North Carolina State University Athletics

Sisterhood with Agustina: Wanting the Doubles Point
2/27/2007 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
By: Agustina Arechavaleta
Agustina is one of three seniors on this year's Wolfpack women's tennis team. Throughout the year, Allison, Lauren, and Agustina will be posting weekly blogs about what it is like to be a member of a Division I athletic team including personal insights on competition and experiences shared amongst the team. The blog's title, Sisterhood, has an important meaning to the team. Each player does not only consider themselves teammates but part of a sisterhood where they will learn to share four years of their lives with other student-athletes from all around the world who enjoy playing tennis and having the opportunity to be part of the Wolfpack.
From two weeks ago, our competitive intensity has been our focus and has been accomplished by our team. The best part of our intensity is that the opponents we are competing against really feel that we are here to win. But it is the doubles point on match day that has been giving the Pack the most success. That one point that puts us up 1-0 has become our confidence builder as we go into the singles portion of the match.
Since the spring season started, the Pack has been victorious in claiming seven of the nine doubles points. This is a crucial point in the match. The theory behind the doubles point is that if we get the doubles point, most of the times, it is what decides the match.
Most of our team’s practices are focused on doubles patterns. The start of the point is something we will be working on this entire season. First serves and strong returns are our main focus to take the initiative. Then there are poaching situations, aggressive plays where we take the ball low and through the middle of the court, offensive lobs, and doing drills to keep up our high communication between doubles partners.
As we practiced doubles this past week Monday through Friday, on Saturday when we faced off against USC, we knew what we had to do. We came out fired up with high fists ready to compete. We wanted that doubles point and we got it. We felt proud of this accomplishment!
________________________
Our next match will be at home against Winthrop. Note that there is live-scoring through gopack.com and the women’s tennis website to keep track of the matches being played at home.
For spring break, we will be heading to Miami to play Florida State and University of Miami. Lauren will be writing next, posting news from behind-the-scenes in two weeks.


