Experiencing what it feels like not to walk or run, but to fly

The upcoming two days of May 25-26 mark exactly 42 years since my teammate and friend, Karl Stanley, and I prevailed in the Iowa High School 1984 Class 1-A State Tennis Doubles Tournament. We won four matches over the two days with the semi-final against Eldora, having stretched an interminable 3 hours, 40 minutes with almost every fiercely contested game going to multiple deuces playing under a hot sun with no wind.

After winning the first set 7-6, despite facing numerous set points against us, in a tiebreaker (11-9), and then leading 5-3 and being close to winning but losing (really choking away) our lead and the second set 6-7 in a tiebreaker (3-7) and alarmingly falling behind 0-2, 1-3, 2-4 and 3-5 in the third set, and at one time being on their serve only two points from what would have been a crushing defeat. We were seniors and this was our last chance. Summoning everything we had inside of us, somehow we were able to tie and level the match at 5-5, and then both feeling like we had just climbed out from the deepest hole on the planet, confidently steamrolled through the final two games to win the third set and match 7-5.

The semi went so incredibly long (from 10 a.m. to 1:40 p.m.) that my oldest brother Kevin, having watched us win the first set then had time to drive from Birdland Park in the north part of Des Moines to Indianola to pick up his wife Monica, and then drive back to Birdland, and after thinking from afar as they saw that we were still on the court that we must be playing either the first place or third place match. There were no gadgets in those days. They were astounded to ascertain that we were still playing the semi!

As Muhammad Ali said of his third and final fight with Joe Frazier (the Thriller in Manilla) “It was the closest thing to a near-death experience” as the tension was almost unbearable and I think my heart must have been racing more than 150 times a minute when we were down 2-4 and 3-5 in the third set and ever so close to defeat. 

Our teammate from the 1984 Storm Lake High School Boys Tennis Team, Yonn Dierwechter, extremely knowledgeable about sports, to this day more than four decades later, for its epic drama, tension, back and forth up and down nature, testing the limits of both teams’ nerves and human emotions, still considers this semi-final to be the finest thing he has ever seen and witnessed in sports.

Thereafter, with it impossible to feel nervous or even have any emotions at all (as they were all used up and gone) and perhaps as a consequence, Karl and I entering the zone when the physical matches and meshes absolutely perfectly with the mental, we played about the best match we ever played in the final and beat an excellent, and favored, No. 1 seeded Fairfield team 6-4, 6-3, who paradoxically were likely better than the team we had ever so narrowly defeated in the semi. So perhaps we only won the final because the semi had been so very hard, so very challenging, so very tough. My mom and dad would remember it for years afterward, telling me that while they didn’t want me to see — always maintaining a calm outside demeanor, they actually had “lived and died with every point.”

So 42 years later, it’s fun to recall and remember, and still grateful for our wonderful cheering section of say 40 Storm Lakers who never gave up on us even when things looked so very bad and bleak in that third set. And of course, Coach Mike Christensen who was there for me emotionally, psychologically and strategy-wise all four years of playing in the state tournament from as a freshman badly losing my first two matches, as a sophomore finishing sixth in singles, and as a junior fourth in singles, to this most happy result as a senior. And without Coach Christensen’s counseling and advice, I never would have played doubles as had never even considered it until Coach advised to do so 36 hours prior to districts saying “do you want to get third, fourth, or fifth again, or have a chance to win a State Championship? I know you and Karl can do this.”

And I would say the best part of winning was seeing how happy it made both sets of parents. So what a feeling it was to wake up the next morning now back from Des Moines to Storm Lake (on the very day (May 27) I was graduating high school) and have this beautiful trophy in our living room (it seemed to be made of solid gold).

And I am proud that we are the only tennis doubles team in Storm Lake history ever to accomplish such, as we could not have any more personified what it meant to grow up and live in Storm Lake — Karl's family lived on Lake Avenue; his dad worked in the communications department at Buena Vista (then) College and he had been the radio announcer/color commentator on KAYL when the BV women won the National Division III Softball Championship earlier that spring, also in 1984. And Karl’s mom worked at Methodist Manor as a nurse.

My family lived first on Highview and then on West Sixth. My dad taught vocational agriculture at Storm Lake Hayes School and my mom, after being a stay at home mom, returned to work as an insurance agent. Karl had three brothers and I had two brothers and a sister. We had both washed out of football after ninth grade (just too small) but from 10th grade, gave this new sport of cross country a try, which is one reason why for tennis we were both in exemplary shape and absolutely never got tired. Karl worked at the cafe in the back of Ressler Drug and I had worked at Country Kitchen and detasseled every summer.

Our senior year Karl had been the leading scorer on the Storm Lake Boys High School Basketball team (12.1 average despite only being 5’11”) and I had made 44 three-pointers in total as a junior and senior in 38 games overall, and we both had been named honorable mention All-Lakes Conference. And tennis-wise, we must have played and practiced together hundreds of times on the high school courts, BVC courts, at Chautauqua Park, Lake Creek, and even behind the junior high (best place to play when it was otherwise too windy to play). Wherever our bikes and later, mopeds, would take us.

Now 42 distant years ago — how fortunate we were (it all could have gone so very wrong), and upon being called by the awards ceremony MC onto Birdland Park Des Moines Court No. 1 for the Iowa State Championship trophy presentation, we both got to experience what it feels like not to walk or run, but to fly.

Kregg Halstead’s family lived in Storm Lake from 1972 to 1986. From 1981 to 1984, he played No. 1 singles as a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior for the Storm Lake High School Boys Tennis Team. Whether the temperature outside on the courts was a cool and crisp 40 degrees or a hot and steamy 100 degrees, from no wind to some days near gale force winds, from being injury-free to a stress fracture in his foot during his junior season, he never missed a match during the four years.