Alexander High School 1999 Team When no one expects anything from your team and your team wins, then everyone is sur-prised and all is great. but when everyone expects to much of your team, and publicity has built up, and expectations are very high, it is even harder to win.

 

Pressure creates a lot of noise for a team. In the season of 1999, which was the 5th year of Alexander High School, this was the background noise for our team. We had 11 returning seniors who had experienced success since their Little League years. When this team lost 2 games during the Border Olympics tournament, these same seniors were devastated since they hadn't anticipated defeat I specifically recall Franco Barrero , a senior, who made a statement that I still remember to this day. He announced to the coach-ing staff after those loses, `We are not losing anymore.

 

We didn't. At that point we went on to win 23 games in a row. This 1999 team went undefeated in district and swept past the playoffs to beat teams like McAllen Rowe, Brownsville Pace, Victoria High School which we played in the Astrodome, and then Corpus Christi Moody, and then advanced to the 5A state tournament in Austin, Texas to face Duncanville in the Final Pour'.

 

We were the 2nd team in Laredo history to advance to the state tournament at that time. Our team was ranked 13th in the nation in the USA Today Poll including both public and private schools and ranked 3rd in state of Texas. This adilevement came because of outstanding student-athletes who exemplified team unity and chemistry, great collaboration from the coaching staff, incredible support from the parents who spent endless hours cheering their sons, and an administrative team who were willing and able to solvesB obstades that we encountered going through all of this. The stars aligned and baseball magic happened.