Maddy Zampardo Secures Spot at NCAA Championships for Tar Heels
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – On a chilly Sunday in Philadelphia, one Tar Heel was still swinging.
With the courts at Penn beginning to empty and the ITA Sectionals winding down, Maddy Zampardo carried the Carolina banner alone — and left with the biggest prize of the week. The sophomore battled past NC State’s Victoria Osuigwe in three sets, 6-1, 5-7, 6-1, to lock up her place at the NCAA Individual Championships.
She didn’t just survive. She finished emphatically.
Zampardo tore through the opening set, 6-1, dictating with depth and weight of shot. The match tightened in the second as Osuigwe found her range and stole it 7-5, forcing a decider and briefly shifting the mood. Any doubt vanished quickly. Zampardo reset, surged again, and repeated the first-set scoreline in the third, 6-1, to punch her ticket to the national stage.
That win guarantees Zampardo a rare double: she will compete in both singles and doubles at NCAAs, the only Tar Heel this season to do so.
A Long Week in Philly
Her Sunday breakthrough capped a demanding four-day run for Carolina in Philadelphia, where the Tar Heels mixed dominant scorelines with hard lessons against a deep national field.
Zampardo’s week started on Thursday with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Princeton’s Pearlie Zhang, then a gritty 7-5, 6-4 victory over Yale’s Leena Friedman on Friday. She took her only loss of the event on Saturday — and it came from across the net in Carolina blue. Teammate Theadora Rabman edged her 7-5, 6-4 in an all-UNC battle that underlined the program’s internal depth.
Rabman quietly put together one of the most complete singles performances of the week. She opened with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Jacqueline Soloveychik (BC), then backed it up on Thursday with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Virginia’s Alyssa James. By the time she outlasted Zampardo on Saturday, Rabman had already stacked three straight-set wins against three different programs.
If Zampardo’s Sunday heroics grabbed the headline, Alexis Nguyen’s consistency wrote the subtext. Listed at No. 85 nationally, Nguyen barely blinked in singles. She tore through Salome Fluri (McNeese State) 6-3, 6-2 on Thursday, then handed out a pair of scoreline beatdowns: 6-0, 6-0 over Jackson State’s Paula Corbalan on Friday and 6-0, 6-2 over Michigan’s Reese Miller on Saturday. Three matches, three straight-set wins, 36 games won and only 7 lost — a statement run from a ranked player doing exactly what a ranked player is supposed to do.
Doubles Punch, Tough Edges
Carolina’s doubles teams showed flashes of the firepower that can change a postseason tie.
The pairing of Tatum Evans and Alanis Hamilton set the tone early. They opened on Thursday with a 6-0, 6-3 dismantling of Brown’s Lee/Shen, then returned Friday to overwhelm Penn’s Schlepphorst/Velaga 6-2, 6-1. On Saturday, they were dragged into a thriller by Virginia’s Zozaya Menendez/Lam, dropping the first set in a tiebreak 7-6 (1). Evans and Hamilton dug in, flipped the momentum with a 6-4 second set, and edged the match tiebreak 1-0 (2) to stay perfect for the week.
Nguyen also made her mark in doubles alongside Manning. The duo opened with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Kollaritsch/Brook (Bellarmine) on Thursday, though they were turned back on Friday by Murphy/Warren (Furman), 7-5, 6-3, in one of several tight losses that will linger for a while in the team’s review sessions.
Frey and Rabman produced one of the more dramatic scorelines of the event on Thursday. After dropping the first set 3-6 to Princeton’s Chhiv/Zhang, they clawed out a 7-6 (6) second set and completed the turnaround with a 1-0 (6) match tiebreak. Their run ended Friday with a 6-0, 7-5 loss to Yale’s Ogilvy/Friedman.
Not every storyline was a winning one. Walkovers hit Carolina hard in singles on Friday, with No. 21 Evans, Hamilton, and Anna Frey all conceding their matches. Earlier in the week, Evans had taken a one-set lead on Penn’s Esha Velaga before falling 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, while Frey and Avery Nguyen both went three sets in narrow defeats.
Those results, taken together, paint a clear picture: a roster with weapons across the board, but also one that has felt the grind of a long season.
Eyes on NCAAs
Out of that grind, one storyline now stands out. Zampardo leaves Philadelphia as the Tar Heel who will carry both singles and doubles hopes into the NCAA Individual Championships.
She has already shown she can handle the volume — four singles wins, a three-set scrap for a spot at nationals, and the resilience to rebound from a loss to a teammate. The level at NCAAs will rise. The stakes will, too.
But in a long week where Carolina spread its effort across courts and draws, it was Zampardo who walked off the final day with a ticket in her hand and another challenge waiting.
