The men’s tennis team won its opening NCAA tournament match last year against William and Mary before defeating North Carolina and Texas. The wins gave N.C. State its first-ever appearance in the Elite 8 — where the team fell to Baylor.
The Wolfpack finished the season ranked No. 19 in the country. The team also ended its regular season with 20 wins, only the second time in school history.
The team’s success from last season has continued into this season, with the team earning a No. 20 preseason ranking. The team’s success last season, according to coach Jon Choboy, was another step forward for the program.
“It’s been definitely one of our goals to keep improving starting from where we were five years ago,” Choboy said.
“And making the quarterfinals of the NCAAs, winning our first tournament match in history — definitely a nice accomplishment. We have a good team so it’s not certainly something that’s out of the realm of possibility. We’re very pleased to have done it though.”
The team has been preparing for the season by playing in multiple tournaments during the fall semester. Junior Jay Weinacker said the team has been trying to get the younger players into the system.
“Last year, we’d played a lot of matches as underdog,” he said. “This year, we’re going to have the targets on our backs so we’ve been working on that a lot. But I think we had a good fall, I think all the guys are ready to go.”
The teams ranking in the top 25 has it excited about this upcoming season.
“We’ve never been ranked this high at the beginning of a season,” Weinacker said. “Since we’ve had to start further back, we’ve ended around 20 the past couple of years. Hopefully this year, starting at 20, hopefully we can move up and maybe we can move up to the top 10 at the end of the year. So it’s a good head start for us.”
Both Choboy and Weinacker said junior Christian Welte made a big improvement from the off season, especially in his mental game — and Welte agrees.
“I’m able to stay in points longer,” Welte said. “Last year, I could play a set and a half strong but then towards the end of the second set, I kind of had a few mental lapses.”
Welte said he has given advice to the incoming freshmen, some of whom will see playing time this year.
“It can get pretty overwhelming at first with all the school work,” he said. “Just trying not to fall behind — you really need to start strong because it will be very tough to catch up. That’s kind of how I started. I didn’t really start up too strongly; it took me a while to catch up.”
The team does have one senior in Nick Cavaday. Choboy said his senior has improved in his game and hopes that all his players take something from Cavaday’s game.
“A lot of things have been added to his game,” Choboy said. “He’s always been a very, very hard worker. He never had to improve in that area. That’s probably is his biggest strength — he just knows how to come out prepared.”
State will take on its first opponent Saturday at home against High Point. Welte said the team is hoping to take its momentum from last season into this season, but this time opponents will look at them more closely.
“It’s a little different when you’re one of the hunted instead of trying to hunt people,” Welte said. “So we have to stick with the same mentality that we had when we were ranked 40th — just go in every match like this is our last.”
