Thea aims for Jr. ITF points in NZ

After faltering in her bid to gain Junior ITF ranking points last year, CNMI netter Thea Minor will again try to earn that feat in New Zealand, starting this month.

Minor will have several chances of becoming the first female player from the CNMI to have Junior ITF ranking points, as she will be competing in three tournaments in New Zealand. She left Saipan last Sunday morning and is now in Australia as a member of the Oceania ITF Touring Team and will be traveling to New Zealand on Jan. 18 in time for her first event.

The CNMI netter’s first competition in New Zealand will be the U18 Canterbury Junior Championships, which will be held at the Ashburton Trust Tennis Centre, in Ashburton, from Jan. 22 to 28.

Next up for the 16-year-old Minor is the New Zealand U18 ITF Summer Champs, which will run from Jan. 29 to Feb. 8 in Auckland. There will be two venues for the Summer Champs-the Scarbro Tennis Centre in Auckland and Manukau Tennis Centre in Manukau City.

From Auckland, Minor will go to Wellington for the last stop of her New Zealand trip. In Wellington, the Saipan Southern High School student will participate in the Tennis Central U18 Junior ITF Tournament. Minor’s last competition will take place at the Renouf Tennis Centre from Feb. 7 to 11.

These three New Zealand tournaments were the same events that gave former CNMI No. 1 junior player Ji Hoon Heo ranking points. Heo joined these competitions twice, while Minor will be participating in these events for the first time.

However, the New Zealand contests will not be Minor’s first in the Junior ITF circuit, as last year, she had already entered three events that offered ranking points. Minor debuted in the 2011 Open Junior BNP Paribas of New Caledonia in June last year and joined both the singles and doubles event. In the singles, she had a bye in the Round of 64 before losing to New Zealand’s Danielle Feneridis in the round of 32, 0-6, 0-6. Then in the doubles, Minor teamed up with Papua New Guinea’s Lorish Puluspene and they bowed to Australia’s Alexcia Hallal and Lara Palmer, 1-6, 3-6.

In the same month, Minor moved from New Caledonia to Fiji for the Air Pacific South Pacific Open Junior Championships where she also dropped her opening games both in the singles and doubles events. Minor lost to Hine Elizabeth Wilson in the singles game, 6-7(6), 3-6. In the doubles, she partnered with the Solomon Islands’ Amanda Korinihona and they fell to the Hong Kong pair of Christy Chan and Maggie Ng, 2-6, 3-6.

Minor’s last Junior ITF event in 2011 was the Air Pacific Oceania Closed Junior Championships, which was also held in Fiji in August. For the third time, Minor faltered in her opening match, suffering a 1-6, 0-6 beating at the hands of Australia’s Celine Lenertz. In the doubles, the CNMI bet joined forces with Vanuatu’s Lorraine Banimataku and lost anew to New Zealand’s Emily Fanning and Australia’s Abbie Myers, 0-6, 2-6.

“I hope to get better results in the Junior ITF events in New Zealand and will work hard to earn ranking points,” Minor said in a telephone interview with Saipan Tribune a week after receiving the invite for the New Zealand trip.