Falcons' team bond bringing them to national stage
May 6—FAIRMONT — The Fairmont Senior Falcons are packing their bags for a trip to Orlando, Florida, though the occasion is business, not pleasure.
The Falcons tennis team is gearing up for their first-ever trip to the D-II NCAA National Tournament after a nail-biting win over Edinboro in regionals. They are set to face the No. 1 seed in the country, Valdosta State, on May 11 in the upcoming round of 16. The slice of history comes shortly after another first for the program, the Falcons having captured their first MEC Conference crown in April as well.
"We're really excited to go, being the first time that Fairmont's gone to the national championship," Fairmont State head coach Terry Deremer said. "It's pretty fantastic to be in the final 16 in the country."
The Falcons have gotten hot at the right time in this postseason, playing their best tennis of the season when the stakes were highest.
"Anytime you go on a run like this, it takes a lot of great players and coaches," Fairmont State assistant coach Alec Moran said. "But a lot of things have to come together too. It's been a magical seven to 10 days for us. We got hot at the right times.
"We lost twice in the regular season, and we avenged both of those losses in the conference championship and the regional championship. It's just the right people coming together and really fighting for each other and fighting for us as coaches."
Compounding the impressive season for Fairmont State is the extreme youth of the team. There are no seniors and only one junior among the eight-man unit, a fact that has not slowed down the Falcons during their white-hot stretch.
"We have a young team," Moran said. "A lot of them were freshman last year, a couple of them are freshmen this year. A lot of the ones that are sophomores this year, it's been crazy to see the growth they've had mentally on the court, because they always had the talent, they had the talent last year, but for them to be able to stay strong against nationally-ranked teams, some of the best in the country, it's unprecedented in our program."
The Falcons have reached the national stage with a truly international lineup, half of their team coming from outside the boundaries of the United States.
"We're really excited," Deremer said. "We have four players from West Virginia on our team, and we have four international players on the team. It's a good mixture, and we're really excited to take Fairmont to Orlando, and we're really excited to represent Fairmont State in the championship."
Such an amount is not at all unusual for college tennis, with Deremer estimating that the majority of the college tennis player base is of international origin.
"It's great to have all the different cultures. College tennis, I don't know the exact percentage, it's probably 80, 85%, through division one to division three, it's a lot of international players. They come to the United States for education, and to play tennis," Deremer said.
Recruiting athletes from abroad is a tricky process, with international collegiate hopefuls usually signing up with recruitment agencies in their home countries and sending out videos and information to potential schools stateside. With the results on the court, Deremer can take a victory lap about his efforts in the offseason.
"We're recruiting off of video, and with the group we have, we made some good choices," Deremer said. "Four West Virginians and our internationals are from Italy, Japan, France and Egypt. They're all great students, our team average is over 3.5. The West Virginian guys can learn about their cultures and they can learn a little bit about West Virginia."
Any barriers between the Falcons were torn down in short order once the team came together for the season. Fairmont currently ranks No. 35 in the country, with the Falcons crediting the bond between one another as the catalyst for their historic push.
"I would say what makes us succeed is how much we care about each other," Moran said. "Every team, especially once you get to the playoffs, is great talent-wise. But the way these guys fought for each other in the biggest matches of some of their lives and the biggest matches of my coaching career, that's what brought us together and kept us winning. These guys love each other off the court, they live together, they're together all the time, they're in the cafeteria, in the gym, and that kind of camaraderie helps build to championships."
"We're so close as a team, and that's contributed to our success on the court," Seena Saadevandi, from Vienna, West Virginia, said.
Though there is immense geographical distance between many on the team's home countries, the Falcons have grown close, in some ways precisely because of their unique situation.
"Getting to West Virginia or any place outside your country, and living there for a few months, if you didn't do that before, you'll have to adapt to the culture," Mohamed El Helaly, from Cairo, Egypt, said. "But those guys, the guys from West Virginia and the internationals, we were all there for each other. They made adapting to the place easier, they made us feel like a family. We're not coming to outsiders, they're not treating us in a different way, we're just all one. They show us to places, they take us wherever — because we don't have cars — they take us all over the place, show us the fun places, to practices, these guys have all the credit.
"Our American teammates helped us a lot," Elia Barozzi, from Rovereto, Italy, said. "None of us have a car, so for every necessity we need them, and they are always there for us. This obviously helped us to build the chemistry we were talking about."
That bond has shown itself in tangible ways for Fairmont State — the Falcons' superior performance in doubles being one example.
"Up and down, one through eight, anybody can play, we can put anybody in the lineup which gives us a lot of depth," Deremer, recently named MEC Coach of the Year, said. "We've been playing really good doubles this year which is a big help. We play the No. 1 seed, Valdosta, and we're going to see if we can't steal a doubles point from them."
It's a chemistry that only grew for the non-freshmen after the Falcons' defeat in the MEC Tournament last year, a point which the team sees as part of what sparked their current run.
"Everybody knows that winning is important, but losing is probably even more important, to learn from your mistakes and to improve," Barozzi said. "That's exactly what we did. We got the right guys to help us this year to help us a lot. We thought a lot about what we did wrong this year and used our best attitude and our best mindset to come together and do better this year."
"The chemistry we have between each other really grew a lot from last year."
The bond between teammates manifested itself once more in the climactic finish of Fairmont's regional championship win, a day that the Falcons took over Edinboro by a narrow margin, the clinching strike coming off the racket of El Helaly to send Fairmont State to the NCAA National Tournament.
"These guys, whenever their match is finished it's not over yet for anyone, they stay on the line, on the court, hyping everyone up, cheering everyone up," El Helaly said. "I was down 4-5 in the second set, and they were all standing right there cheering and screaming, hyping everything up. Of course the deciding point, I don't know what was going on in my mind, I just ran to the net, hit the volley and saw the guys running at me. I didn't know what was going on. It was just a special moment I would say."
Fairmont State is hard at work preparing for May 11, with their belief in themselves, and in each other, at the forefront once more.
"I think we can do well," Alexandre Pages, from Toulon, France, said. "During the season we played amazing, and even if Valdosta is the first seed in the nation, I think we have a chance to perform. It's just a seeding, we know we can beat them."
"We're just all extremely grateful to have won the conference," Saadevandi said. "Then to win regionals was amazing for all of us. To go down there and compete in nationals is a dream come true, and we're excited. We're going to go down there and do our best."
"This year, we've might've been a little bit lucky, but that comes whenever everything else is working well," Barozzi said. "I would say the chemistry within the team is definitely what brought us to nationals."
Reach Nick Henthorn at 304-367-2548, on Twitter @nfhenthorn_135 or by email at nhenthorn@timeswv.com.
