As a freshman, Ronnie Schneider is experiencing college tennis for the first time, but he faced a familiar opponent to the North Carolina tennis team.
In the finals of the qualifying round of the ITA Men’s All-American Championships, Schneider defeated Memphis’ Johnny Grimal to move on to the tournament’s main draw.
Last season, junior Esben Hess-Olesen— who received an automatic bid in the main draw — defeated Grimal in the same round.
Schneider’s 6-3, 6-2 victory improved his record to 7-0 in the fall season.
“He has a great work ethic, so he is doing everything he can consistently to be the best player he can possibly be,” coach Sam Paul said. “I’m certainly happy for him to make the main draw but looking forward to seeing how he competes in the main draw.”
Schneider started the tournament with victories against Rodolfo Bustamante of Texas Christian and Samir Iftikhar of New Mexico in two sets each.
“I thought I did a good job of playing good in the big situations because it was a close match and he’s a good player,” Schneider said of his match again Grimal. “I was just really happy to get through because my goal was to get through qualifying and it was one step towards my goal.”
Several other Tar Heels competed in the tournament. Sophomore Brett Clark won three straight matches, and junior Oystein Steiro won four matches in a row in the pre-qualifying singles tournament to join Nelson Vick and Schneider in the qualifying tournament.
Unlike Schneider, Vick, Clark and Steiro all lost their first round matches of the qualifying tournament in three sets on Monday.
