Port Washington wins state large schools girls tennis championship
Port Washington players celebrate winning the state girls tennis team championship at the USTA National Tennis Center on Friday, Nov 6, 2026. Credit: Anna Sergeeva
In 2022, then-eighth-grader Christiana Kent concluded her first season on the Port Washington girls tennis team with a loss in the state championship match.
The Vikings failed to return to that stage until this year. There was only one fitting way for Kent, now a senior, to close out her high school career. Top-seeded Port Washington defeated No. 2 Horace Greeley, 5-2, to earn its first state large schools title on Friday at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing.
Kent and partner Shoriya Bhat-Bhandarkar clinched the match with a 6-3, 6-2 first doubles win over Sophia Wang and Anya Gunnar.
“This is such a full-circle moment,” Kent said. “This was such a big day for us, and ending my senior year with this match was the best possible thing I could’ve asked for. We also have a lot of younger players, so it was important to us to bring them here and show them this experience.”
The Vikings took down No. 4 Clarence, 5-2, in the semifinals earlier in the day and had an impressive doubles showing, sweeping both matches. After the championship win, Bhat-Bhandarkar said the emotions were beyond words.
“I still don’t even know what to say,” she said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It’s amazing. I want to savor every moment of it.”
She has been Kent’s longtime doubles partner, and neither wanted to finish with any regrets. Win or lose, it was the final match of the pair’s high school career.
“We wanted to leave it all out there,” Kent said. “We’ve been doubles partners for three years, so we have a flow on the court. We work really well together and we kept saying about this match that the only way for us to do this was to do it together.”
When Port Washington (18-3) won the Nassau title on Oct. 21, coach Shane Helfner’s message to the team was to change the narrative. He gave each member of the team a pen to symbolize it.
What started as rewriting the script has become a story with a fairy-tale ending.
“To know the journey that we took to get here and the obstacles we had to overcome, to know we’ve gone as far as you can go as a team is incredible,” Helfner said. “I owe everything to the girls and all their hard work. It all added up to this moment and I just couldn’t be happier.”
Tess Ferguson is a reporter on Newsday's high school sports staff. She joined the team after graduating with a journalism degree from Ithaca College in 2025.
