Last year it was a double three-peat year for the Greenwich High School boys’ tennis team and their coach, Ray Marschall.
This year’s 2026 Cardinals, under the guidance of new coach Mike Racanelli, defended both team titles when they won FCIAC and state championships for the fourth consecutive year.
Greenwich and New Canaan both had tremendous teams and tremendous seasons, and the conference had many of the best players in the state to highlight the excellent 2026 season for boys’ tennis in the FCIAC.
Greenwich and New Canaan both won state championships after Greenwich defeated New Canaan, 4-3, in the championship match of the 2026 FCIAC Boys Tennis Tournament on May 22 at Wilton High School.
That matchup for the conference championship between Greenwich and New Canaan was a very good one regarding the closeness of both teams and it included a few close back-and-forth matches among the four singles matches and three doubles matches.
Greenwich’s Zach Schwartz elevated his game midway through a great No. 4 singles match with New Canaan’s Roman D’Andrea when Schwartz came back for a pivotal victory. After D’Andrea took a 1-0 lead when he won the tiebreaker, 7-4, to win the first set, Schwartz got on a hot roll in the last two sets and rallied back for a 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-2 victory.
The Cardinals won another singles match and got victories from a pair of doubles teams en route to copping the Greenwich boys’ tennis program’s 20th FCIAC championship, a new conference record.
Whichever team won this year’s FCIAC tournament championship match would have that record. Last year Greenwich defeated Staples, 4-2, in the FCIAC final to pull into a tie with New Canaan with 19 conference championships apiece.
Greenwich’s Franciso Lindia won the No. 3 singles match by a 6-1, 6-2 margin while the Cardinals got their other two wins from the No. 1 doubles team of Jake Orbanowski and Ryan Stanton (6-1, 6-4) and the No. 2 doubles team of Milo Russo and Will Neuenfeldt (6-0, 6-1).
New Canaan got a pair of victories at No. 1 and No. 2 singles – from Jackson Mountford (6-0, 6-2) at No. 1 and from Quinn Scanlon (7-6, 6-4) at No. 2 – and the Rams got their other win from the No. 3 doubles team of James Amundsen and Andrew Liebau (7-5, 6-1).
Both teams had identical 17-1 records after that FCIAC final.
Coach Ben Young’s New Canaan Rams were such a good team that they were the squad that dealt Greenwich its only loss of the season when they defeated Greenwich, 4-3, on April 14.
Greenwich’s second-seeded Cardinals shut out Staples, 4-0, while the top-seeded New Canaan Rams defeated Darien, 4-1, in the conference tournament semifinals on the home courts of the higher-seeded teams.
New Canaan’s victory over Greenwich in the regular season inevitably secured the Rams the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament which included eight teams. The Rams finished the FCIAC season with a 15-0 record and Greenwich was 14-1.
Third-seeded Staples, No. 4 Trumbull and No. 5 Darien all finished 12-3, and the FCIAC tournament field was filled out by No. 6 Wilton (10-5), No. 7 Fairfield Ludlowe (9-6), and No. 8 Fairfield Warde (8-7).
In the opening quarterfinal round of the FCIAC Boys’ Tennis Tournament on May 12 on the courts of the higher-seeded teams: Greenwich beat Fairfield Ludlowe, New Canaan defeated Fairfield Warde, and Staples beat Wilton by the identical scores of 4-0, and Darien advanced to the semifinals with a 6-1 victory over Trumbull.
Eleven days after the FCIAC championship match on May 22, top-seeded Greenwich won the CIAC Class LL Boys Tennis Tournament with a 4-0 victory over No. 2 seed Fairfield Prep and No. 1 seed New Canaan won the CIAC Class L Boys Tennis Tournament with a 5-0 victory over No. 7 seed Fairfield Ludlowe on June 3.
New Canaan played in the Class L final for the fifth consecutive year and won its second state championship in the last three years.
Greenwich and New Canaan both finished with 21-1 overall records after winning all four matches in their respective state tournaments.
Greenwich’s 21-1 season this year followed three seasons in a row when the Cardinals finished with unbeaten 22-0 records from 2023-25, so Greenwich has gone 87-1 since a 4-1 loss to Staples in the 2022 CIAC Class LL Boys Tennis Tournament final.
The final event of this year was the 2026 CIAC Invitational Boys Tennis Tournament.
Staples High School’s Kieran Anand and Jonathan Greenspan teamed up and were seeded No. 8 in the doubles draw and they won the championship with a 6-2, 6-2 victory in the final over Greenwich’s seventh-seeded doubles duo of Newuenfeldt and Russo.
Trumbull senior Dean Jackson, who was the Player of the Year in the FCIAC, and Westhill junior Rachit Jha both advanced to the semifinals in the singles draw of the CIAC Invitational.
There were 36 players statewide who were recipients of GametimeCT all-state awards and more than half of them, 19 players, were from the FCIAC.
There were seven conference players among the dozen total selected to the 2026 GametimeCT All-State Boys Tennis First Team, eight FCIAC players made the All-State Second Team, and four more from the conference were All-State Honorable Mention.
Mountford, New Canaan’s superb senior, made the All-State First Team for the third straight year.
It was also the third consecutive year in which Jha and Darien junior Kai Collins earned all-state kudos. They were both chosen to the All-State First Team for the second straight year. Two years ago, when Collins and Jha were freshmen, Collins made the All-State Second Team and Jha was All-State Honorable Mention.
Mountford of New Canaan, Jackson of Trumbull, Collins of Darien and Jha of Westhill were joined on this year’s GametimeCT All-State First Team by Stamford senior Omar Rhazali, New Canaan senior Quinn Scanlan, and Ridgefield sophomore Nathanael Campos.
The eight FCIAC players among the 12 total selected to the GametimeCT All-State Second Team included senior Elias Orrell, juniors Owen Kron and Jake Orbanowski, and sophomore Ryan Stanton of Greenwich; sophomores Sebastian Elizondo and Andrew Ridloff of Staples; Darien senior Rithik Melwani; and Stamford sophomore David Kaplan.
Anand and Greenspan, the two Staples seniors who teamed up to win the doubles championship at the CIAC Invitational, and New Canaan seniors Grady Campo and Graydon Sieghart were the four FCIAC players who earned All-State Honorable Mention.
There were 47 players who earned All-FCIAC honors in the categories of either First Team Singles, Second Team Singles, First Team Doubles, Second Team Doubles, and Honorable Mention, and they are listed on the link below: