With Wednesday’s Duke-North Carolina women’s tennis match knotted at three wins apiece, UNC sophomore Caitlin Collins asked teammate Kendall Cline why she wasn’t nervous watching fellow senior Aniela Mojzis determine the outcome.
“She thrives on the drama,” Cline told her.
And though Mojzis’ 4-0 deficit in the third set might have given the rest of the team reason to worry, Cline confidently watched as her doubles partner won the final six games of the match to cap a thrilling 4-3 UNC win at the Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center.
The win was the Tar Heels’ first regular-season victory against their archrival since 1987. Duke’s streak appeared in jeopardy early in the match when No. 13 UNC (19-6, 7-1 in the ACC) easily corralled the doubles point, dropping a total of one game between its top two doubles tandems.
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“That was concerning,” Cline said. “I was thinking, ‘Is this the calm before the storm?’”
And the No. 16 Blue Devils (13-8, 4-4) stormed back to erase their early deficit with straight-set wins at fifth and sixth singles. Duke’s Kristin Cargill also appeared poised to extend her fourth-singles match with UNC’s Sara Anundsen to a third set, but Anundsen recovered from a 5-3 deficit to win the set in a tiebreak, leaving the Tar Heels needing two more match wins.
Cline, playing at No. 1 singles, nabbed one of them, topping Jackie Carleton 6-4, 6-3. And after Duke’s Clelia Deltour halted Jenna Long’s nine-match winning streak at third singles, both teams and the boisterous crowd focused on Mojzis and Saras Arasu on court No. 2.
Mojzis had won the first set, but Arasu took the last four games of the second set to even the match. The trend continued in the third as Mojzis dropped the first four games, causing Coach Brian Kalbas to reassure his senior co-captain.
