebbs, flows and changing momentum, North Carolina found a way to take home the Atlantic Coast Conference Women’s Tennis Championship trophy for a third consecutive year.
The third-seeded Tar Heels turned back top-seeded Duke by a 4-2 score that defied how airtight of a battle the rival teams actually waged Sunday at Cary Tennis Park.
UNC, ranked second nationally, clinched the win on court No. 3, where sophomore Sara Daavettila prevailed 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 over Blue Devil counterpart Kaitlyn McCarthy. Daavettila battled back from the brink of defeat in the decisive third set after trailing 5-4.
But that was only half the story. At the time Daavettila’s win tipped the match in favor of the Tar Heels, UNC’s Alexa Graham and Duke’s Kelly Chen were deadlocked at 6-6 in a third-set tie-breaker on court No. 4.
In short, it could not have been much closer, but that was pretty much what UNC head coach Brian Kalbas expected. Kalbas had watched his team split two tough matches with the nationally third-ranked Blue Devils during the regular season and scrap for an equally nail-biting 4-3 win over fourth-ranked Georgia Tech in Saturday’s semifinals.
“It’s so hard to win this tournament,” said Kalbas, who recorded his 600th win as a collegiate head coach. “This is the toughest conference in all of women’s tennis, but his is definitely the hardest working team I’ve ever had. That paid off for us today.”
Prior to Sunday, the Tar Heels were 1-9 all-time against the rival Blue Devils in ACC Women’s Championship play.
“I was 0-3 against them,” Kalbas noted. “I had never beaten Duke in the ACC tournament in my 16 years here, much less the finals. I told our team before the match today, ‘One thing you can do today is accomplish a first for me.’ It feels great to finally win against them in the ACC tournament and to get some redemption from about a week ago.”
Kalbas was referencing a 5-2 road loss to Duke on April 20 that helped the Blue Devils nail down the top seed in this year’s Championship. UNC had earlier beaten Duke 4-1 in February’s ITA National Indoor Championship semifinals.
The Blue Devils (23-3) opened Sunday’s match by taking the doubles point with wins on the first two courts.
McCarthy and Ellyse Hamlin teamed up for a 6-1 win over Jessie Aney and Graham at No. 1. Samantha Harris, returning from an arm injury that forced her to withdraw from singles play in Duke’s semifinal win over Miami, joined Chen to defeat Daavettila and Alle Sanford at No. 2. The latter match clinched the point for the Blue Devils after UNC’s Marika Akkerman and Makenna Jones won on court No. 3.
Singles play scoring opened with the Tar Heels’ Jones besting Harris 6-1, 6-0 in matchup of nationally-ranked top-10 players. That tied the match at 1-1 and set the stage for the tight battle to the finish.
“She was injured and I knew that going into in,” Jones said of Harris. “She’s a very good player, and she wasn’t able to play like I know she can. But you have to take advantage of situations when you can, and thankfully I was able to do that for my team and come off (the court) pretty quickly with that point on the board. I think that helped.”
Sanford’s straight-set win on court No. 2 and Chloe Ouellet-Pizer’s three-set win at No. 6 accounted for the remainder of UNC’s scoring. Duke picked up a straight-set win from Hamlin at No. 5.
Sunday’s match ran three hours and 43 minutes, the longest by far of this tournament and one of the longer in the history of the event.
UNC’s Jones earned Most Valuable Player honors after delivering the decisive singles win in Saturday’s semifinal match against Georgia Tech, as well as a straight-set victory in Friday’s quarterfinal win over Wake Forest. The sophomore from Greenville, South Carolina, defeated fellow top-25 ranked players in each of those matches.
“We were looking to go out and give it all we had,” Jones said. “We were technically the underdogs, which we really haven’t been all season. It’s incredible – with us, Duke and Georgia Tech, you have three of the top five teams in the nation. The quality is so high, even with all of the other teams. I think that is why you see our excitement is at such a high level. It’s because we know that winning the ACC Championship is such a huge honor."
UNC (26-3) earned its ninth ACC women’s championship overall and its fourth under Kalbas’ watch.
Both teams will now await what should be favorable seeding in the upcoming NCAA Women’s Tennis Championships. The team bracket is slated to be released late Tuesday afternoon.
For more information regarding this year’s ACC Women’s Tennis Championship, visit theacc.com/wtenchamp.