1. Carol Lee’s feats top 2015 list

Carol Lee gets ready to serve during a singles game in the 2015 IT&E Northern Marianas Junior Championships last May at the Pacific Islands Club tennis courts. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)

Carol Lee’s twin achievements in 2015 put CNMI tennis ahead of its rivals in the Pacific region.

Lee earned the highest ranking among the junior tennis players in the Pacific after placing at No. 747 (she slid to No. 748 at press time, but still tops the region) in the Juniors ITF Circuit in November. She barged into the Top 1,000 in the world rankings and collected 66.25 points (singles and doubles combined) after playing in Guam, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Singapore.

The 14-year-old, who just joined the Juniors ITF Circuit early in 2015 as she was too young to compete in the elite tournaments last year, bagged her first rankings points (5) in the Calvo’s Selectcare ITF Junior Championships 2015 in Hagatna, Guam, where she defeated Japan’s Haruna Tsuzuki in the Round of 32, 6-2, 6-4. In New Caledonia, Lee got 20 points after advancing to the Round of 16 of the singles event of the Open Junior BNP PARIBAS de Nouvelle-Caledonie in Noumea and to the quarterfinals in the doubles.

In Fiji, the Saipan Community School student participated in the South Pacific Open Junior Championships and won 10 ranking points for qualifying to the quarterfinals in the doubles event. She saw action in two more Juniors ITF tournaments in Fiji—Oceania Open Junior Championships and Oceania Closed Junior Championships—and was awarded 40 more points for making it to the semis and Round of 16 in the singles play. In her last Juniors ITF event for the year, Lee notched a quarterfinals seat in the Singapore ITF Junior Championships 2015 to claim 10 more world ranking points.

Besides getting the highest-ranking among the Pacific players, Lee again made history for the CNMI by ruling the three age groups in the Pacific Oceania Junior Championship for three consecutive years. She won the U16 singles championships in 2015 to add to her U12 (2013) and U14 (2014) crowns.

Lee’s records in the Pacific were complimented by the notable performance of her fellow CNMI players in the POJC and North Pacific Regional Championships.

The CNMI Junior Tennis Team clinched four singles championships in the regionals held in Guam with Tania Tan and Robbie Schorr ruling the U14 division, Isabel Heras prevailing in the girls U16, and Conatsu Kaga winning in the girls U12. Conatsu also took the doubles crown with younger sister Coume, while the pair of Tan and Malika Miyawaki and duo of Heras and Ami Tsukagoshi topped the U14 and U16 doubles, respectively.

In the POJC, the Jeff Race-coached CNMI team was ranked second among the 17 participating island-nations, behind powerhouse Tahiti. The Commonwealth sent 14 players to the POJC that was held in Fiji and 10 made it to the quarterfinals, six in the semis, and two in the finals.