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The Underdogs Prevail

CAPTAIN WRITES DETAILED story OF STATE CHAMPIONSHIP

Here is a tongue-in-cheek account by Captain Jeff Corales of the Louisiana 2.5 Men's team.

The Franco’s 2.5 men’s team visited Stone Creek to play their 2.5 Men’s team on Saturday, 4.30.11. The winner would claim the league championship. Granted there are only three teams in the league, but I digress. The heavily favored Stone Creek boys were younger, had been playing longer and even went so far as to hire one of the pros to come out at 6:30 a.m. the day of the match for a lesson to help prepare them. They had cold towels and water brought to them by hand maidens and even showed up with cans of pink tennis balls for the match. The blue collar Franco’s guys took their places on the courts and the match began. Stone Creek stayed true to form early and won the singles match despite Rob Johnson’s never say die effort. Stone Creek was up 1-0.

In the second match, Williams defeated Iron Mike Powers and Wayne “Wayne O” Weidenbacher on court 1 6-4, 6-2. Stone Creek 1 Franco’s 1. In the meantime, as I am sure everyone saw on ESPN and CNN, an epic battle was being fought on court 2. Jeff Corales and Ryan Orgeron from Franco’s were mounting one of those comebacks reminiscent of the 2004 Red Sox. Beaten badly in the first set, the never give up never surrender dynamic duo came back to win the second set. In the tie breaker neither team could get ahead by more than one point. At 8-7 Corales/Orgeron, the Stone Creek team served out of turn. Play was stopped only momentarily to have Williams removed from the court when he ran onto it and started screaming ‘what the heck ‘ Tempers flared, fists were doubled up and the temperature around the court went up about 20 degrees. Stone Creek kept the point, which is correct per the rules. Now 8-8 , the match was on Orgeron’s serve. Corrales hit a winner at the net, Franco’s was up 9-8. The faint sounds of Journey singing Don’t Stop Believing could be heard playing during a clinic on a distant court.

Ryan calmly prepared to hit his next serve knowing all he needed to do was get it in. A hawk circling the court 250 feet in the air managed to dodge his first serve. His second serve was is in and returned. Ryan responded with a deep just inside the base line shot. The Stone Creek player got to it, but his return went into the net. A surreal silence followed. Hands were politely shaken. The Franco’s team members congratulated one another and quietly walked into the morning sun, leaving their vanquished foes and their legions of fans to wonder ‘ who are those guys?’ Dates for the parade are tbd
And from this day to the ending of the world, the 6 of us will remember our victory at a state tennis tournament played in sweltering heat that was spread out over 8 days. We few. We happy few. We band of brothers.

 Team

 Louisiana Men’s 2.5

 Home Courts

 Mandeville, LA

 Captain

 Jeff Corales

 Fun Fact

 Captain has a great sense of humor.