Staff Writer

PORTLAND — Kyle Lagasse isn’t all that big, and he certainly isn’t green, but the Biddeford senior does have one thing in common with the Incredible Hulk ”“ don’t make him angry.

After dropping the first set 4-6 to Windham’s Jacopo Secchi in the No. 1 singles of a Western Maine Class A boys tennis team quarterfinal on Wednesday, Lagasse battled back in the second to earn a set point at 6-5 when Secchi called a Lagasse shot that looked to have hit inside the line out.

Instead of moving on, Lagasse made a call back at Secchi, setting off a war of words that only ended when Biddeford coach Mark Ouellette and Windham coach Wayne Martin entered the court to cool things down.

Far from being rattled, Lagasse went on to take the second set, and then dominated a tense third, winning 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 for the deciding point as the seventh-seeded Tigers stunned the second-seeded Eagles 3-2 at the Racket & Fitness Center.

For both Lagasse and Ouellette, there was no question when the turning point of the decisive match had come.

“I really think having the other kid kind of set him off, he got angry and he played better,” Ouellette said. “Kyle’s a competitor.”

“He squeezed me inside, and I made a fair call back at him,” Lagasse added of the contentious end to the second set. “It gave me some momentum going into that third set, which carried on.”

Lagasse’s response to adversity encapsulated the fight Biddeford (9-5), which had fallen 4-1 to the Eagles (11-2) during the regular season and came into Wednesday as heavy underdogs, displayed all afternoon.

The Tigers had lost the first two finished matches of the day, with Ken Reyes falling to Brandon Currier in the No. 3 singles 4-6, 2-6, and the No. 1 doubles pair of Ian Robinson and Kush Patel losing out to Avery Topel and Brad Carpentier 1-6, 7-5, 3-6.

The comeback started with Dakota Nightingale in a grueling No. 2 singles match with the Eagles’ Jordan Crowley.

Nightingale won the first set 6-4 but looked ready to drop the second when he fell behind 6-4 in a tiebreaker. But the senior battled back, winning four straight points to take the match 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) and get the Tigers on the board.

“My serve was going in today for once, so that was nice,” Nightingale said. “I just kept playing hard. It was hard work and he’s a great competitor, but I didn’t want it to be my last match.

“I just had to stay focused. I really didn’t want to lose that.”

Nightingale’s effort looked all for naught, however, when Biddeford’s No. 2 doubles team of Josh McCauley and Josh Pelletier dropped the first set to Windham’s Jarron Nadeau and Nick McGoldrick 3-6, and then had their serve broken at 5-5 in the second.

But the Tigers’ pair didn’t lay down, breaking right back thanks to a beautiful slice backhand from McCauley at game point and then winning the resulting tiebreaker 8-6.

From there it was all Tigers, with McCauley and Pelletier sweeping the third set 6-0 to even up the overall match 2-2.

“We play a lot of doubles, and we practice a lot of doubles. We play tiebreakers every day, so we’re used to them,” Ouellette said. “They just keep playing.”

That left Lagasse and Secchi as the only match left on court tied at a set apiece. After regrouping from the skirmish at the end of the second set, it was Lagasse who came out much stronger in the third, breaking his opponent three times in the final set, including in the deciding game when Secchi double faulted three times.

“I just worked on keeping the ball in play and letting him make mistakes as you saw at the end there,” Lagasse said. “He faulted it away, and I got the match.”

The Tigers now move on to the regional semifinals, when they’ll face the winner of Thursday’s match between third-seeded Kennebunk and sixth-seeded Deering.

It will be Biddeford’s first appearance in the regional semis since 2004, which Ouellette said is a good statement for a program that had won just four overall matches in the past four years coming into this spring.

“It’s big,” he said. “It’s bigger for the kids than it is for the program. Some of these kids have really worked hard. It’s been a while since we’ve reached this level.”

— Staff Writer Cameron Dunbar can be contacted at 282-1535, Ext. 323.