History in the making
The Cameron Yoe boy’s tennis team will be competing in San Antonio on Thursday and Friday, May 20-21, weather permitting, for a State Championship.
The boys will be competing to win the first boy’s tennis championship in school history and their first overall tennis state title since Kori Sosnowy in 1994. A big part of their success is due to their coach, Lance Hause.
This year is his 16th year of coaching in Cameron, and his ninth year coaching tennis. He has been back and forth mostly between softball and tennis as he helped his wife coach softball for a few years. Overall, this year is his fifth year back for the tennis team, and he’s ready to help his players bring title home.
“It’s an awesome feeling, I’m really happy for the kids and their both really great kids,” Hause said. “I’m just excited for the opportunity to go compete.”
The two competing are Nolan Brashear and Marino Cardona.
Cardona got into tennis simply for the fun of the game and the competitiveness. Brashear got into it from looking up to his brother, Braden.
“My brother played and he’s two years older than me,” Brashear said. “I saw him play and I thought I’d like it so I started playing.”
Both the coach and the two players, Brashear and Cardona have different thoughts about when during the season they felt that they could eventually get to this high level of achievement.
Hause feels that it was in early March at the China Spring tournament.
“I put them as a doubles team last year and our season was cut short and the other team that advanced from our regionals is from our district,” Hause said. “I would say probably the first tournament. We went to a big 4A tournament, we went to China Spring and we lost in the semifinals to a team from China Springs and thought then that these kids have a chance to be special.”
Brashear believes he felt that moment was at district because they did really well in that tournament. He believed if they kept the momentum going in the regionals, they would have a really good shot of advancing.
Cardona feels that moment was after the second tournament they went to in Rockdale. They showed that they played great as a team and was playing very well against the other schools and while continuing to win.
Along with tennis, both play other sports. Brashear plays football and basketball, Cardona plays baseball. An even better fact is that both have had postseason experiences in those sports. Brashear made it to the second round of the playoffs in basketball and Cardona is currently in the regional quarterfinals in baseball, and they all believe that postseason experience is important and has made a big difference throughout this tournament and will be helpful for the upcoming state matchup.
“It’s a great comfort for me,” Cardona said. “It shows that you can do two sports and go far in both. You can be a two sport athlete and not just one.”
“I think it does, yes,” Brashear said. “It’s a different feeling playing in the playoffs. “There’s more pressure, you get more nervous. When you get used to that feeling it really does help and you feel more ready when you’re in those situations.”
“I do and that’s one of the things that I think are pretty special about these two because when you get to the higher level, most of the kids that compete at the state level at tennis, they’re just straight tennis kids,” Hause said. “With Nolan, he played football and basketball, and even during football he came out this season played fall tennis. And with Marino, he played fall tennis and is the starting first baseman for the baseball team. And so, I think it’s pretty rare that you get kids that advance to the state level at tennis that do play all the sports, but they’ve played in sports where they compete and I think it’s taught them how to compete.”
But, Hause and the players know experience alone and playing multiple sports won’t be enough and that they still need to keep working hard on fundamentals and giving it everything they got. They are even being given outside help and help from the rest of the roster.
“They work really hard,” Hause said. “And they have Nolan’s brother, Braden. He was a regional qualifier for us his junior year and he didn’t get to compete last year. It really helped with these two being the only two to make it, he’s been really helpful coming out and giving them somebody to hit (practice) with. Some of our other teammates have been really good with coming out and hitting (tennis balls) with them and giving them an opportunity to hit with somebody.”
He also believes the best is yet to come in the following years, considering the possible talent in the junior high level in the tennis program. This makes him feel that the Yoemen tennis teams can possibly compete at the state level for many more years.
“I think anytime that you can get kids out of the district and the area, as we play in a really tough district,” Hause said. “We had ten people that left our region and four were from our district. I think anytime you can get people out, it gets kids excited. We had a really huge turnout for our junior high program this year. We had close to 40 kids, which is really good. I think anytime you have kids be successful, they want to be a part of that, and they’ll both (Brashear and Cardona) be back next year, so we hope that can carry over and get kids excited about playing
Cameron wishes them the best of luck as they try to make history for the school.