Sometimes all it takes is a quick word from a coach to inject the confidence back into his top seeds, and when Liberty coach Chris Conrad approached Roman Farhad and Luke Appleman at a changeover in the District XI Class 3A doubles tennis final, the Hurricane pair immediately got back on track and were crowned district champs with their 6-1, 6-4 victory over Emmaus’s Eddy Chow and Nick Stone on April 28 at Lehigh University.

“Once we started to calm down a little bit, adjust to the lighting indoors, and have a little more confidence in ourselves, plus honestly, the other team making unforced errors as well, it helped us come back into the match, and we got some energy from that, and we were able to take control from there,” Coach Conrad said. “It was pretty impressive. We had a great first set. We didn’t want to hurt ourselves in the second set and we were.”

The Hurricanes were up 4-0 in the first set before the Hornets won their first game, but it would be their last due to Farhad’s net play and Appleman’s overheads.

“We were aggressive at the net. They challenged us with two up, but we were able to counter that,” said Conrad. “Obviously, we played a pretty clean match other than those three games in the second set.”

After Chow and Stone won the first game of the second set, the match was moved indoors as a light rain began to fall.

Chow and Stone won the next two games when Conrad had a chance to speak with his players at the changeover.

“I was mad that we were indoors because we play outdoors all season and then we get moved indoors, so I was a bit frustrated,” said Appleman, “and then [Coach Conrad] said just play and focus and hit your shots, and we did that.”

The turning point appeared to come in the seventh game that went to deuce and was won by the resurging Hurricanes.

“There’s a big difference between 2-5 and 3-4, and I knew we had Roman’s serve coming up, so if we won 3-4, I knew Roman was gonna hold it, and I was gonna put us in a good position to win,” Appleman said.

Appleman hit two hard lobs and on the third shot, Farhad finished things off with an overhead to tie the set, 4-4.

“It was pretty scary,” said Farhad. “Luke hit some good overheads, and then we were just going for it. I hit a big overhead there, and it gave us the confidence to just go for our shots and play like ourselves. We had the chemistry because we practiced doubles a lot. I felt relieved. All the nervousness went away. Tennis can switch at any moment, so it felt good to finish it off there. I was proud of Luke that he turned it up and was putting it away for us.”

The Hurricane pair won the next two games and were awarded their district gold medals by Conrad.

“It’s a trip to Hershey and an opportunity for them to represent Liberty,” Conrad said. “This is seven straight doubles finals for us, and that’s just insane. Four of those are district doubles champions, so we have a good run, and I want to make sure that they play their best going into states.”