MFS junior Renna Mohsen-Breen, who played one-handed for half of her sophomore season, is eyeing a run at two separate state titles this season.
Maybe the best compliment you can make about a high school athlete — because, remember, they are teenagers, which means they can be both unpredictable and volatile — is to say they regularly practice good sportsmanship.
But when Moorestown Friends School girls tennis coach Mike Bodary ran through the list of reasons he thinks junior Renna Mohsen-Breen is a quality player, he talked about her mentality.
Mohsen-Breen is tough. She’ll pull her best ace out at an opportune time to put a tough opponent away.
But the 16-year-old Mohsen-Breen is also smart. In high school tennis, you’re not always going to be matched up with a peer and, rather than growing frustrated or getting eager to embarrass the other team’s top singles player by pounding the ball, she lets them play.
“She just keeps the ball in play,” Bodary said.
Mohsen-Breen is a good sportsman, the best player in South Jersey in 2018, and someone likely to land one of the top four or five seeds when the individual state tournament gets underway in early October.
After sitting out New Jersey’s top high school tournament last fall (she had a national tournament schedule conflict), Mohsen-Breen is eager to make a run at the state’s top scholastic crown.
“I’ve been wanting to win that since freshman year,” Mohsen-Breen said. “First, the South Jersey sectionals singles tournament. Hopefully I win that, and then the larger goal is the state tournament. Hopefully this year and possibly next year, too.
If Mohsen-Breen continues on her current path — three weeks into the season she’s only had one match where she didn’t win 6–0, 6–0 — she could be on a collision course with Andrea Cerdan of Paramus Catholic (who beat her in the fourth round as a freshman) or Holy Angels School’s Ashley Hess (the state runner-up last year).
“She’s the best player I’ve had in 11 years, just a natural talent,” Bodary said. “She’s got the all-around game, volleys well, defends well. And all of the girls look up to her, they know how good she is but she doesn’t (carry herself like that).”
Mohsen-Breen believes she first picked up a racket around 8 years old. Her older brother, Adam, played tennis, and since she liked to do everything he did, she began to play, too.
To say she picked up the game quickly might be an understatement.
“I’ve seen her play since she was 9,” Bodary said. “She played at my club, where I play. I went there, they had 12-and-under and a 14-and-under (tournaments) and she was in the finals of the 14-and-under and loses in the third set in the finals. And she was 9! She didn’t even play the 12s, ‘why play the 12s, someone who’s three years older than me, I’ll play someone who’s five years older than me.’”
Since her childhood years, Mohsen-Breen has raised the bar: she’ll even beat you one-handed. Although, to be fair, that wasn’t by choice.
Mohsen-Breen plays tennis all throughout the year — she played in tournaments in California and Louisiana this summer — and it was toward the end of the summer between her freshman and junior seasons when she was diagnosed with a stress fracture in her left wrist.
So what did she do, with the summer season winding down and the high school season starting up? She kept playing, just without the use of her non-dominant hand.
“I just didn’t have a backhand,” said Mohsen-Breen, who opted for slices over her regular, powerful backhand strokes. “So the last month of the summer and first month of the season I was playing with one hand.”
How did that go? Mohsen-Breen lost one match, to Vineland senior (and eventual state champ) Tess Fisher.
A year later, Mohsen-Breen has full use of both hands and a pretty good Moorestown Friends team around her, too. The Foxes have already scored wins over perennial South Jersey powers Moorestown and Haddonfield in 2018, buoyed by freshman Bella Pescatore at second singles behind Mohsen-Breen.
“With Bella at (second singles), it really just shifted everyone back one spot,” Mohsen-Breen said. “Elena (Styliades, third singles), she’s super strong against the threes we’ve been playing, and our doubles teams (have been strong), too. I think we have a shot at states, and hopefully we’ll make a run at Tournament of Champions.”
Mohsen-Breen, who hopes to continue playing in college, preferably at a northeast, Division-I school that’s also academically strong, credits her family (her brother and parents, Greg Breen and Nancy Moshen-Breen) and coaches (“Coach Bo” at Moorestown Friends and Dylan Comerford and Tom Gutteridge at High Performance Tennis Academy in Bala Cynwyd) for getting her to where she’s at as a 16-year-old tennis prodigy.
“My grandma (Ines Breen), she drives me to (Bala Cynwyd) almost every day,” Mohsen-Breen said. “And all of my coaches have been really so dedicated to me and making me better, so I’m grateful for that.”
