Sabah pair nab bronze
Leviance Chong and Cristabel Ntakop combined to deliver Malaysia the Team Bronze in the Philippine University So Tennis Invita onal Championships recently.
KOTA KINABALU: Leviance Chong and Cristabel Ntakop combined to deliver Malaysia the Team Bronze in the Philippine University Soft Tennis Invitational Championships recently.
The Sabahan youngsters, who were preparing for the Korea World Juniors, achieved their objective with flying colours after finishing joint third with the Philippines Juniors in the Southeast Asian Women’s Team event.
Played at the Colegio San Agustin tennis indoor hardcourts in San Jose Del Monte Bulacan, the Malaysian representatives collected five points along with the Philippines Juniors.
The Philippine national squad emerged as the Team event champions, followed by Cambodia.
Leviance also made it into the main draw of the girl’s Singles, where she eventually bowed to Filipina Khy Hitosis 1-4.
The Sabah lass had earlier turned back local girl Louise Diloy in a hard fought 3-1 victory to gain the important point to advance.
Despite lack of experience during the preliminary round, Leviance showed moments of promise before falling to Asian Games soft-netter Guia Arzaga 0-3 of the Philippines, NCAA runnerup Toni Raymundo also of the Philippines 1-3 and Cambodia’s Rin Sotheary 1-3 in the shortened scoring system.
Cristabel also made her own gallant effort against qualifiers Eileen Peralta (0-3) and Bianca Pica (0-3) before scoring against Tinghuy Bo of Cambodia (1-3) and Eunice Tabotabo (1-3).
She, however, failed to get past the preliminary stages.
In doubles, Leviance and Cristabel lost 1-4 to Cambodia’s Sotheary and Mariyana Meth, 1-4 to San Beda University pair Khy-Vervien Bejonaso, 2-4 to College of St. Benilde duo Roni Hortaliz-Eunice Tabotabo and 14 to Lyceum University players Fatima Amirul-Jaeka Frias 1-4.
“Our Sabah soft tennis players really need to compete in high level tournaments such as the Philippine University because they have many divisions which are beneficial in our preparations for the 3rd World Juniors (Soft Tennis Championships) in Korea on November 18,” explained Sabah soft tennis official K.K. Chin.
“Korea and Japan also registered (at the Philippines University tournament) but only in the Men’s events,” he added in a press release yesterday.
For the record, highly fancied Koreans Gichan Shin and Deokwon Jo took home the Open Men’s doubles title while Shin won the Junior singles gold medal, and Cambodia’s Sarsarit and Sambath pocketed the Junior doubles gold medal.
The Philippines dominated the team, women and girls’ events.
The awarding ceremonies were presided by Philippine Soft Tennis Association (PSTA) president Col. Eff Tamayo and secretary general Joven Sepino.