Off-island tennis players doing well

Conatsu Kaga serves to Malika Miyawaki during a local tournament last year at the Pacific Islands Club hard courts before she and three other CNMI players left for Fiji to train. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)

The CNMI’s off-island players are proving they are worthy of the scholarships they received after delivering in their respective competitions recently.

Siblings Coume and Conatsu Kaga, Ji Min Woo, and Seung Jin Paik, who are in Fiji after getting a scholarship to train at the ITF/OTF Regional Training Center in Lautoka, played in the 2017 West Pacific Regional Championships last week and had notable performances in both the singles and doubles events.

Coume topped the girls U14 singles contest, sweeping all her matches (4-0) in Pool B and winning three more games in the playoffs to rule the 10-player field. The No. 3 seed Coume clinched the singles championships after pulling off an upset over No. 2 Morgan Zorika of Solomon Islands in the finals, 6-1, 7-5. The CNMI bet, who did not drop a single set in the pool play, marched into the title game after eliminating Papua New Guinea’s Marawa Kota, 6-3, 6-1, and outlasting Solomon Islands and No. 4 Bird Prudence, 6-1, 3-6, 10-5.

In the doubles, Coume teamed up with the Solomon Islands’ Marion Gaotee and they were in a three-way tie for first place with Prudence and Zorila and Vanuatu’s Desiree Signo and Naomie Sipiti. The three pairs had similar 3-1 records in the round-robin contest, but Prudence and Zorika won the tiebreak (decided by games won/loss) with their 43-18 record, narrowly beating the 43-19 of the Vanuatu duo. Coume and Gaotee settled for No. 3 with their 42-27 slate.

In the U16 singles, Conatsu and Woo both moved into the finals, while Paik barged into the Final Four.

Conatsu finished the round-robin competition with a 4-1 record, missing the singles crown after bowing to eventual champion Rosalie Molbaleh of Vanuatu, 5-7, 1-6. Conatsu highlighted her four wins in the singles with a pair of victories via shutouts, while she and Fiji’s Melody Lal were ranked third in the doubles.

In the boys U16 singles, Woo gained a finals berth after beating Paik in the semis at the lower half of the bracket, 6-3, 6-0. Woo and Paik arranged an all-CNMI semis showdown after downing the Solomon Islands’ Ferguson Pitu, 6-0, 6-1, and Fiji’s Shantanu Shail, 6-2, 6-3, respectively. Woo lost in the finals against No. 1 seed Marlin Hannam of Vanuatu, 4-6, 1-6. The finals defeat was Woo’s only loss in the division as he earlier swept his four games in the pool play, while Paik had a 2-1 mark in the elimination. In the doubles, Woo and Paik joined forces and were in second place along with Pitu and Fiji’s Gavin Moloti, but had to drop to third after losing in the tiebreak.

Meanwhile, former CNMI junior players Thea Minor and Mikayla Lopez are also doing well in the collegiate ranks.

Minor is fresh from a semis stint for the Henderson State University in The Great American Conference Tournament of the NCAA Division II. She gave HSU the tiebreaking win in the singles game against Southern Nazarene University to put her squad in the Final Four.

The former NMSA Female Student Athlete of the Year awardee played her first season with HSU and is the Reddies No. 2 singles player.

“I had a fun year. I have a very supportive team. I am looking forward to playing one more year of college tennis. Most number 1 and 2 singles players are either a junior or senior. So being there almost two and three years you can tell they have the experience and confidence at this level which makes it difficult to beat them,” Minor said in a message sent to Saipan Tribune.

Minor made the jump from the National Junior College Athletics Association Division I where she played for New Mexico Military Institute to NCAA late last year.

Several months after Minor graduated from NMMI, another CNMI player—Mikayla Lopez—earned a slot on the Broncos roster and had an impressive showing in her season debut.

Lopez and Ghana’s Francisca Nyarko won the doubles championship in the Region V of the NJCAA and the former also finished second in the singles behind the latter. Lopez and the rest of her teammates qualified, too in the NJCAA Women’s National Tournament that started yesterday at the Reffkin Tennis Center in Tucson, Arizona.