The Brooklyn Pickleball Team (13-5, 41pts) stayed undefeated in its home state with a thrilling DreamBreaker victory over the Carolina Hogs (5-14, 17pts).

In my preview article for today, I wrote that this matchup could very well go to a DreamBreaker, but the way that it happened was anything but expected.

To start, Rachel Rohrabacher/Jackie Kawamoto took women’s doubles for Brooklyn before Ben Johns/Roscoe Bellamy won men’s doubles for Carolina.

Then, Rohrabacher/AJ Koller took on Etta Tuionetoa/Johns in the first mixed doubles game. It looked like the Hogs would go up 2-1 in the match when Tuionetoa/Johns raced out to an 8-4 lead, but Rohrabacher/Koller came all the way back to win one of the most entertaining contests of the season.

“That was probably the most fun match I’ve played in a long time,” Koller noted after the contest. “I mean, Rachel is just a stud. We didn’t really say much when we were down. I think we just said before the match that we were gonna trust each other the whole way, and so we didn’t really blink at 4-8. We were gonna go out swinging, and it made for a heck of a match.”

That win put Kawamoto/Riley Newman in a position to close out the match for Brooklyn, but Tammy Emmrich/Bellamy pulled off a stunning 11-2 upset to send the match to a DreamBreaker.

The tension only continued to rise from there.

After Newman kept Brooklyn alive by saving a match point against Bellamy, Rohrabacher took the court against Tuionetoa at 20-20 and scored two in a row to give Brooklyn its first DreamBreaker win of the season.

Rohrabacher says she relishes competing in those high-pressure moments.

“There’s no feeling like closing out a DreamBreaker,” she mentioned. “I was screaming at Riley to get us to 20-20, and I was just really excited to be able to close it out for my team. I just love DreamBreakers. They’re so much fun.”

Now 3-0 on the weekend, Brooklyn will close out the event with a match against the New York Hustlers (3-15, 8pts) later Sunday afternoon.