This season, fall tennis is looking fresh.

What once was a series of warmups leading into winter will now be a decider of champions as the fall circuit concludes with the inaugural NCAA Individual Championships. For USC women’s tennis players, the quest to qualify for the tournament begins Sept. 21 through 29 at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American Championships hosted by North Carolina at Cary Tennis Park in Cary, North Carolina.

The All-American Championship is conducted annually, but this September, the NCAA has upped the ante as 10 singles players  — eight from the main draw and two from the feed-in consolation bracket  — and four doubles pairs will make the cut for the Individual Championships. With these added stakes, this tournament has huge importance for the Trojans.

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“We’re viewing everything with a big competitor mindset — not that we wouldn’t in general, but everything has a little bit more pressure and focus on it,” said junior Grace Piper, the No. 36 ranked ITA singles player. “We all want to come up with some big results to make the tournament.”

Although a few Trojans are eager to go on deep runs this weekend, especially with new stakes on the line, Head Coach Alison Swain noted that qualifying for the Individual Championships is not the team’s sole focus. The Trojans still have a big spring season ahead.

“We’re still trying to emphasize player development. Fall is still the time that we really get to come together as a team, figure out our identity [and] develop some bigger things in our tennis in preparation for spring,” Swain said. “That’s what we’re trying to emphasize with our players — development overall is going to help results take care of themselves in the long run.”

At last year’s All-Americans, the Trojans brought back some hardware. No. 15 junior Emma Charney competed in doubles alongside graduate Eryn Cayetano. The duo fell in its first main draw match before ripping through three consecutive opponents to win the consolation bracket.

In addition to her doubles success, Charney had the strongest singles outing of her teammates. She reached the qualifying singles round of 64, falling to then-No. 13 freshman Theadora Rabman who represented UNC, the host university.

Now that Cayetano has graduated, Charney is paired up with sophomore Immi Haddad. The pair is still building a dynamic and will start this weekend in qualifiers. In the team’s first tournament — the Battle in the Bay Classic — the duo lost in the opening round of 16.

At the Battle in the Bay, Charney continued her reign as the Trojans’ headliner. She hadn’t dropped a set until the semifinals where she was narrowly knocked out in a three-setter by Georgia’s No. 13 junior Anastasiia Lopata.

“Fall can sometimes be tough at the start because if you haven’t played a lot of summer matches, you don’t have a lot of matches under your belt,” Charney said. “I’m really happy with the level I brought, and I got to play some really high-level players, which allowed me to play high-level tennis.”

Piper and Charney are the Trojans’ most notable returners and Swain is still working on crafting cohesion among the Trojans’ new collection of personalities. In the Bay last weekend, Charney competed, but Piper did not travel with the team. Instead, three of the Trojans’ four representatives — Haddad, sophomore Lily Fairclough and Princeton transfer graduate student Maia Sung — made their USC debuts at the tournament.

“We have a super young team, some new people, so [we are working on] getting the whole dynamic with everyone right,” Piper said. “We’re meshing really great.”

As for the rest of the field, with such a sizable pool of possible opponents in the Trojans’ path, it is difficult to pinpoint key contenders. However, players from the Carolinas tend to fare well when contending in their home state. It may be worth keeping an eye on UNC’s No. 6 junior Reese Brantmeier and South Carolina’s No. 10 senior Sarah Hamner. UNC and South Carolina boast the No. 26 and No. 27 doubles duos respectively, which is notably behind the Trojans’ No. 20 duo in Piper and Fairclough.

Stefano Fendrich contributed to this report.