High school girls’ tennis teams are not defined by its credentials in September.
Similar to Major League Baseball, it is all about what happens in October.
For Bridgewater-Raritan High School, this has been peaking when it matters the most heading into its debut in this fall’s state tournament, where it finished as runner-up in its state sectional playoff bracket one year ago.
But over the course of the shortest season amongst all sanctioned NJSIAA fall sports, every match proved to be critical for the Panthers in the long run, even if they were not directly reflected in Bridgewater-Raritan’s record.
“We knew going in that it would be a tough regular season schedule,” said second-year head coach Evan Rosenberg, whose squad was promoted to a Skyland Conference Delaware Division that is arguably amongst one of New Jersey’s most difficult divisions.
“We just needed to get better, knowing in the postseason that as long as we got there, we would have an opportunity to make some noise.”
Thanks to a grueling schedule consisting of two matches each against Pingry School (ranked No. 1 in New Jersey), Ridge High School, Montgomery High School, Hillsborough High School, and Bernards High School, one victory two weeks into the school year proved to be enough to send Bridgewater-Raritan to the big dance.
Most importantly, whether in triumph or defeat in each of their subsequent rematches in their two-game series against the aforementioned teams, the Panthers’ improvements were evident.
After its state tournament opener Tuesday evening at Watchung Hills Regional High School, Bridgewater-Raritan is still dancing, and its resilience has truly paid off.
Despite winning just two matches over the first month of school in 2025, fifth-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan (3-8) earned a first-round bye thanks to its strength of schedule and is now just one victory away from booking its return trip to the state sectional finals.
This is because the Panthers won on a season-high four courts at fourth-seeded Watchung Hills (6-3) to punctuate an impressive 4-1 upset victory in the quarterfinals of the NJSIAA North New Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 tournament on Tuesday, October 7, in Warren.
“We’re coming off of a season last year where we made the sectional finals, so a lot of our girls have the postseason experience,” explained Rosenberg after his team’s victory, which advanced Bridgewater-Raritan to the state sectional semifinals with its young roster consisting of six juniors and one sophomore. “We’ve seen our growth throughout the season, even if the wins haven’t always been there. You can definitely see that we have gotten better since we started.”
“I’m happy that our girls are starting to see the dividends of all of their hard work and their resilience.”
Next up for fifth-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan (3-8) is a trip to top-seeded J.P. Stevens High School (8-5) in the state sectional semifinals on Thursday, October 9, at 3 p.m. in Edison.
The winner of this matchup will advance to the state sectional finals against either third-seeded Columbia High School (8-5) or second-seeded and reigning sectional champion Westfield High School (9-4).
The higher-seeded of these two remaining sectional finalists will serve as host to the state sectional title match Tuesday, October 14.
Now one the last four teams standing in their state sectional tournament bracket, Bridgewater-Raritan can certainly see this now if it did not do so already.
On Tuesday evening, juniors Mysha Jain and Sophia Liu defeated senior Paola Caravello and junior Sahana Mehta by a score of 6-0, 6-2 in second doubles to put the Panthers on the board first. First doubles proved to be a massive swing court early, however, before juniors Rhia Evans and Aadhya Rakesh pulled away for a critical 6-4, 6-2 victory against Watchung Hills juniors Kaitlyn Long and Lilla Bellish.
This capped off a sweep of both doubles courts for Bridgewater-Raritan for the third match this season, and the Panthers now have a perfect record of 3-0 in such matches.
The end of the first set of first doubles felt like an eternity, as Evans and Rakesh found themselves clinging to a 5-4 advantage in the opening set. While tennis scoring in a set ascends from zero (love), 15, 30, to 40 before the ensuing game point, players are required to win each game by two points. Otherwise, a 40-40 tie: also known as a ‘deuce’, begins, where players who score the next point earn the ‘advantage’ and can win by scoring the next point.
Otherwise, the score reverts back to ‘deuce’, and the process repeats for an indefinite amount of time until the game has a winner.
In this case, Evans and Rakesh prevailed to take the opening set, 6-4, and put themselves in the driver’s seat during the rest of their best-of-three match.
“It was really stressful, because if we let them win that, then it would go to [seven points],” described Evans of her duo’s overtime scenario, which would have guaranteed a set tiebreak had Long and Bellish knotted set one 5-5 due to the win-by-two requirement across the board."
“You want to win as fast as you can.”
Whether it be a 6-4 defeat, or especially a 7-6 defeat after an ensuing set tiebreak, being on the wrong side of a set-one result that goes the distance is usually a rough situation to mentally come back from. After heading into set two with a coveted one-set cushion, this certainly eased the pressure for the Bridgewater-Raritan pair, which eventually closed out a decisive 6-2 set two victory to take the remaining doubles court.
“Changing your mindset especially is important, because we were down a lot of the time, and I think there were two points that we had [advantage-in and set point],” Evans explained. “So we just needed to keep pushing them back, and make them hit all of the defensive shots. We could see that we were making the mistakes and hitting it out, so we had to get out of our heads and keep our foot on the gas.”
“We were up and could not let back.”
Even though Evans was on this postseason stage last year, Rakesh: her doubles partner, was making her state tournament debut.
Yet both of them looked like they had been there before, especially given the fierce competition they faced during the regular season along with the Somerset County Girls’ Tennis Tournament.
“It was honestly really fun and I enjoyed it,” Rakesh reflected of her match, notably in the back-and-forth first set. “It was a little stressful in the beginning, because we were bouncing back. They would win a point, we would win a point, and there were a lot of deuces. In the beginning, building up our consistency and making sure we hit cross court was important.”
“Once we got out of our own heads and took it one point at a time, we were able to get up and win the set.”
When she was a sophomore during Bridgewater-Raritan’s 15-4 campaign one year ago, Evans previously teamed up in second doubles with current sophomore Skye Cabatu, who was elected as the Panthers’ co-captain along with junior Vivian Chao this season. After playing doubles all of last year, Chao and Cabatu moved up to second singles and third singles, respectively, to fill the singles spots vacated by last year’s senior co-captains and since-graduated members of the Bridgewater-Raritan High School Class of 2024: Jessica Kozyra and Madison McInerney.
“I’m really proud of Skye for moving up to singles,” Evans said of her former doubles partner. “She is a really good co-team captain and role model, even though she is a sophomore and younger than me. She’s really fast on the course and is really good at singles, especially because she has been playing lacrosse all spring and summer and picked up a tennis racquet one month before the season.”
With junior varsity [JV] girls’ tennis consisting entirely of doubles duos, it was the next woman up onto the varsity squad for Rakesh, who has picked up right where Cabatu left off as Evans’ partner in 2025.
Now, she is one team victory away from her own trip to the state sectional finals.
“Rhia is a really good doubles partner,” praised Rakesh of Evans. “Even during the points, she tells me to move up and step into the ball, and it really helps me play. I’ve practiced more this year than last year, and I think my mindset has changed.”
“That has really helped me throughout this year.”
On the singles side Tuesday evening, Cabatu rebounded from a set-one loss to defeat junior April Marie Ortiz in third singles by a score of 2-6, 6-2, 10-6 in a match capped off by a decisive 10-point tiebreak. Chao won against Watchung Hills senior, 6-2, 6-1, to give Bridgewater-Raritan a season-high four court victories after taking three in each of its previous two triumphs over Bernards.
For Chao, it was the perfect time to deliver her most decisive individual victory of the season, especially given her transition from doubles to singles and the amount of extra ground she has covered this fall.
“Going from doubles to singles has been one of the biggest shifts this year,” revealed Chao of this move. “In doubles, you have a partner on the court. For singles, you may be playing two or three-hour matches alone with your own thoughts. That’s been something I’ve been trying to overcome, but as the season has gone on from September to October, it’s been a lot easier talking to myself and working on self-attitude.”
“Coach Rosenberg has also been so helpful with his advice.”
Like her teammates, Chao’s subsequent results have been great improvements upon previous matchups, which have proven to prepare Bridgewater-Raritan for its return to the postseason. Even though the Panthers were unable to complete the five-court sweep, junior Neha Ashok nearly completed an epic rally from a big set-one defeat in first singles before falling 6-1, 7-5 against senior Emily Wang, who narrowly avoided having to play a decisive 10-point tiebreak against Ashok to end the evening.
Three of Chao’s losses were 6-0, 6-0 sweeps in Bridgewater-Raritan’s first four matches of the year alone, but since then, she has managed to extend her second singles matches to lengthy marathons while gaining valuable reps to further grow in the long run.
Four of her other losses have come in matches where at least one set has gone to some form of a tiebreaker, including two of them in decisive third-set 10-point tiebreakers.
In other words, taking six of nine total games in her 6-2, 6-1 victory will certainly go a long way as part of her successful season.
“Becoming a captain has definitely been an experience, and the most important thing I learned is the idea of being responsible for the team and helping organize events,” described Chao of her duties. “Skye and her mom have been a really big part in that as well. I’m really grateful that I’m a co-captain this year, because I have someone else I can rely on if needed.”
“I hope to be as good of a captain as Jess and Maddie were last year.”