The North Carolina women’s tennis team is finally back atop the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Shinann Featherston’s thrilling three-set win over Noemie Scharle gave the Tar Heels a 4-3 win over fifth-seeded Florida State and their first ACC title since 2002.

Zoe De Bruycker, Jelena Durisic and Gina Suarez-Malaguti were also singles winners for Carolina, who dropped the doubles point but rallied to win the program’s sixth league tournament crown.

“I feel that now, we as a program, have gotten to the point where we belong with the other amazing North Carolina teams,” head coach Brian Kalbas said after the match.

“North Carolina has had such a great tradition of excellence in athletics and for us to win an ACC Championship in women’s tennis is a testament that we have a program that is up to the caliber that of the other programs here at UNC. This is why I came to North Carolina, to compete for championships, so I am really excited for our team.”

The Seminoles took the doubles point with wins on courts two and three. Florida State’s Francesca Segarelli and Ruth Seaborne had a commanding win on court two, beating Durisic and Tessa Lyons, 8-3.

On court three, their teammates Katie Rybakova and Amy Sargeant were victorious over Suarez-Malaguti and De Bruycker, winning 8-4.

Play was stopped between Carolina’s Featherston and Lauren McHale and Florida State’s Scharle and Federica Suess after the Seminoles secured the doubles point. Featherston and McHale were leading 7-5.

After losing the doubles point, Carolina needed four singles wins to rally for the victory.

The first point came from De Bruycker as she returned to her winning ways. The Saratoga, Calif., sophomore dominated Rybakova, 6-2, 6-1, on court one, her fifth win over a top-50 opponent in the last month.

Suarez-Malaguti gave UNC its first lead of the day after winning in straight sets, 6-2, 6-0, over Suess on court five.

Durisic made it 3-1 on court two with an impressive turnaround. After dropping the first set to Francesca Segarelli, 6-2, the senior captain came back with a vengeance to take sets two and three, 6-4, 6-2, respectively. For Durisic, the win avenged a 6-1, 6-0 loss to Segarelli in last week’s regular season finale in Tallahassee.

Jelena Durisic

Pushed to the brink, the red-hot Seminoles would not go down without a fight.

FSU snagged a win on court six as Lyons was fell to Amy Sargeant in three sets, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3.

Shortly after, McHale dropped a three-setter to Ruth Seaborne, 6-3, 5-7, 6-0, giving FSU its third point of the day and knotting the dual at 3.

All eyes shifted to court three as Featherston was amidst a third-set tiebreak with Scharle that would determine whether ACC title.

Featherston, who fought off a match point at 30-40 and 4-5 in the third set, opened the tiebreak with a 2-0 lead. After Scharle tied it at 2, Featherston eventually got a mini-break and held serve to make the score 6-4. On match point, Scharle sent a ball long to give Featherston the 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (4) victory and Carolina its first league tournament title in nine years.

“It usually happens that I’m the last one out there on the court for whatever odd reason,” Featherston said after the match. “It’s happened a lot. I love being the last one out there. I know I have it in me to win, and that’s all I think about. I refuse to lose. If I get hurt, I don’t care. If I have to stay out on the court for hours, that’s what I will do.”

“For her to clinch the match yesterday and today shows what a great competitor, fighter and teammate she is to everyone,” Kalbas said of Featherston, who was named the event’s Most Valuable Performer. “If anyone deserves it, it’s her.”

The victory give the Tar Heels the ACC’s automatic bid to the 2011 NCAA Women’s Tennis Championships. The pairings for the event, which begins May 13-15, will be announced on May 3.

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UNC football coach Butch Davis says quarterback Bryn Renner is uncharted territory after having TJ Yates at the helm for four years but he’s optimistic that Renner will be good.

That confidence, in part, comes from the fact that Renner has been studying tape of Yates, himself and NFL quarterbacks in preparation for the 2011 season.

“He’s passionate, he loves to work, he wants to be good,” Davis said during a news conference Thursday. “He’s got that certain air of charisma that when he steps in the huddle I think the rest of the teams believes that he’s going to find a way to make that play work.”

Davis added that Renner has the talent and skills but he is inexperienced and will be learning every day.

And, who will be Renner’s backup. “We’ve got to develop some depth there,” Davis said. “Braden Hanson, A.J.
Blue and Marquise Williams are three other young quarterbacks that we’ve got to develop. We’ve got to be able to have at least two quarterbacks that we feel like can go into games and we feel like we can win with.”

Woody Durham, the voice of Tar Heels football and basketball since 1971, is resigning at the end of June saying that the quality of his announcing had begun to decline of late.

“I felt it kind of getting away from me a little bit,” said Durham, 69. “And so that’s why I thought it’s probably a good time to step aside.”

Durham, whose son Wes is the Georgia Tech play-by-play announcer, almost retired following the 2009-2010 basketball season but decided to come back another year and work harder to live up to the level of excellence he expected. “But again, my presentations were not always what I wanted … so I knew it was time, and I wanted it to be my decision.”

Eric Montross, the UNC basketball color analyst, said Durham was excellent because of his preparation. “He has the uncanny ability to know everything about a player,” he said. “He’ll know what they ate in the morning for breakfast to what they’re going to do after the game, to their birthday and their high school coach and what the high school coach had for breakfast.

“It was never-ending, the attention to detail. He lived Carolina athletics. He sought out ways to continually make things better.”

Eight years after graduating from Carolina, Durham took over the play-by-play announcing after Bill Currie, “The Mouth of the South,” left the position.

“One and one no longer make two,” said Mick Mixon, who worked as Woody color analyst for 15 years. “Water no longer freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Woody Durham is no longer the voice of the Tar Heels.”

Durham called 13 Final Fours and 23 bowl games. Go where you go and do what you do, Woody.

Listen to Woody Durham’s call of the end of the 1982 National Championship game.

Harrison Barnes has made it official that he will be returning to North Carolina for his sophomore season. As reported last week on CapitalSportsNC.com, Barnes has enrolled in summer school

“As an 18-year old, I’m in the early stages of my life journey,” Barnes said in a statement from UNC. “I’m honored and blessed for the chance to play in the NBA. And because of my family, teachers, passion, and work, I have the ultimate dream of one day playing and experiencing a fulfilling career in the NBA.

“Opportunities, both beneficial and life changing, can seem to make the next phase of my journey an easy decision. But I am a student-athlete at the University of North Carolina. I’m here to experience college life, grow as a person, receive a quality education, and be part of the greatest basketball family in college sports.

“The experiences I’ve enjoyed on and off the court will be invaluable. These experiences will help fuel my journey in the NBA and beyond.

“I look forward to meeting the challenging journey in the NBA, but my decision on November 13, 2009, still holds true. I’m focused on being a student-athlete. And my decision is to continue this part of my journey at the University of North Carolina.

“As a team, we’re preparing for a special season. My off-season plans are to diligently work on honing my basketball skills in all areas with one team-goal in mind — to bring the 2012 national championship home to UNC.”

UNC coach Roy Williams said it was a difficult decision for Barnes. “He really had no wrong decision to choose, but I believe he is coming back to school because he enjoys college basketball, he enjoys the University of North Carolina and he enjoys his teammates. If he had decided to leave for the NBA, that would have been okay, too, because he will always be a Tar Heel. But it will certainly be a lot of fun to coach him again,” he said.

The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) announced today that Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Commissioner John Swofford, former director of athletics at the University of North Carolina, has been selected by the NACDA Officers and Executive Committee to be the recipient of the 45th James J. Corbett Memorial Award.

The Corbett Award is presented annually to the collegiate administrator who “through the years has most typified Corbett’s devotion to intercollegiate athletics and worked unceasingly for its betterment.” Corbett, athletics director at Louisiana State University, was NACDA’s first president in 1965. The award is the highest honor one can achieve in collegiate athletics administration.

Additionally, Swofford will receive an honorary degree from the Sports Management Institute (SMI), an educational institute sponsored by NACDA and the universities of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Southern California and Texas.

“Receiving the Corbett Award is truly one of the highlights of my career because NACDA has meant a great deal to me since I attended my first Convention in 1976, and when I look at the previous recipients, it is humbling to join them,” said Swofford. “None of us have success without the help and support of others, and I have been fortunate to have that support from family and colleagues throughout my career. I am sure there are many that have received this award that were more deserving. I can assure you that there have been none that were more appreciative.”

Swofford, in his 14th year as commissioner of the ACC, served as president of NACDA in 1993-94, while director of athletics at North Carolina. He assumed his role as the fourth full-time commissioner in July 1997. In July 2010, Swofford’s leadership helped the conference secure a new 12-year multi-media rights agreement with ESPN, which will more than double television revenue to the 12 member institutions.

In 2003, on behalf of the nine league institutions and the ACC Council of Presidents, Swofford introduced Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College as the newest members of the conference. With the expansion, Swofford helped bring the conference extended and enhanced television contracts in both football and basketball.

During his career, Swofford has been an advocate of academics and student-athlete welfare, and helped the league form the ACC Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.

When he was hired at North Carolina in May 1980 at the age of 31, Swofford was the youngest major college athletics director in the nation at the time. He initiated North Carolina’s trademark licensing program and saw tremendous growth in athletics facilities on campus. His accomplishments were recognized by the university with the establishment of the John D. Swofford women’s athletics scholarship and the naming of an auditorium in the university’s football complex in his honor.

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