North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: On Her Own, Green Excels In Spring Debut
4/11/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
RALEIGH – Kate Green insists it wasn’t a total freak-out moment. But it was awfully close.
Just a few weeks ago, the freshman on the NC State women’s team was kind of overcome with her new life in America. The native of London arrived here in January to immediately begin her collegiate tennis career with the Wolfpack.
At first, she was pretty happy when her parents brought her to campus. They stayed around for a week and helped her get settled before they headed back to England. Green was happy to be living on her own as an adult.
Until, of course, she realized just how daunting it was to be living 4,000 miles away from home, without any personal transportation, and very few friends.
“I was like ‘Oh, my God, I am on my own,’” Green said. “I have to deal with all this stuff: school-work, tennis, finding time to get some sleep. It just really, really, really stressed me out.”
She found comfort with frequent transcontinental telephone conversations with her mother, Liz, and some help from her roommate, Catherine Grotz, a native of Seraing, Belgium, who also arrived to begin her tennis career with the Wolfpack in January.
Despite the near freak-out, Green has performed well in her debut season with the Wolfpack. She owns the women’s team best winning percentage, with a 15-5 record in dual-meet matches, including two impressive wins last week as the Wolfpack fell to No. 8 Clemson and No. 6 Georgia Tech. Green improved to 8-1 while playing in the No. 5 singles spot.
"Her game has developed really well," said Wolfpack women's coach Hans Olsen. "The first six weeks she was here, we were more focused on developing her mental game and she really made some improvements with that. Now, she has been working on attacking the ball and getting to the net. She has great wheels and is a very good athlete.
"We think she has a very good upside."
Green begin playing tennis at the age of 11. She went to Wimbledon every year since grade school. She grew up playing with Naomi Cavaday, an up-and-coming British tennis star and the sister of NC State men’s player Nick Cavaday. She also knew former NC State men’s player Will Shaw through a mutual friend. Both Cavaday and Shaw recommended Green to Olsen, who had heard about her through his international tennis contacts.
The only problem was that Green had stopped playing the sport she grew up loving just before her senior year of high school. She was burned out on the game, and wasn’t having a good time. She was trying to complete her secondary education exams. She was also having fun going out with her friends and enjoying an active social life in London. But once she graduated from the Pendergast School, she picked up her racket, found a new coach and fell in love with the sport all over again.
“My new coach really inspired me and made me want to play,” Green said. “He got me motivated to want to play for myself.”
But it wasn’t long that Olsen motivated Green to play for the Wolfpack, who began recruiting Green to come overseas to play collegiate tennis. There was one problem, however: Olsen didn’t have a scholarship available this coming fall. He could only recruit both Green and Grotz if they agreed to enroll at NC State for this year’s spring semester.
It was a quick turnaround for Green, who was still a little rusty, but she jumped at the opportunity, even though she did not have the time to make a recruiting visit to Raleigh before she enrolled in school.
“I had always seen older players go off to America to play when they finished their junior careers in England,” Green said. “It was always one of my aims and aspirations to do the same thing. But it was all kind of rushed.”
Olsen didn’t worry about Green making the adjustment to American college life. He had just brought in, under similar circumstances, New Zealand native Shona Lee. She enrolled last January, earned All-ACC honors as a freshman, then chose to join the World Tennis Association Tour as a professional.
Green doesn’t plan on that anytime soon. She is optimistic that her individual game will continue to improve and that she can be an important building block for the future of Olsen’s program.
And, she figures, she won’t have any more personal crises, especially next year when she has a car on campus. Having to bum rides and wait for buses was one of the reasons for her near freak-out. First, however, she has to practice driving on the right-hand side of the road.
“No one has let me try driving their car yet,” she said. “I think it is because Will Shaw is such a bad person to ride with on that side of the road.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
