Among the eight players who stepped onto the San Diego courts in the women's ITA National Fall Championship singles quarterfinals, three were donning Carolina blue.
One — junior Fiona Crawley — would go on to win the final match, earning her sixth title of the fall season and picking up her second major victory. But it was the entire team's success that highlighted the Tar Heels' potential heading into the spring season.
“To me, what stands out for our program is how well everybody did this fall,” head coach Brian Kalbas said. “(I’m) really proud of the whole team in general.”
At the beginning of October, UNC placed three players in the semifinals of the ITA All-American Championships, which Crawley went on to conquer. This milestone was one of the first markings of potential greatness for the current team — something that only seems to continue growing.
After falling in the first round of the tournament to Georgia Tech’s Carol Lee, UNC senior Anika Yarlagadda responded by advancing to the consolation finals before ultimately losing to Duke’s Chloe Beck. Additionally, sophomore Carson Tanguilig and graduate Abbey Forbes also made runs to the quarterfinals.
But once again, the defining performance was that of Crawley, who maintained her undefeated singles record to take down Princeton’s Daria Frayman and secure yet another trophy.
Frayman is a player who tries to extend matches as long as possible and relies on her extreme consistency in these long stints. This was something that Crawley was anticipating after having watched Frayman's three-and-a-half-hour semifinal showdown the day before.
Despite dropping the second set, Crawley persevered and eventually took down the top-ranked senior, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
“In the third set I kind of just tried to clear my mind and be like, ‘Okay, completely new set, it doesn't matter what happened in the first set, it doesn't matter what happened in the second set, six more games and that's it,'” Crawley said.
