6 tourneys await Carol

CNMI junior player
Carol Lee will be
competing in top-ranking tournaments in South
Korea, Mexico,
and Florida. (Contributed Photo)

The CNMI’s Carol Lee will be very busy in the last two months of the year, as she will be playing in six high-ranking Juniors ITF tournaments.

First up for Lee is the 2018 Lee Duk Hee Cup Chuncheon International Junior Tennis Championships, which will run from Oct. 30 to Nov. 4 at the Chuncheon Songam Sports Town Tennis Courts in Chuncheon, South Korea. It is a Grade 2 event, which awards as much as 160 and 120 ranking points to the singles and doubles champions, respectively.

From Chuncheon, the 16-year-old will head to Jeju-do to compete in the 2018 Seogwipo Asia/Oceania Closed Junior Championships that will be held from Nov. 5 to 11. The Asia/Oceania Closed is a higher tournament than the Lee Cup, as the former has a B1 rating, which gives 280 points to the singles winner and 210 to the doubles.

After her back-to-back events in South Korea, Lee will travel to Mexico for a pair of tournaments. She will first play in the Copa Mundial Campeche FMT that will take place at the Campeche Country Club in Campeche from Nov. 12 to 18. The Copa is a Grade 1 event, which awards the same points as the Asia/Oceania Closed.

For her second tournament in Mexico, Lee will be tested at the Mundial Juvenil Yucatan HSBC FMT, which will be hosted at Club Campestre de Yucatán Calle in Merida. This time, 500 points in the singles and 375 in the doubles can be won in the Grade A competition that will run from Nov. 19 to 25.

From Mexico, the CNMI junior player will go to Bradenton in Florida to participate in the Eddie Herr International Junior Championship. The Eddie Herr event is another Grade 1 competition and will be held at the IMG Academy from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2.

For her last tournament of the season, Lee will be seeing action in the prestigious Orange Bowl that is set from Dec. 3 to 9. The Commonwealth bet will be playing at the Frank Veltri Tennis Center at the Plantation Central Park, also in Florida.

Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association official and CNMI national team coach Jeff Race helped arrange Lee’s participation in the tournaments in Mexico and Florida and wished that the junior player will gain more ranking points from these events.

Lee, who has been ranked as high as No. 161 (in September this year), is at No. 167 as of Oct. 15 and has 263 points (singles) and 135 in doubles. She last competed in Australia in late August and has been in Fiji for about two months now, training at the International Tennis Federation/Oceania Tennis Federation regional facility.

“I’m very excited to play these high-level tournaments. I feel more ready now than I was in the beginning of the year, so hopefully I can have some good results. I am in Fiji and still training really hard. I feel good about where I am with my tennis now,” Lee said.