Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.

Brian Kalbas has climbed the mountain and put his stake in the ground.

The 20-year Carolina women’s tennis coach has added the big one to his team’s four straight ITA indoor national championships in a huge how-sweet-it-is-to-be-a-Tar Heel moment. Here are the latest Kalbas facts.

The top-ranked UNC women finished their 2023 season with a 35-1 record by winning the program’s first NCAA championship and avenging its one loss of the season at N.C. State. The Wolfpack also advanced to the NCAA Final Four in Orlando and reached the championship match against its bitter rival.

This time, the Tar Heels won the doubles point and then, after State had taken the first singles, swept the next three matches to claim the NCAA hardware, 4-1. Tell me, what could be better than beating the Pack in the process?

State had seemingly grabbed the momentum by winning No. 1 singles, but Carolina came back with three straight hotly contested victories by Fiona Crawley in a tie breaker, Carson Tanguilig and Elizabeth Scotty in the 2, 3 and 4 singles to end it. Kalbas becomes the 14th UNC coach to win an NCAA title.

The championship following the ITA four-peat makes Kalbas’ program arguably the best in the country. It was Carolina’s first trip back to the Final Four since 2014 and since then has been dominant on the ITA circuit.

Kalbas has always regarded Carolina as his dream job after coaching at his alma mater Notre Dame and William & Mary, where he was national coach of the year in 1998 and won 79 percent of his matches in Williamsburg. In Chapel Hill, he has done even better by going 532-102 for .818 winning percentage. Over the last 14 years, it has been an incredible .889.

His list of accomplishments is way too long for this post, but go to his bio page to see how many great teams with multiples of great players he has coached. And it doesn’t look like he is slowing down with the $17 million Chewning Tennis Center opening at UNC, a college facility that compares to any in the country. Kalbas is the common denominator in all that.

He already talks openly about being able to recruit high school stars who are good enough to have shots at becoming successful pros. Still, every one of his athletes who stayed four years has left with a degree.

In the intrusive days of NIL and the transfer portal, that is also the job of a college coach.

 

Featured image via ITA on Twitter

Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related Stories
‹
Chansky's Notebook: Common Denominator
It is no coincidence that two terrific UNC programs used their new home facilities to recruit great players and win trophies.
Chansky's Notebook: Fight Goes On
UNC women's tennis star Fiona Crawley may join a group of amateurs thinking about suing the NCAA for the right to earn more money.
Chansky's Notebook: Cloudy Future?
Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler. The White House celebration was a reminder of what could happen. The Tar Heels’ field hockey and women’s tennis teams were two of the […]
Chansky's Notebook: Still the ACC's Best
Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler. Virginia is the only school making a run at Carolina’s NCAA dominance. The Tar Heels have finished eighth in the latest Learfield Directors Cup […]
Chansky's Notebook: The One Who Got Away
Mack Brown was a very good football coach. His father was a high school coach in Tennessee, and his older brother Watson preceded him into mid-major positions. The peripatetic Brown held nine assistant jobs and one as a head coach in 15 years before he was 35. That included being the athletic director at Tulane […]
Jason DeCaro, Reese Brantmeier, Ryleigh Heck Named 2026 Patterson Medal Winners
UNC announced the 2026 class of Patterson Medal winners Tuesday morning. The Patterson Medal, first awarded in 1924, is the school’s most prestigious honor for athletic excellence and career achievement. To receive the award, Tar Heel athletes must have competed in at least three seasons for UNC and have exhausted their collegiate eligibility. The 2026 […]
Chansky's Notebook: The Cost of Business
Carolina has released its salary structure for the 2026-27 men’s basketball season, and right now it has to be a game of wait and see. Mike Malone is making $7.5 million in his first college head coaching season and his new top assistant Chuck Martin is making $500,000. Here is where it gets interesting. The […]
Chansky's Notebook: Code of Conduct
When he left Carolina as chancellor in 2024, Kevin Guskiewicz was dogged by policy confrontations with the UNC Board of Trustees. Guskiewicz found himself in the same position after only two years at Michigan State despite strong support from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Spartans’ Hall of Fame basketball coach Tom Izzo. He visited […]
Chansky's Notebook: Dunia the Great
Of all the athletes who competed at Carolina over the years, there is no one in the same ballpark as Dunia Sibomana-Rodriguez. His life-changing moment occurred when he was six years old and survived an attack from vicious chimpanzees in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 18-year-old UNC prodigy who is on a […]
UNC Women's Tennis Falls to No. 4 Texas A&M in NCAA Quarterfinals
The UNC women’s tennis season came to an end Friday night in Georgia, as the No. 5 overall seed Tar Heels fell to No. 4 Texas A&M 4-3 in the NCAA quarterfinals. Carolina took an early lead in what proved to be a back-and-forth match, winning the doubles point thanks to victories on No. 2 […]
›