On Tuesday, May 31, The Kew-Forest School tennis team defeated Portledge School 3-2 to win the 2011 Independent Private and Parochial Schools Athletic League (IPPSAL) championship on Portledge's hard courts in Locust Valley.

Portledge was the defending champion, and has won the title five out of the last eight years.

Rising star Ariana Rodriguez, a USTA nationally ranked player and freshman at Kew-Forest, defeated Portledge's #2 player Cameron Daniels, a sophomore who is also a ranked USTA player, 8-6, in a close deciding match.

Other victories for Kew-Forest included: Mike Anzalone over George Gage, 8-1; and Macklin Fluehr and Whitney Schott over Vishal Chinchwadkar and Eddie Huai, 8-6. Portledge's #1 player Alex Shidlovsky defeated Kew-Forest's Lanny Vaisman, 1-8.

Rodriguez and Schott were the only two girls playing in the otherwise all-boy competition.

This year, The Kew-Forest School launched a new tennis academy in conjunction with the school. The program is conducted at the historic West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.