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cavalier profile JULIA ADAMS Graduate Student • Tennis The Virginia women's tennis team had a very large hole to fill at the top of its lineup. When 2021 NCAA singles champion Emma Navarro, who was the top-ranked collegiate singles player in the na- tion last year, made the announcement over the summer that she would be turning pro, the question that everyone asked was, "Who will play No. 1?" Enter Julia Adams. Adams played four years at Furman, earning a bachelor's degree in politics and internal af- fairs. She is using her COVID-granted fifth year to work on her master's in educational psychology at UVA. The 2022 Southern Conference Player of the Year is among the most accomplished play- ers in Paladins' history, tallying more than 140 combined singles and doubles victories. In 2021, she became the first player in their history to win a match in the NCAA Singles Championship. Last year, she competed in both the singles and doubles championships. Adams hit the courts running at UVA. In the fall, she was crowned singles champion at the ITA Atlan- tic Regional, unseating her teammate Natasha Sub- hash, who had won the title in each of the last two tournaments. She also made a splash with a win against No. 17 Kari Miller of Michigan in the fall. When dual season came around, Adams was penned in at the top of the Cavaliers' lineup. Playing in the No. 1 slot comes with its chal- lenges. Adams was tasked with playing both the No. 1 and No. 2 singles players in the national rankings in back-to-back matches against North Carolina and Duke in UVA's first two ACC matches of the year. Though Adams lost her individual match against Duke, her efforts still helped the then- No. 20 Cavaliers topple No. 10 Duke 4-3 with a strong showing in doubles, something she has done repeatedly in dual matches. In the Duke match, Adams and her partner Mélodie Collard clinched the doubles point with a 6-4 win against a top-20 Duke tandem, earning a doubles point that ended up being the difference in the team victory. Adams and Collard, who went 10-2 in doubles to start the spring, also picked up a win against the top-ranked tandem at the end of the fall campaign: North Carolina's Fiona Crawley and Carson Tanguilig. — Melissa Dudek • Photo courtesy UVA Athletics 34 CAVALIER CORNER