1981 Girls' Tennis Team Honored for Memorable Season
On Saturday, June 26, 2022 the FHS Hall of Fame honored the 1981 FHS Championship Girls' Tennis Team for their "memorable season" at their annual banquet. Pictured are: top row L-R: Christine Louganis, Sue (Nolette) Aubin, Debbie (Rapoza) Dulude, Joanne Reedy, Cindy Mark and Carol O'Brien (deceased); bottom row L-R: Anne (Gonsalves) Beauregard, Susan (Jacobsen) Nadeau, Coach Donald J.B. Dufour, Lee Vaudry and Tammy Pereira. Not pictured is Jenn Young. Unfortunately, Coach Donald Dufour was unable to attend the Banquet because he is in the process of moving from Florida to North Smithfield, Rhode Island.
The 1981 Fairhaven High School Girls’ Tennis Team, led by rookie Coach Donald J.B. Dufour, had the distinction of winning the first Conference Championship in their sport. However, it wasn’t an easy path. The girls started the season by losing their first 4 non-conference matches, double losses to Dartmouth and Seekonk, a period which Coach Dufour reflected back on as their “early organizational period”. The team went 7 and 1 the rest of the season with their only loss being by a score of 3-2 to Old Rochester.
Coach Dufour told the Standard-Times reporter that the biggest obstacle that his team had to overcome was their negative attitude, because the program had been very unsuccessful for such a long time. But anyone who knows Donald Dufour can imagine how he projected his positivity to this group of girls, along with some crafty tips which probably included demonstrations on hitting drop shots, as any of you who have played tennis against him can attest.
Probably the best example of Coach Dufour injecting his positivity approach was the rematch with Old Rochester when the season was on the line. Each team had one conference loss with just a few more matches to play. Playing at 2nd Singles, Sue Nolette lost the first set 1-6, and Coach Dufour has told me that he “called her over to the fence and discussed readjusting her strategies and Sue won the next two sets 6-4 and 7-5 which secured the win for FHS and after they defeated Bourne 4-1 in the last conference match of the season, they were crowned Southeastern Mass Conference Division 2 Champions.