Mad Drops rally to beat Flash for first win
PEACHTREE CORNERS, GA - For the second day in a row, Championship Court at MLP Atlanta witnessed the conquering of some DreamBreaker demons.
It was the Atlanta Bouncers on Saturday and Los Angeles Mad Drops on Sunday morning.
Like the Bouncers, Los Angeles had lost its first two matches of the season in DreamBreaker fashion—falling to the New Jersey 5s and St. Louis Shock.
It looked like the Mad Drops were on their way to their third consecutive loss after dropping both gender doubles matches against the Dallas Flash, but their mixed doubles pairings of Catherine Parenteau and Thomas Wilson and Jade Kawamoto and Hunter Johnson held strong to tie things up and force a DreamBreaker.
“Even being down 0-2, we had a weird confidence going into the mixed because we know we have two very strong mixed doubles teams,” Parenteau said of the team’s mentality going into the second half of the match.
Los Angeles would not be denied in the DreamBreaker despite their prior struggles and raced to a 21-16 triumph behind strong individual performances from Parenteau and Johnson.
“We told each other to just be aggressive,” Parenteau explained of the team’s DreamBreaker gameplan. “We knew we weren’t going to win by just being passive and letting them come to the net first. We wanted to hit big serves, big returns, big thirds and try to come up with winning shots."
That’s exactly what they did, as Los Angeles picked up its first team victory of the season.
That match marks the end of the Mad Drops’ matches in Atlanta, but the Flash will again take center stage on Championship Court Sunday afternoon against the D.C. Pickleball Team.
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