Junior Reps Make Mark at Regional Meet

The tournament was held on May 1-7 in Vanuatu.

The 22-member national junior tennis team that represented Fiji in the recent West Pacific Regional Qualifier Tournament in Vanuatu early this month returned with four divisional wins from the 12 categories in the weeklong event.

Fiji Junior Tennis head coach Andrew Mailtorok said arranging training for the event was an enormous and strenuous task. “It was an enormous task for me as a head coach to arrange for national training for children still in school with only two months to prepare for the biggest tournament in the West Pacific in terms of junior tennis,” Mailtorok said.

“It was not easy trying to arrange training at three separate venues, Lautoka, Nadi and Suva evenly and on days when everyone is available. “We had to collectively, with sacrifices, come together for the greater good, train for Fiji and push ourselves to our limits and our struggles have paid it off.

The tournament was from May 1 May 7 at the Vanuatu Tennis Club which included sides from Papua

New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Kiribati.

“I am proud of how far we’ve come as a team despite the twomonth preparations we had to endure but at the end of the day, we were able to come back home with some lessons and exposure to events at international level.” Mailtorok was assisted by assistant coach Sumit Lal and manager Noelani Politini.

“Our deepest thank you to all parents for their support and commitment that enabled their children to attend training, sacrificing hardearned money to pay for the things needed and for standing beside me during this time.

Despite all the challenges and limited resources we have been able to meet the expectations of stakeholders, I call this event a success.