The last time the New Jersey 5s (16-3, 49pts) played the Los Angeles Mad Drops (17-7, 47pts), the Mad Drops nearly pulled off an upset with AJ Koller taking the place of an injured Hunter Johnson at the season-opening event in Orlando.

Johnson was back in the lineup—and new acquisition Ben Johns was fully active—when the squads faced off on Saturday at the Advil Targeted Relief MLP Dallas, but it wasn’t enough to get LA over the hump as the 5s escaped with a thrilling 22-20 DreamBreaker triumph.

New Jersey struck first in women’s doubles, where Anna Leigh Waters/Meghan Dizon defeated the Mad Drops’ Catherine Parenteau/Jade Kawamoto 11-3 to avenge their loss from earlier this season.

“Their defense is just absurd, so we knew every ball was coming back and that we had to be on our ‘A’ game,” Dizon said of that opening contest. “We just came in prepared, and we played a great match.”

After Ben Johns/Hunter Johnson dispatched the 5s’ Will Howells/Noe Khlif in men’s doubles to even the match, Waters/Howells took the court against Parenteau/Johns in a mixed doubles game that had no shortage of storylines.

Parenteau, of course, is Waters’ former women’s doubles partner on the PPA Tour, who Waters left in April to play with Anna Bright. Johns is Waters’s current PPA mixed doubles partner, and the two have won 50 titles together.

Waters/Howells secured an impressive 11-4 win before Kawamoto/Johnson defeated Dizon/Khlif to bring on a DreamBreaker, much to the delight of a frenzied crowd at Pickler Universe.

In that deciding contest, Hunter Johnson outscored Will Howells 9-3 through three rotations, marking a standout performance that would be enough to secure the win against most teams.

Like I said—most teams.

Waters outscored Parenteau 9-1 and won back-to-back points with the score tied at 20 to help lift New Jersey to victory in one of the best matches of the season.

Despite a Herculean effort on her part, the 18-year-old was quick to credit the performances of her teammates.

“I couldn’t have done it without the team,” she affirmed. “LA is an amazing DreamBreaker team. They’ve got some incredible players, and they were playing amazing, so I think it just showed our fight as a team and how much we work together.”

This result will help the 5s as they inch closer and closer to securing No. 3 seed heading into the postseason.

New Jersey will close out their event with matches against the Texas Ranchers and St. Louis Shock on Sunday, while the Mad Drops will end their regular season against the Dallas Flash.