by Chris Jones ·
Friday, June 12, 2026
Front row, from left: Anjana Ramkumar, Nina Livornese, and Aalia Manduru. Back row, from left: Fatima Mulyono, Meghna Nambiar, Coach Chris Holmes, Michelle Xu, and Misha Kalava. Missing: Khivi Nanra. (Courtesy photo)
The Bromfield girls varsity tennis team battled its way to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 4 state semifinals with a 3-2 win over the No. 4 seed Amesbury Redhawks, Thursday, June 4, in Amesbury.
On a brutally hot afternoon in the low 90s, Bromfield’s second singles player Misha Kalava crushed Kenzie Cameron 6-2, 6-0, and then the first doubles team of Meghna Nambiar and Nina Livornese dispatched Amesbury’s Maggie Francis and Sammie Porter 6-1, 6-1. The Trojans were without starter Khivi Nanra, who is injured, but seventh-grader Livornese, who typically plays third singles, stepped up.
That left 1 point to earn, and first singles Michelle Xu claimed it with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Maeve Snyder. “Michelle won easily by score, but her opponent was a difficult player to play,” head coach Chris Holmes said.
According to Holmes, Snyder, a fleet-of-foot southpaw, never hit the same ball twice, using a variety of spins and pace that prevented Xu from finding any kind of rhythm. So Xu decided to move her opponent all over the court and resorted to a slice forehand, a shot she almost never uses. “Michelle is an indestructible athlete, and on hot days, that’s worth a lot. By the second half of the second set, her opponent was tired and finished,” Holmes said.
In the other two matches, the Trojans weren’t as competitive. Redhawk Katie Welch defeated Fatima Mulyono 6-2, 6-1, and in second doubles, Liv Thorpe and Bailey Kimball beat Aalia Manduru and Anjana Ramkumar 6-0, 6-0. However, Holmes credits Mulyono with a gutsy effort: “Fatima kept them [Amesbury] off the scoreboard for close to two hours.”
Psychologically, this kept the pressure off the Trojans. “It doesn’t give the other team a boost–-they think they’re going to win third singles and get that point, but they haven’t won it yet,” Holmes said.
The victory marks the second year in a row that varsity girls tennis has made the state semis. Last year, Bromfield bowed to Manchester-Essex, losing by 2 points in a third-set tiebreaker that kept them from the finals.
But this was not to be Bromfield’s year. On June 10, the team faced five-time defending Division 4 state champion Hamilton-Wenham at St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury at 2 p.m., losing 3-2 in a hard-fought finale to their season. Go to harvardpress.com for more details. Prior to Wednesday’s game, according to Holmes, only two Central Massachusetts teams remained in this year’s state tournament: the Westborough varsity boys and the Bromfield varsity girls.
MIAA Division 4 Girls Tennis Tournament, Round of 8.
- First singles: Michelle Xu (Bromfield) defeated Maeve Snyder (Amesbury) 6-4, 6-1
- Second singles: Misha Kalava (B) def. Kenzie Cameron (A) 6-2, 6-0
- Third singles: Katie Welch (A) def. Fatima Mulyono (B) 6-2, 6-1
- First doubles: Meghna Nambiar and Nina Livornese (B) def. Maggie Francis and Sammie Porter (A) 6-1, 6-1
- Second doubles: Liv Thorpe and Bailey Kimball (A) def. Aalia Manduru and Anjana Ramkumar (B) 6-0, 6-0