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CNMI jr. tennis players leave for Fiji
Tony Kim is one of the 13 CNMI junior tennis players who will leave Saipan for Fiji this Thursday to compete in the Pacific Oceania Junior Championships.
(Roselyn B. Monroyo)
Thirteen members of the CNM Junior Tennis Team will leave for Fiji this Thursday to compete in the 2016 Pacific Oceania Junior Championships.
The group, which is composed of Robbie Schorr, Ken Song, Tony Kim, Sean Lee, Malika Miyawaki, Asia Raulerson, Conatsu and Coume Kaga, Marie Gregoire, Ji Min Woo, Seung Jin Paik, Michael Ren, and Vincent Tudela, will be suiting up for the North Pacific Team. Also on the elite squad are Carol Lee, Isabel Heras, and Tania Tan, who have been in Fiji since May after earning a summer scholarship program at the ITF/OTF training facility in Suva.
The Commonwealth bets will be challenging representatives of the west team made up of players from Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Norfolk Island, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu and the east, which have Samoa, American Samoa, Tahiti, and Tonga netters. The POJC will be held next week.
CNMI Sports Hall of Famer Jeff Race will call the shots for the North Pacific Team, which will also have players from Guam, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
“The players are doing well in the training. I am sure we are going to have lots of Top 4 and finals appearances, while Carol is certainly the favorite in the girls U16 division,” said Race, whose players will also compete in the U12 and U14 age groups.
Lee, the lone player in the Pacific to have won the U12, U14, and U16 singles titles, was unbeaten in last year’s POJC, clinching the U16 singles crown after surviving Palau’s Ayana Rengiil in a three-set finale, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-0.
Lee and company had a strong showing in last year’s tournament in Fiji. Of the CNMI’s 14 players in the 2015 edition of the annual competition, 10 made it to the singles quarterfinals, six in the semis, and two in the finals (Tan was the other finalist in the girls U14 singles). In the doubles, the Kaga siblings and Tan and Miyawaki marched into the finals, while Tudela (with FSM’s Joab William), Lee (with Rengiil), and Sakano (with American’s Samoa’s Hanisi Ledua) got Final Four berths.
