With a singles sweep, the Leonia girls tennis team did something it had only done once before, and 17 years in waiting.
Aryu Ramalingan, Maya Naik and Reanna Radu won their matches to deliver an NJSIAA Group 1 title over Glen Rock, 3-2 on Friday at the Mercer County Tennis Center in West Windsor.
“The singles players are a year older,” Leonia coach Tim Cullen said of what got the Lions to the top this year. “When you take a look at it, we have three very good singles players, which meant that our doubles could grow over the course of a year, and you saw our doubles went to a tiebreaker in the third set, and that was terrific.”
Leonia had made the Group 1 final five times before, most recently in 2015 in the program’s third appearance in that match in eight seasons since 2008. All came up short of the Lions’ first group title since 2002, until Friday.
Leonia advances to the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions as the sixth seed and will face third-seeded and Group 4 champ East Brunswick in a 5 p.m. match on Sunday at the Garden State Tennis Center in Edison.
Leonia won the NJSIAA Group 1 girls tennis title on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019 at the Mercer County Tennis Center in West Windsor.
Leonia’s win came after the Lions took three of the first four matches off court, with Radu’s and Naik’s wins around a Glen Rock win from Puja Parikh and Rachel Khusid at second doubles. Ramalingan followed Naik’s win with her victory at first singles to seal the title.
“It means so much,” Leonia senior Hannah Futeran said. “We haven’t won a state championship since 2002, and every single year since then, we’ve been working towards another one.”
The Lions had plenty of support, with pink team sweatshirts all over the tennis center for the day’s final match.
“We put in so much more work, and it really felt like everyone was coming together, and the team was really united this year,” senior Morgan Suh said.
