As the ball floated high in the air, Ingrid Neel’s eyes focused in.
“Here it is,” a man muttered in the crowd.
Neel raised the racquet above her head and struck the tennis ball, leaving no chance of return as her teammates rushed onto the court to hug her. In a trying match with tough singles competition, the No. 1 Gators women’s tennis team defeated No. 2 North Carolina 4-2 in the National Team Indoor Championship to give Florida its first tournament title since 1999.
The Gators opened the match in dominant doubles fashion. Josie Kuhlman and Belinda Woolcock exited the court first after downing North Carolina’s Rachael James-Baker and Chloe Ouellet-Pizer 6-0. Anna Danilina and Neel were not far behind, as the duo defeated Jessie Aney and Cassandra Vazquez 6-2.
Singles play proved to be far more difficult, though, with the two teams fighting back and forth. Three courts went into three sets and two courts went to tiebreaker sets.
Brooke Austin was first off the court, winning a decisive 6-1, 6-1 match over Ouellet-Pizer. In her first time playing the two position this season, Danilina struggled to keep up with her competition, Sara Daavettila, and fell 6-1, 6-2.
After losing her first set 6-4, Kourtney Keegan recovered to put away Vazquez, winning her final two sets 6-1, 6-1. This gave the Gators a 3-1 lead until UNC’s Alexa Graham defeated Kuhlman in a grueling match, as Kuhlman fell 6-3, 7-6.
This put the match into the hands of Woolcock and Neel, the last two Gators on the court. In a competitive, back-and-forth match, Neel found her rhythm in the third set to defeat fellow Rochester, Minnesota, native and best friend Aney 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to give Florida the Indoor Championship title.
“You could tell it was going to be hard to go all the way through and get it done, but credit to our players,” coach Roland Thornqvist said in a video posted to FloTennis.com. “They were resilient, and our freshman at the end was just remarkable.”
While Thornqvist said the team plans to enjoy the win for the next couple of days, he noted that the Gators will have to get back to work upon returning home. Florida will face the national champion runner-up and the defending national champion this weekend.
“We have very little time for us to bask in our glory here,” Thornqvist said. “We’ll probably take a couple days off, but we’ve got to get right back onto the drawing board.”
Florida will look to do just when it hosts host No. 5 Oklahoma State on Saturday and rival No. 4 Stanford on Sunday.
Contact Spencer Thompson at sthompson@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @spencemthompson.
UF women’s tennis coach Roland Thornqvist smiles during introductions prior to Florida’s win over USF on Jan. 27, 2016, at the Ring Tennis Complex.
