By Copey Rollins ’26
Student Writer, Bearcat Sports Media

The New England championships were an amazing success for both the boys and girls teams as they were both able to come home with second place trophies.

On Saturday and Sunday February 10th and 11th, the boys and girls traveled to Deerfield in order to compete in the New England Championships with the boys being the fourth seed and the girls being the second seed. 

The boys started their weekend off by playing Deerfield, the host of the tournament. They won the game 4-3 beating Deerfield by a little bit less than their 6-1 win in the start of the year. Oscar Okonkwo ’25, Rohan Gupta ’26, Arvaan Motwane ’26, Dwyer Illick ’26, and the number eight seed Leon Li ’27 all won their games, in order to give the Bearcats a strong start to their tournament. 

Later that day they went up against Kent hoping to win just as they had done earlier in the season. The matches started off with the top three Hotchkiss players: Okonkwo, Parth Khera ’26 and Gupta all winning their matches. Both Liam Waldron ’25 and Eli Levy ’24 had extremely close matches; however, they were both unable to beat their opponents. Arvaan was the fourth Bearcat to win, rounding out the first day for the team. 

At noon on Sunday Hotchkiss went up against Brunswick, the number one seed in the tournament and the team that is number two in the nation. Okonkwo, Khera, and Gupta all won their games in a commanding manner however the rest of the team was unable to get a win after a lot of very hard fought, close games. Captain Oscar Oknkwo said, “We all thought we could do it when the odds were stacked against us. Although we lost, it was a close 4-3 match that we’re all proud of.” 

At the end of the day the boys were very happy with the way that the tournament went as they were able to place higher than their seed. Captain Eli Levy said, “The team is very happy with how this weekend went, and it gives us a lot of confidence going into Nationals. We hope to beat our best finish in our history, which is fifth.” The tournament went very well for the girls, they were seeded second and were able to place second too.

On Saturday they had their first match against Choate, beating them 7-0 just as they had done three days before. The matches were won by Elise Kang ’25, Maya Mansoor ’24, Makeda Moshi ’26, Olivia Choo ’26, Virginia Wood ’25, Eloise Oakley ’27, Campbell Burke ‘24 and Tori Jenkins ‘24 in the eighth match. 

Later that afternoon they played Tabor Academy, winning 5-2. The games against Tabor were won by Mansoor, Choo, Wood, Oakley, Kang and Burke in the eighth match. Makeda and Elise both had extremely tight games as they went up against two extremely talented players however they were unable to win their matches.

On Sunday, the Bearcats played Greenwich Academy, a team that is currently ranked number one in the country. Greenwich has won New Englands since 1986 and they kept that streak this year. Though they lost to Greenwich all of the girls put up very strong fights, they all played extremely well and were very happy with how they played.

The girls were really happy with how the tournament went and it served as good preparation for nationals starting on February 23rd. Captain Tori Jenkins wrote “New Englands was a great experience for the girls and gave us good things to work on going into Nationals in two weeks.” The Girls team is seeded third for Nationals and they hope to go beyond that and get the second place trophy. 

Both the Boys and Girls will have their last games of the season at nationals in Philadelphia coming up soon as they hope to perform better than they have in the past, continuing on current success.