Cranbrook tennis poses with the 2025 Division 3 state championship trophy Oct. 25 in Midland.
By: Scott Bentley | Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle | Published November 10, 2025
MIDLAND/BLOOMFIELD HILLS — Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood won the 2025 Division 3 state championship Oct. 25 at Midland Tennis Center.
The win reestablishes Cranbrook as the premier boys tennis program in the division, as this is the school’s 10th state title just since 2008.
“It means so much,” Cranbrook senior Jace Bernard said. “(Last year) we had states on our home courts and we were, I would say, expected to win, and we didn’t pull it off.”
Cranbrook hosted the 2024 finals and finished behind Detroit Country Day and Ann Arbor Greenhills. Those seniors never forgot that feeling and made it a mission to finish the job this time around.
“This whole offseason, and during the season, our main goal was to get the championship back,” Bernard explained. “We knew how bad it felt the year before. Looking back now it feels so good to get it back.”
The victory is worth celebrating and certainly wasn’t easy. Cranbrook edged out Detroit Country Day by one point a year removed from losing by two points. Division 3 is always competitive, and this year, 34 points was enough to hoist the Division 3 trophy.
“We know it takes every single person to get the win,” Bernard said. “If one person were to not make it far then we know it would really hurt the team. We had that mindset of the team over the individual.”
The biggest factor in Cranbrook Kingswood’s victory was depth. The team made the final match in a whopping seven of eight flights with victories in four events.
“I think we were just stronger from top to bottom,” Cranbrook Kingswood head coach Steve Herdoiza said. “That’s the beauty of our team is that we could win in a number of different ways.”
Cranbrook was in front for most of the weekend, but Detroit Country Day was on the team’s heels the entire weekend, and the final result came down to the wire.
“We were in front and we needed Josh (Day), our four singles player, to win,” Herdoiza explained. “That was maybe the third to last match that was on. Once he won we knew that we couldn’t be caught. … It came down to the very end.”
State titles in tennis have become an expectation at Cranbrook, and there doesn’t look to be any change in that regard going forward. Although the senior class was stellar for the program this year, there’s already a very talented core of underclassmen who made their mark in 2025.
Players like sophomore Eli Rosen, junior Josh Day, junior Ryan VanDyke, sophomore Dylan Popat, junior Andy Yu and freshman Henry DeMuth are ready to carry the torch and help mold the next class just as this year’s seniors did with them.
“It starts with the seniors and their leadership and what they brought to us … guiding these guys on the right approach to things,” Herdoiza said. “We have good young talent … and they had a willingness to follow the lead of the seniors.”
The history books will see Cranbrook with 34 points, Detroit Country Day with 33 points, Holland Christian with 26 and Ann Arbor Greenhills with 23 in what was an electric state final for the second year in a row.
“It’s the most competitive the state has been in a long time,” Herdoiza said.
This is Cranbrook Kingswood’s eighth state title in the past 11 years, and Steve Herdoiza has been the head coach for six. Either Detroit Country Day, Cranbrook Kingswood or Ann Arbor Greenhills has won the Division 3 title each year since 2007.