As a freshman on the Harriton girls' tennis team, Rachel Benstock will play this week in her first PIAA state team tournament. So she doesn't know what it feels like to lose there.
Neither does Marni Blumenthal. The Rams senior has been to three state team tournaments, and emerged a champion three times.
Harriton coach Jack Ladden can't explain that losing feeling, either. Seven years he has been the Harriton coach. Seven years he has guided the Rams to a state team title.
" 'Harriton will make news when we lose' is my statement," Ladden said.
Poetic and prophetic, the statement overlooks two noteworthy feats: the Rams' seven-year stretch and, likewise, quite a run for Ladden, an avid player who started coaching tennis at the tender age of 60.
Ladden and his team will try to make it eight in a row this week in the PIAA Class AA tournament. Harriton, after defeating Lower Moreland, 4-1, last week for its 11th consecutive District 1 title, will face District 12 champ Masterman in the first round Tuesday.
The championship run will be on the line.
"It is very nerve-racking," Blumenthal said of the streak, "but the pressure also helps you want to win it more, so it kind of gives you motivation. It's not that you don't want to mess up for your team, but you want to keep this amazing streak that we have going."
That streak started shortly after Ladden traded singles and doubles on the baseball diamond for singles and doubles on the tennis court.
"I played baseball, coached baseball, umpired baseball for 50 years," said Ladden, 67.
"I finally gave up coaching when I figured I couldn't get out of the way of a line drive when an 18-year-old hit it at me."
Ladden was a first baseman, at 5-foot-10, for Lafayette College in the 1960s, competing in the College World Series one year, and didn't start playing tennis until he was about 30.
He retired in June 2004, after working in management in the electric industry. That August, Fran Tomaselli, the longtime Conestoga coach for whom Ladden's two daughters had played, told him about Harriton's vacant position. He got the job about two weeks into preseason practice.
"My first year was a Cinderella team, a team that had no right to be at states and no one expected them to do anything at states," Ladden said. "As it turned out, they won."
