The No. 1 UNC women’s tennis team (6-0) slammed the Kentucky Wildcats (4-1), 4-0, during the last day of the ITA Kickoff on Saturday afternoon. With the win, the Tar Heels advance to the ITA National Team Indoor Championship in February.
“Anytime that we get pushed, it’s helpful for us just to have to deal with difficult situations and Kentucky did that,” associate head coach Tyler Thomson said. “Pretty much every match was competitive.”
The Tar Heels got on the board early. In the doubles match between UNC’s No. 1 duo sophomore Reese Brantmeier and senior Elizabeth Scotty and Kentucky’s No. 36 pair Elizabeth Stevens and Makayla Mills, the Carolina Blue-clad duo refused to let the Wildcats come up for air. Brantmeier and Scotty took the first five games. Although the pair lost the next game, the duo battled back in the seventh to secure the first doubles match 6-1.
Similar to Brantmeier and Scotty, No. 11 senior Reilly Tran and graduate Abbey Forbes took the early lead. Although the pair lost the first game to Kentucky’s Zoe Hammond and Julia Zhu, the Tar Heels won the next five. While the Wildcats won one more game, the lead proved too much to recover from. Tran and Forbes won the match 6-2 putting the Tar Heels up 1-0.
Using the momentum from the doubles point, the Tar Heels attacked with the same force to open singles. No. 41 Forbes refused to relent in her match against Zhu. In the first set, Forbes won 6-1. In the second match, she steamrolled Zhu once again to earn the first singles point for UNC by winning the second set and match 6-2.
Senior Fiona Crawley found the same success on the opposite side of the court. After winning the first set 6-3, she silenced Kentucky’s Ellie Eades even more in a second set 6-1 victory to push the Tar Heels to a 3-0 advantage. To cap off the ITA kickoff weekend, after winning her first set 6-3, No. 32 first-year Thea Rabman shut down Kentucky’s Ellie Myers 6-0 in the second set to win it all to force North Carolina to a 4-0 victory.
“Thea’s an incredible addition for our team [and] gives us more depth,” Thomson said. “She has skills that are really unique on our team. She has a lot of variety.”
The Tar Heels will travel to Seattle, Wash. for the ITA National Team Indoor Championship slated to begin on Friday, Feb. 9. For the next two weeks, the team will be preparing in hopes of securing its fifth-straight indoor championship win.
“Our best method of preparation is to really to play against one another because when we have intrasquad competition, we’re playing against the best in the country,” Thomson said.