Greenwood High School tennis coach Dexter Pearcy, starting his sixth season at the helm, doesn’t have to look far to find reasons for optimism entering the 2026 season. On the boys’ side, the Bulldogs return an unusually large and experienced senior class. On the girls’ side, the Lady Bulldogs face what Pearcy expects to be a demanding conference race, but they counter with proven postseason experience, developing depth, and a roster he believes can hold its own against that competition.
Taken together, Greenwood enters the season with something every coach wants before the first meaningful serve is struck – options. That could be particularly valuable for a sport in which a lineup can change quickly because of injury, availability, or the simple process of determining where varsity ends and junior varsity begins.
Pearcy says he believes Greenwood has enough overall depth to absorb those changes without suffering a dramatic drop in performance and competitiveness. “We can just plug and play and keep rolling along,” Pearcy said, adding that players moving into larger roles already have varsity-level experience. “It’s not like it’s a huge drop-off.”
That depth is especially evident in a boys’ roster built around eight seniors — Sawyer Harry, Jon David Hefflin, Danh Nguyen, Lucas Roper, Caleb Schaefer, Thomas Veatch, Hayes Whitson and Drew Williams. They are joined by junior Weston King; sophomores Abel Duvall and Kaleb King; and freshmen Sterling Adams, Jacob Pomianowski and Jackson Teeter.
Eight seniors in one class gives Pearcy something hard to manufacture – players who have spent years learning how varsity matches unfold, how to handle pressure, and how to recover when a match begins moving in the wrong direction. It also gives the Bulldogs a large veteran core capable of setting the standard for the younger Bulldogs coming behind them.
The Lady Bulldogs are younger overall, but hardly short on experience of their own. Greenwood’s girls’ roster includes seniors Klaire Holland, Alivia Kittell and Taelyn Martin, along with juniors Rylea Jones, Shealynn Mills, Madison Nguyen and Charlie Vaughn. The sophomore group consists of Paisley Berg, Molly Conley, Natalie Copher, Gracie Gibbs, Bristol Mott, Presley Travis and Ana Rizzo, while Sydney Church, Emma Grace McCants and Avery Tidwell make up the freshman class.
Martin gives that group an especially valuable piece at the top. Pearcy pointed to her state tournament experience and said she finished as a conference runner-up in doubles each of the past two seasons. “That’s huge experience for us,” Pearcy said.
That experience could matter because Pearcy expects the girls’ conference field to present an especially stiff challenge. He believes the Lady Bulldogs may encounter more resistance across the conference than Greenwood’s boys, but he was equally clear that he expects his girls to be part of that competition rather than simply chasing it.
“I think the girls are going to be a little stronger,” Pearcy said of the conference landscape. “But even though the conference is more competitive in girls, I think we’re going to be competitive as well.” The encouraging part for Greenwood is that the Lady Bulldogs’ outlook does not rest entirely on one accomplished senior.
Pearcy specifically mentioned Natalie Copher and Ana Rizzo as two girls who’ve been close to the varsity-junior varsity dividing line, indicating the kind of competition Greenwood has developing inside its own lineup. Both girls are sophomores, part of a seven-player 10th-grade class that gives the program a substantial group to develop not only for this season, but for the next couple years. That creates a useful combination for Pearcy – seniors capable of setting the pace now and younger players pushing for court time behind them.
Greenwood also enters the season with continuity on the coaching side. Pearcy said Naomi Conley, Molly Conley’s mother, is returning after volunteering and coaching alongside him last season. He is also getting help from Leesha McKay, who has been running Greenwood’s junior high program.
Pearcy praised the job McKay has done with the younger players and said he asked whether she would be willing to help at the high-school level as well. “She said she’d love to help,” Pearcy said. Her involvement could have benefits well beyond another adult helping run practices. With McKay already working with the junior high program, Greenwood has an opportunity to create greater continuity between the players coming through the younger ranks and what Pearcy expects from them once they reach high school. That pipeline matters for any program, but Greenwood has a particularly interesting transition ahead.
The Bulldogs can lean heavily on the present this season because of their eight seniors. At the same time, that makes the development of King, Duvall, King, Adams, Pomianowski and Teeter increasingly important as the GHS boys prepare for the eventual departure of such a large graduating class.
Yet the Lady Bulldogs face almost the reverse situation. Their roster has only three seniors but 14 players in grades 9-11, giving Pearcy a sizeable young foundation paired with a few experienced upperclassmen. But that doesn’t guarantee championships, deep postseason runs, or even an easy path through conference play. The coach knows better than to promise any of those things before the season begins.
What Greenwood can reasonably claim is something more useful in August: experience at the top, competition for positions underneath it, and enough depth that the lineup should not be fragile. For the Bulldogs, the 2026 season is an opportunity for a large senior class to make its final run together. For the Lady Bulldogs, it’s a chance for Martin and the other upperclassmen to combine postseason experience with one of the program’s deepest groups of young players. And for Pearcy, it means starting the year without having to hope that everything goes perfectly. If somebody must move up, the coach believes he has another player ready.
If the girls’ conference proves as difficult as expected, the Lady Bulldogs believe they have enough experience to fight through it. And if the Bulldogs’ seniors perform like a group that has been preparing for one final season together, Greenwood could have plenty to look forward to on both sides of the net.
Speaking of the conference race, the 5A West will be somewhat different this fall with the subtraction of Harrison and the addition of Mountain Home, plus the subtraction of the Shiloh Christian boys while the Lady Saints remain in 5A. Harrison is moving down to 4A while Mountain Home is rejoining the 5A West. The Shiloh boys have been rewarded for their dominant play by being kicked up to 6A. The other 5A West teams include Greenwood, Siloam Springs, Alma, Van Buren, Farmington, and Russellville.
According to Coach Pearcy, he expects the conference race to be very competitive, especially with the addition of Mountain Home’s excellent tennis program and the traditional strength of the Shiloh girls. “I think we’ve got a chance to be pretty competitive. Our five senior boys all have varsity experience. They all played last year. I think that experience is a big deal. I think some of their [abilities] have grown big time. So, knowing what’s coming back, I think we have a chance to be really competitive.”