New Canaan junior Leah Zheng was the best female high school tennis player in the state once again, and the Greenwich Cardinals defended both team titles when they won FCIAC and state championships for the second straight year.
Those were two significant achievements of many which highlighted another great season for girls’ tennis players and teams in the FCIAC.
There were 36 players who received GametimeCT all-state honors in the designations of either First Team, Second Team, and Honorable Mention, and 17 of them were from FCIAC teams.
In each of the last two seasons Zheng was selected FCIAC Player of the Year shortly before being chosen the state’s Player of the Year by GametimeCT. She led the large group of seven FCIAC players selected to this year’s 12-player GametimeCT All-State Girls Tennis First Team.
Zheng, Greenwich senior Shining Sun, Danbury junior Sydney Radachowsky, and Fairfield Ludlowe junior Mairead Kelly have been four of the best singles players in the state for the last two years. They were all repeat selections to the GametimeCT All-State Girls Tennis First Team.
Greenwich seniors Caitlin Mahoney and Maddy Wilber and their freshman teammate, Sofia Guerrero, were the other three conference players selected to the 2026 GametimeCT All-State Girls Tennis First Team.
Staples, New Canaan and Fairfield Ludlowe all had very good seasons. They joined Greenwich to take up all four semifinal spots in the 2026 Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class LL Girls Tennis Tournament.
The No. 2 seed Staples Wreckers helped arrange a third straight Greenwich vs. Staples championship match in the Class LL state tournament with their 4-3 victory over No. 6 seed New Canaan.
Greenwich’s Cardinals advanced with a 4-0 victory over No. 5 seed Ludlowe before they three-peated in the final with the victory by the same 4-0 score as in the 2025 and ’26 finals.
Coach Jerry Sulli’s Greenwich Cardinals were simply too talented, dominant, and too good to be given a legitimate challenge by any team in the conference and the state throughout both postseason tournaments.
They defended both of their team championships on the New Canaan High School courts. Greenwich won the 2026 FCIAC Girls Tennis Tournament championship with a 4-0 victory over Staples on May 26, and eight days later (June 3) the Cardinals won the program’s 13th overall state title.
Greenwich won two of the four singles matches and two of the three doubles matches to win the program’s 14th overall FCIAC championship. That is the conference record for most FCIAC team titles.
New Canaan has the second most with 11, as the 2024 New Canaan Rams copped that 11th conference crown two years ago with a victory over Greenwich in the FCIAC tourney final.
In this year’s FCIAC final, Greenwich got four impressive victories from singles players Mahoney (6-1, 6-1) and Chloe Culver (6-0, 6-1) and the doubles teams of Wilber-Guerrero (6-0, 6-0) and Bella Barban-Olivia Popp (6-0, 6-3) in their 4-0 victory over Staples.
When the Cardinals got that fourth victory which clinched the FCIAC championship, the other three matches were halted when Sun had a 6-0, 5-1 lead in the No. 1 singles match, Adrianna Gavriloiu of Staples had a 7-6, 1-0 lead in her No. 3 singles match, and Greenwich’s No. 3 doubles team of Clare Sibley and Priya Gupta had a 6-4, 0-0 lead.
Greenwich defeated New Canaan, 4-1, in the semifinals of the FCIAC tournament while Staples advanced to the championship with a 5-2 victory over Fairfield Ludlowe, which had advanced to the conference tournament final in 2025.
The two Cardinals who won their respective singles matches in the semifinals were Mahoney (6-2, 6-0) and Avery Li (6-0, 6-2) while the two doubles teams of Wilber-Guerrero (6-4, 6-4) and Barban-Popp (6-4, 6-4) were also victorious.
Both of those Greenwich doubles duos and Mahoney at No. 2 singles won all three of their matches in the FCIAC tournament.
New Canaan got its victory in the semifinal match featuring two of the state’s best No. 1 singles players when Zheng defeated Sun, 6-2, 6-2.
Among Zheng’s many accomplishments, she was the No. 1 seed at the 2026 CIAC Invitational Tennis Tournament and she capped off her second consecutive undefeated season by defending her singles championship with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over No. 2 seed Sarah Siolkowski of East Catholic.
In winning all six of her matches in this year’s CIAC Invitational in straight sets, Zheng only lost a combined 11 games while winning her 73 total games and all 12 sets.
Like New Canaan’s Zheng, Greenwich’s No. 1 doubles team was also seeded No. 1 at the CIAC Invitational and Wilber and Guerrero also finished undefeated on the season with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Fairfield Ludlowe’s third-seeded duo of senior Paige Seaver and sophomore Allegra Early.
Both of those doubles teams from the FCIAC – Greenwich’s Wilber-Guererro duo and the Ludlowe pair of Seaver and Early – advanced to the CIAC Invitational final with 6-0, 6-0 semifinal victories.
Seaver and Early won five matches to advance to the CIAC Invitational championship doubles match and that was pivotal toward both earning their selection to the 2026 GametimeCT Girls Tennis All-State Second Team.
Senior Camryn Lee and junior Isabella Calaba of New Canaan, and Staples sophomore Olivia Lazar joined Ludlowe’s Seaver and Early in that group of five FCIAC players on that all-state second team.
The quintet of conference players who earned GametimeCT All-State Honorable Mention were senior Scarlett O’Malley and freshman Emma Nichols of Darien, Fairfield Ludlowe senior Elle Seaver, Staples junior Amelia Berkowitz, and Ridgefield freshman Liliana Estrada.
Zheng was selected to the GametimeCT All-State Girls Tennis First Team and All-FCIAC Girls Tennis First Team Singles all three years in high school and has lost just one match in her career – as a freshman in the CIAC Invitational semifinals.
When Radachowsky was a freshman, she was selected to the 2024 GametimeCT All-State Girls Tennis Second Team and 2024 All-FCIAC Girls Tennis First Team Singles. This year she was a repeat selection to the GametimeCT All-State First Team and on the All-FCIAC First Team Singles for the second time in her three-year career after having been All-FCIAC Second Team Singles as a sophomore last year.
Sun and Kelly joined Zheng as the three conference players selected to both the All-FCIAC First Team Singles and GametimeCT All-State First Team last year and this year.
Liesl Purviance of Bridgeport Central was named the Coach of the Year in the FCIAC and Darien won the Team Sportsmanship Award.
There were 42 girls’ tennis players who earned All-FCIAC honors and they’re all listed on the 2026 All-FCIAC Girls Tennis link below: