Daily Journal Girls’ Tennis Players of the Year: Sacred Heart Prep’s Jena Azmeh and Charlotte Weber

She was No. 2 because she could not supplant another four-year starter — Charlotte v, who has held the top singles spot for the Gators for the last four years.

Weber, however, had previously qualified for CCS as an individual, making the singles draw her first three years. She was a first-round loser her freshman year, lost in the second round as a sophomore before making the CCS singles championship match last year as a junior, falling to Rachel Gee of Evergreen Valley-SJ, 6-2, 6-4.

So going into their senior seasons, both Weber and Azmeh decided to join forces in an attempt to capture a CCS doubles title.

Winning a section doubles championship might be even harder than a singles crown because many of the doubles teams are comprised of the top two singles players from a given school, just like Weber and Azmeh were trying to do.

“They ended up getting the No. 1 seed, which is not always a good thing,” said SHP head coach Losaline Mafileo.

But the Gators’ duo lived up to their seeding. In addition to their normal singles plays during West Bay Athletic League regular-season play, the pair played three tournaments together — the Golden State Invitational, which is a doubles-only tournament, along with the WBAL and CCS doubles tournaments. After losing their second match of the Golden State Invitational to a tandem from Los Altos, Weber and Azmeh ran the table. They won 11 matches in a row and were 12-1 as a doubles team, culminating in the 2025 CCS doubles title and earning 2025 Daily Journal Girls’ Tennis Players of the Year.

“We were always pretty compatible,” Weber said. “When we played the Golden State the year before, we did really well and had a lot of fun.”

Weber and Azmeh became SHP’s first CCS girls’ tennis champions since the second of Sarah Choy’s back-t0-back singles titles in 2014 and 2015. The last Gators’ doubles crown was accomplished by Sam Rosekrans and Haley Hemm, back in 2006.

“It was something (Weber and Azmeh) wanted to do and it worked out,” Mafileo said. “The doubles thing was almost like a stress reliever for them, to just have fun. They knew they had a chance to do well.”

Not only did the duo do well, they dominated.

Early-season success

The early rounds of both the Golden State and WBAL tournaments were played using a pro-set scoring system, one in which the first team to win eight games won the match. In the Golden State Invitational, Weber and Azmeh beat a team from Amador Valley-Pleasanton, 8-0. That was followed by a tie-break loss to Los Altos, 8-7, and then it was winning the rest of the way.

Their third match was an 8-1 win over Mission San Jose-Fremont. Their final two matches of that tournament went back to traditional tennis sets and Weber and Azmeh posted a 6-0, 6-1 win over Monte Vista-Danville and 6-2, 6-0 over Lynbrook.

After that, there were no more doubles play until the postseason as Weber and Azmeh turned their attention to the Gators’ team where they enjoyed just as much singles success. Both went 13-3 in their singles matches this season. Both were swept by Menlo, with Weber falling to the Los Gatos No. 1 in the CCS team tournament, and Azmeh dropping a regular-season decision to Harker.

Between their singles and doubles records, the pair were both 23-4 on the season.

But they didn’t completely abandon their doubles training.

“We practiced (doubles) a lot outside of (team) practice,” Azmeh said. “We played a lot of doubles against my (older) brothers and Charlotte’s mom.”

Weber’s mom, Ahn, played collegiately at LSU.

The two worked so well together because their styles of play complemented each other and the two have a longtime chemistry as best friends since middle school.

“My volleys are very good and I have a big forehand. I’m an aggressive player, creating points. Jena, she doesn’t miss,” Weber said.

Said Azmeh: “I cover the back really well, which is why we work so well together. … A big thing for me is, I had so much fun playing with Charlotte, I felt no pressure at all.”

After the Gators went 4-6 as a team and finished fourth in the WBAL Foothill Division behind Harker, Menlo School and Castilleja, Weber and Azmeh finally got to put their doubles skills back to work.

And they showed no signs of rust.

Post-season dominance

Up first was the WBAL doubles team and, like they did at the Golden State in September, Weber and Azmeh bulldozed the field. The first two rounds used pro-set scoring and the tandem went a combined 16-2. In the semifinals, they beat a Crystal team 6-3, 6-0 to move into the final.

There, Weber and Azmeh got a little revenge by finally beating Menlo this season, beating the Knights’ tandem 6-1, 6-1 for the WBAL championship.

That earned them the No. 1 seed in CCS, which did not slow their roll. They beat Wilcox, Menlo and Carlmont in straight sets, dropping just nine games over six sets.

The win over the Scots moved Weber and Azmeh into the CCS final where they experienced their first adversity as a doubles team. Taking on Monta Vista sisters Leilani and Zoe Laruelle, Weber and Azmeh won the first set,7-5, but dropped the second, 4-6.

In the third-set super tiebreaker, a race to 10 points, the SHP pair found themselves down 1-6.

“Going into the third set, I know we talked about not having nerves, but we had come all this way. I really wanted to win,” Azmeh said. “We were a little panicked, but we said just take it one point at a time.”

And the Gators climbed back into the tiebreaker. But they eventually faced a match point, down 7-8. But Weber and Azmeh won the final three points to capture the CCS title.

“Disbelief. I was so in shock,” Azmeh said. “I was so excited. I was so happy because we had been working for it for so long. It felt unreal.”