For the third straight year, a player from N.C . State has been named to the All-ACC women’s tennis team. The newest member of this exclusive group is sophomore Joelle Kissell .
Kissell , who had a 15-8 singles record throughout the year, finished the regular season ranked No. 31 in the nation. She has taken down seven nationally ranked players this year, including both the No. 16 and No. 20 players in the nation. She also finished the season as a nationally ranked doubles player, coming in at No. 76 with her doubles partner, senior Ashley Miller.
“[ Kissell ] had a really, really solid freshman year, but as soon as that year ended she just went to work on her game last summer and all through the fall,” head coach Hans Olsen said. “She made technical improvements, tactical improvements by playing more aggressively, mental improvements by keeping the big picture in mind of where she wants to go with her game and had that as her focus rather than just winning with a scrappy style any way you can.”
Although she is seen as a talented player–Kissell was a five-star recruit coming out of high school–what sets her apart from the competition is immediately obvious to those who see her on the practice court.
“Above all her talents–and she has many of them–is her work ethic,” Olsen said. “Her second talent is her competitive intensity. When she gets out on the court, there’s just an energy on that court that is determination, focus and just ‘I’m gonna get out here and do whatever it takes.’ That stuff you try to teach to your athletes every day, but for Joelle, just never going away from a situation comes naturally for her.”
During her freshman year Kissell used her primary weapon, penetrating groundstrokes from the baseline, for an extremely impressive 20-5 singles record. During the offseason between her freshman and sophomore years, Kissell put in countless hours on the practice court to add a new dimension to her game–the ability to get to the net and put away volleys.
“That was a big adjustment because I was used to playing a few feet behind the baseline just running down balls,” Kissell said. “Pushing myself to the net was kind of uncomfortable for me, but we worked through that and it’s paid off in a lot of my matches. Had I not done that, I would’ve lost a lot more.”
Although such a change requires a tremendous amount of time to grow comfortable with, volleying more wasn’t the only major change Kissell made to her game during the offseason; she also developed her second serve from a liability into a weapon.
“That was also very tough for me because we were trying to get a lot more aggressive second serve that wasn’t so dinky,” Kissell said. “But it was hard because I would miss them, but my old second serve where I was just putting it in nice and easy still worked. So it would be frustrating because I’m like, ‘I know I can make the second serve but now that I’m going for a more aggressive one, I’m missing them,’ so I had to work through that.”
The selections for the team were announced April 19, right in the middle of the ACC Tournament. Kissell received news she had been selected for the All-ACC team from an untraditional source of information. Her coach thought he was going to be the first to tell her she had been given this honor.
Olsen said of the moment, “I was standing next to her and I said ‘I just heard that you’ve been selected to be All-ACC’ and I thought that I was getting the news fresh, but she said she already knew about it.”
“One of my teammates had showed me the Twitter message that tweeted that I had been All-ACC,” Kissell said. “I was like ‘Oh! Well that’s cool,’ and then coach was like, ‘Joelle, I have some good news for you,’ and I already knew so I was just smiling.
“I don’t even have a Twitter and I found out through it,” Kissell said.
Even though this year has been a great success in Kissell’s mind, she believes there is always room for improvement.
“I’m just keep going with what I’ve been working on through this whole year,” Kissell said. “I’m really trying to work on being more aggressive. In doubles I want to poach more, serve-and-volley better and just really work on being the one who’s attacking and being in control of the point.”
Kissell is hopeful she will be playing in the upcoming NCAA Individual Tournament in Athens, Ga. starting May 23.