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Regional tennis championships canceled
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Posted on Aug 31 2020
In this 2018 file photo, the CNMI’s Jimin Woo is seen here competing in the Paficic Oceania Junior Championships in Fiji. (Oceania Tennis Federation)
There will be no Pacific Oceania Junior Championships this year.
Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association president Jeff Race confirmed the cancelation of the tournament featuring 18 of the 20 member-countries of the Oceania Tennis Federation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s POJC was supposed to take place from Oct. 15 to 24 with the dates had already been adjusted since the competition is usually set between July and August.
The POJC is held in Fiji every year and holds singles and doubles tournaments in the U14 and U16 age groups and a team event in the U12 division. Players are selected to see action in POJC based on their performance in three regional competitions—North, East, and West qualifiers.
Neither of the three divisions was able to have its respective championship due to the pandemic, too. The East and West qualifiers were initially slated for May, while the North Pacific Regional Championships where the CNMI competes was to take place in June. The North qualifier was then moved to July (13 to 17) before host Guam rescheduled the qualifier anew to Sept. 5 to 9. Guam had to eventually pulled the plug on the tournament due to the spike in the COVID-19 cases on the island.
Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are also in the North Pacific group, while the East block is made up of players from the Cook Islands, Tonga, Norfolk Islands, Tahiti, and Samoa. Fiji, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, American Samoa, and Papua New Guinea are on the West group.
Besides the team and individual contests in the POJC, the annual tournament also has the Nations Cup in Fiji with winners determined based on the performance of the players of each country. The CNMI hoisted the Nations Cup in 2017 and 2018 before losing the title to Tahiti last year.
