CovCath’s improbable doubles comeback gives the Colonels their first tennis state team title

Author: Dan Weber

NKyTribune sports reporter

NICHOLASVILLE Heid already lost the first set 6-2 and lost the second 5-1. One more lost game and that would be all he wrote.

One more lost game, and Covington Catholic still wouldn’t have its first-ever team state title, and Northern Kentucky still wouldn’t have a boys’ state doubles title since the 1949 prep.

And then it happened. Another student’s CovCath team Alex Yeager and Kaleigh Christensen didn’t even lose again to a Greenwood team led by Kentucky’s Mr. Tennis, Dylan Dethridge with his partner Gary Zheng.

Not a game. Not in the post-split series super playoff used to decide state tournament games, where the first to 10 points with a two-point lead wins.

CovCath State Champion Tennis Team

And yes, that team was the CovCath Colonels after winning six straight games and another on Thursday.

And then won the game 10-7 after jumping out to a 9-3 lead over a deflated Greenwood team and a crowd that clearly didn’t know what hit it.

Not that the CovCath colonels could tell them. They weren’t quite sure how they were going to pull this off.

Coach Al Herzenberg said he was just trying to shift his energy from negative to positive. He has been doing this for 33 years and has finished second three times. And he has great assistants to do the practical work.

So when he went down to court, he was just trying to shake the wood, he said.

His job is to keep the train on track. Our men have all the tools, he said, but they are sophomores.

Grandfather of CovCath and Northern Kentuckys Mr. Tennis Kevin Molony shouted, there is no clock in tennis. Take it one point at a time.

Although the two colonels couldn’t hear him over the din of the waiting Greenwood fans, they agreed in a strangely optimistic way.

CovCath singles state winners Alex Yeager and Kalei Christensen

Time was definitely on our side, Christensen said. It was all they had.

We slowed down there, he said. And then he did something else. He listened to his partner, a guy he’s been playing with since second grade.

Alex kept saying, Stay with me, stay with these comebacks, stay fighting.

And so they did. Point after point. The energy refocused, their positions changed. Back from heel to toe.

Your energy comes from your feet, says Al. And from a group of CovCath students who finally had something to be happy about.

It was definitely a factor, Kalei said of the fan support that turned from green to blue as quickly as their game.

Now if only they could make it to the semi-finals. And when they managed to grind out game after game, winning four straight to tie the score at five, and then winning the next two split sets, there they were.

We love breakers, Alex said, quoting coach Al.

They just had to get there. You saw us there,” Kalei said of their response to win the second set. You’d think they’d already won it.

As it turns out, they won the first three points and then nine of the first 12 points to take a 9-3 lead. Just one more.

OK, it took four more to get there, but when Yeager dropped an unstoppable chop volley just across the net after Kalei mishit her second serve, somehow, someway the Colonels were back.

It wasn’t exactly how we planned it, Kalei said. But damn it.

CovCath’s battle song opens with a spirit that never dies. Never more so than right now at the Top Seed Tennis Club in Nicholasville.

You couldn’t even dream of something like this, Kalei said, but you can hope.

Colonel fans can only hope it gets better from here. All athletes who scored points on the singles star playing basketball Brady Husseythe junior, who will make the quarterfinals on a rehab ankle, will be back.

We were just getting started, Coach Al said. Just another moment among many when his philosophy was on the money.

You don’t have to win all the points. You just have to make the last point, he said in this game. Not the first no matter how many points Greenwood was ahead after winning 11 of the first 14 games.

Just go to the place where you can win the last point.

What the colonels did.

Somehow.

Somehow.

Covington Latins on top Sara Watanabe reached the girls’ singles final on Saturday before falling to Sacred Hearts Ellie Hammond6-4, 6-3 as the Louisville school won its fifth straight team title.

Dan Weber is the sports editor for the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him @dweber3440 on Twitter.