After placing two singles players in the semifinals and a doubles team in the finals at the ITA Carolina Regional Championships, Duke is feeling especially strong finishing up with its fall training.
“I thought all in all, it was a good event for us,” head coach Jamie Ashworth said. “We were looking for some people to take advantage of some opportunities they were given, and they did that.”
The play of Blue Devil freshmen Beatrice Capra and Ester Goldfeld highlighted the tournament for Duke. The doubles team came back from a match point at 7-6 to defeat the No. 7-ranked Wake Forest pair of Kayla Duncan and Kathryn Talbert 9-7 to reach the finals.
The two were unable to keep up the momentum, however, falling to the No. 1 doubles pair in the nation, Clemson’s Keri Wong and Josipa Bek, 8-5 despite claiming an early 2-0 lead.
“We were trying to get something out of our doubles, so we changed our doubles team, and we wanted to get a look at some different combinations,” Ashworth said. “As a whole, I thought it was fairly successful.”
In singles play, junior Mary Clayton picked up a quarterfinal win after another Duke player—freshman Monica Turewicz—withdrew due to illness. Clayton failed to win her semifinal match against Clemson’s Nelly Ciolkowski, though, falling 6-3, 6-2.
Looking back at the results, Ashworth said he thought the tournament was a successful one in terms of gauging the players’ individual strengths and weaknesses against top opponents and in measuring the playing level of rival teams.
“One of the things we had talked about before the tournament was that this was a tournament where we could see what kind of depth we have against a lot of teams we’re going to face in the spring,” he said. “If you look at the top [North Carolina] teams that we were going against in the semis, both had teams in the top 10 in the country, and that was good for everyone on our team.”
Highlighting the strong level of play over the past several days, Ashworth pointed out that the tournament definitely helps his players prepare for the upcoming ITA Indoor National Championships in November, if not the upcoming season.
“It’s hard to talk about dual matches when they’re three months away because a lot can change and a lot can happen before then, but you want to see girls getting better and doubles teams working together and communicating,” Ashworth said. “We’re happy with where some of the girls are at, but at the same time, we play another tournament in two weeks, and over the next weeks we can get better.”
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