The T&T pair of Aaron Wilson and Arun Roopnarine both ended in the cellar position of their round-robin groups of the Junior Boys Singles at the Scotiabank Canadian Junior and Cadet Open on Thursday night. After missing out on qualifying for the Cadet Boys Singles main draw on Wednesday, Wilson and Roopnarine were eager to rebound in the Juniors at the Canadian Chinese Table Tennis Association Centre, Markham, Greater Toronto, Ontario. However, both players failed to win any of their matches.
Wilson suffered defeats to Canadian duo Hongtao Chen 5-11, 3-11, 5-11 and Jeremy Hazin 8-11, 9-11, 8-11 for a 0-2 record in Pool B, while Roopnarine went under to Chinese Taipei's Cheng Ting Liao 3-11, 4-11, 4-11; and Canadians Antoine Bernadet, 11-8, 11-7, 4-11, 10-12, 6-11, and Xuebo Li, 7-11, 4-11, 7-11. On Wednesday night both T&T players missed out on qualifying for the main draw of the Cadet Boys Singles. This, after both players finished in third spot in their respective four player groups from which the top two qualified.
Playing in Group B, Roopnarine won his opening match against home town player James Yu 11-5, 11-8, 11-9 but then suffered losses in his next two, versus USA's Howard Tong, 9-11, 4-11, 8-11 and group winner, Korean Jeongwon Oh 9-11, 9-11, 9-11 to finish with four points, two behind Oh. Tong was second with five points after only losing to Oh and qualified for the main draw as well, while Yu ended bottom of the table with three points. In Group F, Wilson also started on a winning note, 11-7, 13-11, 13-11 over Canada's Matthew Lehmann and he followed it up with another scintillating display in beating Korean Jeong Lee 11-9, 7-11, 11-6, 11-7.
Needing a win to secure top spot and qualification to the main draw in his final group match, Wilson stumbled, 6-11, 11-9, 10-12, 5-11 to Canadian Alexander to leave both players and Lee level on five points apiece from three matches, two wins and a loss each. To determine the winner and runner-up from the groups, the results against the cellar-placed player Lehmann was discarded in the calculations for the three players in the tie. Then the games for and against were calculated between the three players tied only, however there was still a tie between the three players. The next step used the points won to points loss ratio between the trio (games won over games loss or points won over points loss).