CARY — After the top-seeded North Carolina women’s tennis team rolled through Miami, 4-0, on Saturday, head coach Brian Kalbas said he didn’t feel any sort of special pressure.
UNC, with the win in the semifinals, will compete for its fourth consecutive conference championship on Sunday. If the team finishes the job, seniors Jessie Aney and Chloe Ouellet-Pizer will be the only Tar Heels in the history of the program to win four ACC Championships.
But for Kalbas, all this talk about pressure — drawing comparisons to past matches and past teams — simply isn’t a conversation worth having.
“Personally, there’s no pressure on me,” Kalbas said. “Before we won (a championship) three years ago, we hadn’t won one since 2011.”
He continued: “I tell my team this. We’re not trying to defend what we did in the regular season. We’re not trying to defend what we did last year, or even two or three years ago. We’re not trying to defend it. We’re just excited to get better.”
Kalbas has plenty of experienced players to echo this sentiment. And on Saturday, his team's tournament experience proved valuable.
In the afternoon, North Carolina kept its doubles record blemish-free on the season and only dropped one set in singles. Also, Aney — who had lost to the player she played on Saturday earlier in the regular season — redeemed herself in a 6-2, 6-4 win on Saturday.
“To me, this team — more than any other team — they love to compete,” Kalbas said. “I would be kind of nervous or kind of fearful if I didn’t think this team had a hunger to them, or that they weren’t looking at this as an opportunity.”
A critical component of this team, though, has no experience on this stage at all. Cameron Morra, a first-year from Rockville, Md., has been a steady force on Court 4 for the Tar Heels this season. And, on Saturday, she notched points for her teams in doubles (6-2) and in singles (6-2, 6-1).
