A year after collecting its first Friends League title in 23 years, Moorestown Friends School topped that achievement by winning the first girls tennis state title in program history

A year after collecting its first Friends League championship in 23 years in 2017, Moorestown Friends’ girls tennis moved the program up to a new level in 2018.

Junior Elena Styliades outlasted her Newark Academy counterpart in an entertaining and tense, three-set match at third singles to put the Foxes over the top in the New Jersey Non-Public B state championship. Styliades and her fellow Moorestown Friends singles teammates, Renna Mohsen-Breen (first singles) and Bella Pescatore (second) won their matches to deliver the Foxes a 3–2 win over Newark Academy.

The victory marked the first state championship in the history of the Moorestown Friends girls tennis program.

“I never expected it,” Moorestown Friends coach Mike Bodary said. “Newark Academy is always (the favorite), they’ve won seven of the last eight (state championships) and 15 overall, it’s always been someone up north.”

In winning their championship, the Foxes snapped Newark Academy’s streak of five straight state titles. One of those came over Moorestown Friends in 2016.

“Although we lost 3–2, it wasn’t that close,” Bodary said. “I really expected us to have a better chance next year since we don’t have any seniors. I thought this was a year we’d improve, but I never expected us to win a state championship. It was exciting.”

If waiting a lifetime of a program was long, enduring another 3.5 hours wasn’t really that big of a deal for the Foxes. Because that’s how long it took Styliades to overcome Newark Academy’s Julia Schwed in an epic, championship-clinching match with a final score that read: 7–6, 4–6, 6–4.

“Her wrist was hurting her two matches before and I didn’t think she could play up to her full capacity, but she really pulled it out,” Bodary said. “The girls went crazy of course.”

Moorestown Friends’ program has been plenty successful throughout the years. It won seven sectional titles between 1988 and 2017.

But it had never cleared the state title hurdle after collecting those sectional trophies. Until Oct. 18 at Mercer County Tennis Center, when Mohsen-Breen, Pescatore, Styliades, and doubles teams Amanda Augustino and Sasha Zekavat (first) and Natalie Julian and Julia Holliday made school history.

They put Moorestown Friends in the history books, literally, joining the 64 other programs that have won state championships since they’ve been awarded in the sport since 1976.

But it could just be getting started.

During the 2018 season, bolstered by one of the state’s top singles players in Mohsen-Breen and a breakout freshman in Pescatore, the Foxes earned the program’s first-ever victories over Moorestown and Haddonfield, long-time South Jersey and state powers, in September. And then they cut through the postseason, without a single senior on the roster.

“It’s going to be fun next year, all of the girls are pumped,” Bodary said. “Having everyone back and a strong contingent of freshmen, it’s going to be tough getting in the lineup.”

Before officially closing the book on 2018, though, the Foxes had a chance to add a cherry to the top of their state title sundae, via the Tournament of Champions, when the six state champions in each group face off to determine a №1 overall team in the state, but came short three days after being crowned champs, on Oct. 21. Moorestown Friends fell to Bridgewater-Raritan 3–2.

It should be noted, though, that Bridgewater-Raritan (an enrollment of 2,072) is a school that’s roughly 10 times bigger than Moorestown Friends (227 students). Still, both Mohsen-Breen (6–0, 6–0) and Pescatore (6–1, 6–3) took their matches fairly easily.

Next up for the Foxes: finishing off their second straight Friends League crown. Moorestown Friends entered the final full week of October as the only undefeated team left in the Friends League.

“It has been a year of firsts,” Bodary said, referring to the state title and wins over Moorestown and Haddonfield. “I thought last year winning the Friends League was something, since it’d been 23 years. But this (state title) goes back 36 years (when non-Public state titles began in 1982). It’s pretty exciting.”