NC State (No. 10) goes head to head with Florida State (No. 13) on Senior Day and experiences their first loss in months. The Wolfpack had some impressive individual performances but fell short of the Florida State Seminoles with combined scores (17-5, 9-3).
There were several individuals and doubles that exceeded expectations and improved their rankings overall. Anna Rogers scored her 15th ranked singles win and defeated Carla Touly of Florida State. Rogers teammate, Moldovan, also experienced an individual win, and has now tied the record for most individual singles wins (87). Anna Rogers and Alana Smith walked away with their 10th ranked doubles win, finishing 6-3 over Emmanuele Salas and Ana Oparenovic. Adriana Reami and Claudia Wiktorin put up a good fight against Carla Touly and Ariana Rahmanparast and ended in a halt at 4-5. Liz Norman and Bianca Moldovan also defeated their Seminole opponents, finishing 6-3. The Seminoles closed out the competition with a tiebreaker between Alana Smith and Emmanuele Salas.
Coach Simon Earnshaw’s thoughts on the competition: “We knew coming into today that it was going to be our biggest test of the year. There was a lot of emotion with it being Senior day, which made it almost too much of a challenge. We started off really well, with one of our better double’s efforts of the year. Florida State really dug down deep and we weren’t able to carry enough momentum into our third set. It was a good learning opportunity for us because we haven’t experienced the other side of wining for a while. When we play at this level, we have to experience it both ways.”
The next appearance for the Florida State Seminoles will be a battle against the Virginia Cavaliers on April 11. The Seminoles will compete at home for another victory. As for the Wolfpack, they will travel to Durham to battle Duke (No.4) on April 10th.