Elizabeth Scotty, Fiona Crawley bring home ITA Fall Championship for women's tennis

UNC women’s tennis duo, sophomore Fiona Crawley and junior Elizabeth Scotty, join UNC’s roster of national champions after victory at the ITA Fall Championships in San Diego this weekend. 

The duo competed in the women’s Main Draw Doubles division at Barnes Tennis Center over the course of four days of matches. 

What happened? 

Fourth-seed Crawley and Scotty won a 3-set doubles match against Old Dominion University duo Tatsiana Sasnouskaya and Yuliia Starodubtseva, seeded third, on Sunday. The match ended with a 67-59 point victory for the Tar Heels.

When was it decided?

Crawley and Scotty beat Yale's Gong/Kung duo in the first round, Stanford’s Ma/Blake in the second, and defeated the sixth-seed University of Texas’ duo Collins/Chavatipon 7-6, 6-3 in the quarterfinals. 

Another UNC duo, composed of senior Cameron Morra and first-year Carson Tanguilig, made it to the quarterfinals before losing to Old Dominion’s Sasnouskaya/Starodubtseva in a 3-set tiebreaker 7-5, 3-6, 1-0. 

Old Dominion won the opening set at 6-4, however Crawley and Scotty surged with a 6-2 tying victory in the second set and a 1-0 victory in the tiebreaker. 

The nail-biting third set victory came after four second-return points and four first-serve points propelled the score to 11-9 in favor of the Tar Heel tandem. 

A second-serve miss and a shot out of bounds by Old Dominion ended an almost two minute-long rally to give UNC the championship point, winning the third set. 

Who stood out?

Scotty and Crawley showed off their prowess in the second set, where Scotty made a series of hard-hitting serves that resulted in weak returns from their opponents. They held the Monarchs at an early two points as the Tar Heel duo continued to rack up. 

In the third set, the score remained all for the Tar Heels, maintaining a 5-0 lead early on courtesy of a volley by Crawley that stopped the Monarchs near the net. While the match eventually tied up at 5-5, a shot out of bounds put the Tar Heels back in the lead. 

The game stayed close for the rest of the match, staying at less than a four-point lead for the Tar Heels for the rest of the set. 

Two overhead shots by Crawley pulled the duo into a 9-5 championship point for the Tar Heels, but Old Dominion triumphed and tied the match at 9-9 almost immediately after.

Scotty played hard as returner on the court, playing a forehand return that made the Tar Heels 3-0 early in the match. 

Why does it matter? 

Sunday marked the end of the tournament that featured a total of 32 women’s doubles teams vying for the championship title. 

The victory also marks the second time a doubles team has brought back the fall national championship title for UNC in women’s tennis program history-- the last being in 2015. 

The duo only began playing together recently at the ITA Regional Championships in Winston-Salem, North Carolina last month, and are currently undefeated with a 10-0 record. 

When do they play next?

The fall season may be over for the Tar Heels, but women’s tennis will begin their spring season on Jan. 7 at the Tar Heel Invitational in Chapel Hill. 

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