By Kyle Serba
DURHAM, NC -- On Saturday, April 19, the North Carolina Central University men's tennis team accomplished something that no NCCU team had experienced since the 1984 women's basketball squad -- a conference championship.
The Eagles defeated Virginia State (8-1), Saint Augustine's (8-1) and Johnson C. Smith (7-2), for the right to be called the 1998 Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Men's Tennis Champions.
NCCU finished the season with 11 consecutive wins to end with a 15-1 conference record and 16-6 overall mark.
"We may not have had the best talent in the conference, but what we lacked in skill we made up for in our ability to think and prepare," said second-year head coach David Nass. "The players found ways to win."
The 1998 conference championship is the first on record for the NCCU men's tennis program since 1974, when legendary Eagle head coach Dr. James W. Younge guided his squad to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Men's Tennis Championship for the third consecutive year.
The Championship Run
The championship run began on Friday (April 17) afternoon against Virginia
State, which placed third in the CIAA during the regular season. A year ago,
VSU ousted NCCU from the CIAA Championships with a narrow 5-4 second-round
victory. This year, the Eagles were determined not to let history repeat itself.
As fate would have it, this year's No. 6 seed match pinned VSU's Ijuanzee Isom
against NCCU's Traci McCluney, who lost to Isom at last year's conference
tournament in one of the match's decisive contests. After McCluney,
determined to avenge her 1997 defeat, lost the first set 6-1, she told Nass,
"I am going to win this match." McCluney fulfilled that promise to her head
coach, winning the next two sets, 7-5, 6-4.
Due to inclement weather on Saturday, the CIAA moved the semi-final and championship matches to an indoor facility, the Raleigh Racquet Club. In the semi-final match versus Saint Augustine's, the Eagles held a slim 2-1 advantage after doubles play, yet faced possible elimination. NCCU's No. 1 seed Jason Hampton trailed 6-3 (in an eight-game pro-set format), and No. 2 seed Robert Rusher fell behind 7-4. Rusher, serving to stay in the match, fought off two match points and won the last five games for a dramatic 9-7 come-from-behind victory. Likewise, Hampton rallied to win six of the last seven games for a 9-7 victory.
"It was the most dramatic comeback I have seen in all my years of coaching," Nass said about Rusher's match. "And Jason's match was equally as impressive. It was like two identical matches unfolding simultaneously."
Motivated by the excitement of the semi-final match against St. Augustine's, the Eagles soundly defeated Johnson C. Smith, 7-2, to become a part of NCCU athletic history.
With the change of venue and weather delay, the championship match against JCSU did not end until just minutes before 12 midnight on Saturday (April 18). "Our players were determined to win, whatever the obstacles," Nass added. "That's the sign of champions."
The team proudly displayed the championship trophy at Sunday (April 19) evening's NCCU All-Sports Awards Banquet at the Regal University Hotel, where the golden championship memento stood three-feet tall at the center of the men's tennis table.
Humble Beginnings
In January 1997, when David Nass arrived on NCCU's campus as the
recently-appointed interim head tennis coach, he discovered that the tennis
program had one player, one can of tennis balls and no uniforms.
A year-and-a-half later, NCCU proudly holds the title of "1998 CIAA Men's
Tennis Champions."
The women's tennis program, celebrating its inaugural season at NCCU as a club sport in 1997, had 18 players on its varsity roster in 1998 and is being heralded as the women's tennis conference champions, according to Nass. Since there are only two other schools in the CIAA (Virginia State and Johnson C. Smith) that offer women's tennis as a varsity sport, the conference does not recognize women's tennis as an official conference event. "Our women's team was undefeated (2-0) against CIAA opponents this year," Nass explained. "Therefore, (unofficially) our women's tennis team is also the conference champion."
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