Among Tuesday’s morning headlines in Nuevo Laredo’s newspaper El Mañana, was one that read, “Thank you Toros.” One of the border city’s most successful stories in the last two years has been Nuevo Laredo’s professional basketball team, “Los Toros.” This past weekend, fans packed the city’s Sports Center to cheer the team on as they faced the Red Falcons of Veracruz in the championship game of the National League of Professional Basketball. The final game on Tuesday resulted in a lost for Los Toros, as the Red Falcons overwhelmed the border team taking the championship trophy to Veracruz with a final score of 92 to 69. While the crowd felt the lost, they praised their team’s efforts with shout approvals of, “Toros, Toros , Toros.” The team gave them memorial basketball wins during the semifinal series against the team from Monterrey, winning several games in overtime and by a single point. But team members agreed that Tuesday’s lost was justified adding that Veracruz played hard and deserved the win. Veracruz fans and team members ran on to the center’s floor with some 40 seconds left in regulation time and began their championship celebration. It had been eight years that the Red Falcons had been playing for such a moment. Toro’s Rene Rougeau visibility discouraged by the lost told the newspaper, “It was a great season, too bad we couldn’t return to continue playing in Veracruz.” In a border city that is constantly the target of negative reporting of violence and an area of “high risk,” by the American press, the Toros is one of Nuevo Laredo’s jewels. The team pickup a following quickly and winning the national championship last year brought on additional followers this season. Throughout the season, the team played before a pack house. It is finding a lot more success in fan numbers than Laredo’s hockey team, the Bucks who fan following has been dropping through the years Team members are mainly former U.S. players include Lonnie Vasquez, Manuel Guzman and Juan Manuel Esteva, who remained on the floor greeting fans after the championship game Tuesday night.
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