T&T girls secure two silver medals in Youth t-tennis
Shammi Kowlessar
BOTH Trinidad and Tobago girls’ teams earned silver medals when the Caribbean Youth Table Tennis Championship served off yesterday in Guyana.
After beating Guyana 3-0 and losing 3-1 to eventual champions Dominican Republic when the straight round-robin event began the day before, the Under-19 girls needed to go down to the wire to edge Jamaica for second place.
With the fixture deadlocked at two, Imani Edwards-Taylor, runner-up in both major senior tournaments contested last year, whipped Kelsey Davidson 12-10, 11-5, 11-1.
The southpaw had earlier given T&T a 2-0 lead by beating Tsenaye Lewis 11-13, 11-6, 11-8, 11-9, after Priyanka Khellawan, who had also flown the red, white and black in the open Caribbean Championships a few days before, cruised past Davidson 11-5, 11-9, 11-3.
Mikah Stroude seemed on her way to completing the sweep, but she failed to close out a 2-0 lead and was eventually nosed out 7-11, 9-11, 11-6, 11-5, 13-11 by Liana Campbell.
And then Lewis forced the decider with a convincing 11-9, 11-6, 11-4 triumph over former two-time U-13 champ Khellawan.
Needing to beat Jamaica to edge the Guyanese for the silver in the U-15 straight round-robin event, T&T prevailed 3-1.
Chloe Fraser, the other member of the senior Caribbean team, got the ball rolling with a commanding 11-4, 11-3, 11-3 triumph, and came back to finish the job in similar fashion, 11-8, 11-4, 11-4.
Jordan Thong, who has also been training in France for the last nine months, lost the only point for T&T 11-7, 5-11, 11-8, 11-8 as the Jamaicans made it one-all.
But then Lyllana Boodhan, a winner of seven junior titles this season, got things back on track 15-13, 11-4, 11-6.
The T&T girls had beaten Guyana 3-1, but went down 3-0 to eventual champs the Dominican Republic on Monday.
Both boys’ teams advanced to last night’s semi-finals.
After edging Guyana 3-2 in their opening fixture the day before, the U-15 boys crushed Barbados without losing a single game to win Group 2.
Sekel McIntosh completed the rout 11-3, 11-3, 11-6 after Malik Gopaul had prevailed 11-8, 11-7, 11-2 and Gabriel John had cruised home 11-4, 11-3, 11-4.
After going down 3-0 to Dominican Republic on Monday, the U-19 boys also did not drop a game against Grenada to finish second in Group 1 and earn a place in last night’s semis.
Nicholas Lee won 11-5, 11-5, 12-10; Ameer Mohammed triumphed 11-1, 11-4, 11-5; before Nicholas O’Young got them across the finish line 11-9, 11-6, 11-3.