When it just clicks

Sometimes, the best partnerships don’t announce themselves. They just click.

Three years ago, Jayce Hooten arrived in Las Cruces as an incoming freshman, a newcomer still figuring out where he fit. Around the same time, Carter Follin was finding his own way into tennis, a sport he hadn’t planned on choosing.

Now, the Centennial High juniors aren’t just teammates. They’re one of the state’s top doubles pairings — two players whose individual strengths seem to sharpen when they step on the court together.

What they do well alone, they do even better as a pair.

Follin didn’t grow up thinking tennis would be his sport. Soccer was his path, until the world shut down during COVID and forced a change.

“I played soccer for about nine years, but when COVID hit, I couldn't play soccer,” Follin said. “My grandma was a big-time tennis player. She loved playing so I decided to go out and try tennis. From there I picked it up and started playing every day. After about a year playing tennis, I quit soccer to focus full time on tennis.”

Hooten’s path looked different but landed him in the same place. The son of New Mexico State men’s basketball coach Jason Hooten, the assumption might have been that basketball would follow. But a trip to the courts changed that.

“My mom and my sister were going up to the tennis courts at my high school in Texas one day, and they asked me to come with them,” Hooten said. “I went over there and I really liked it. I really had fun. I probably could have been a pretty good basketball player, too, but my dad always just wants me to do what I want and be happy with it. Tennis makes me really happy, and I really love it.”

Both players were drawn to the same thing — the accountability. In tennis, there’s nowhere to hide. Every point belongs to you.

That independence doesn’t disappear in doubles. It evolves.

“You’re not really nervous,” Follin said. “You don't have pressure. It’s just a feeling of trust. You know their play style. You know what they will and won't do, and you can kind of coordinate off that, whether you speak about it or not.”

Sometimes that coordination is instinct. Sometimes it’s constant communication.

“If I’m at the net, I’m not sure if I should let it go or if I should just go,” Hooten said. “There is a lot of communication, a lot of talking and knowing where to move, just knowing the movement.”

The partnership itself was never guaranteed. Follin entered high school expecting to focus on singles, unsure if he’d find the right fit in doubles.

“I was thinking mostly singles because coming out of middle school … I had a good friend that went to a different high school,” Follin said. “I wasn't sure I'd be able to find a good doubles partner that I could enjoy playing with, but then Jayce moved to Cruces, and we've kind of just had a lot of fun playing doubles together.”

What started as circumstance quickly became something more.

The Centennial program welcomed Hooten when he arrived, and the pairing with Follin felt natural almost immediately. Now, they’re not just contributors, they’re leaders on a team with state title aspirations.

The Hawks, defending district champions, went 9-1 a year ago and are again pushing toward an unbeaten season. Five of six players from last year’s team that reached the state semifinals return, bringing both experience and expectation.

Hooten and Follin are central to that push.

After finishing third in doubles at state last season, with their only loss this year coming to an out-of-state team, the next step is clear.

“All year long I've been talking to them about micro and macro, micro being the match at hand and macro being the ultimate goal of getting to both finals,” head coach James Alba said. “Is that a lot of pressure at times? Sure. But I'm a firm believer in the process and facing and addressing your fears.

“The talent is there with these two gentlemen. If they can control their emotions, the sky is the limit with Carter and Jayce. If they can balance their talent with their mental game, what they don't realize yet is they will already have won, regardless of the win/loss outcome.”

That mental game — the ability to stay steady when everything tightens — may be their biggest edge.

“I think it comes a lot from showing the mental stability,” Follin said. “You want to show that, no matter how hard a point gets or how close you are from winning or losing, you still want to be that person that shows that resilience.”

“Tennis is such a mental sport,” Hooten said. “I think over the years it’s really given me mental toughness. It’s just giving me mental strength in other aspects of life. I can fight through things.”

That’s the part that carries beyond the court, the quiet understanding that pressure doesn’t have to break you, that trust can be built, that the right partnership can make difficult moments manageable.

Sometimes, it even makes them feel easier.

And for Hooten and Follin, that’s the difference. Not just how they play, but how they move through the game together, knowing that whatever the moment demands, they won’t face it alone.