Nigel Si­mon

T&T's Aaron?Wil­son ad­vanced to the main draw on the Cadet Boys Sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion at the eighth In­ter­na­tion­al Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion El Sal­vador Ju­nior & Cadet Open Cham­pi­onship in San Sal­vador, yes­ter­day. Com­pet­ing in a four-play­er Group Ten se­ries, the 14-year-old Wil­son whipped El Sal­vadore­an duo, Ro­dri­go Morales 11-4, 11-5 11-1 and Harold Lei­va 11-5, 11-8, 11-6 in his first two match­es ahead of his group de­cider with In­dia's Anir­ban Ghosh, his con­queror at the quar­ter­fi­nal hur­dle in Guatemala last week. Ghosh al­so won his first two match­es against Morales and Ghosh. Arun Roop­nar­ine, T&T's oth­er en­trant was beat­en by In­dia's Aarsh Shah 5-11, 5-11, 9-11 in his open­er be­fore he re­bound­ed to de­feat Swe­den's William Apelquist 11-9, 7-11, 11-7, 11-8 ahead of clash with win­less El Sal­vador's Os­car Vil­la­ta last night, with a win se­cur­ing a main draw knock­out spot. Among the Cadet Girls', T&T's Brit­tany Joseph en­tered her match with El Sal­vadore­an Mon­i­ca Men­doza need­ing a win to reach the main draw knock­out phase.

This af­ter both Joseph and Men­doza were beat­en by In­dia's Ay­hi­ka Mukher­jee 4-11, 4-11, 2-11 and 1-11, 5-11, 4-11 re­spec­tive­ly. The lo­cal trio were al­so drawn to com­pete in the Ju­nior Sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion from which the top two play­ers will ad­vance from their re­spec­tive groups to the main draw knock­out stage. Joseph was drawn in Group Eight with Mukher­jee, Chia-Yun Kuo (Chi­nese Taipei) and El Sal­vador's Kar­la Pal­ma (El Sal­vador) while Wil­son lined up against Kevin Wu (New Zealand), Chris­t­ian Ville­da (El Sal­vador) and Fran­cis­co Ma­tias (Puer­to Ri­co) in Group Five, and in Group Sev­en, Roop­nar­ine came up against Jonas Sten­er (Swe­den), Rene Quan (El Sal­vador) and Li­van Mar­tinez (Cu­ba). And in the Cadet Dou­bles, Wil­son and Roop­nar­ine had a round-of-32 bye and await­ed the vic­tor of the clash be­tween Oliv­er Men­doza/Marce­lo Quin­tanil­la (El Sal­vador) and Li­van Mar­tinez (Cu­ba)/Jo­han Hes­sel­gren (Swe­den). The T&T/USA?Cadet Girls pair­ing of Joseph and Is­hana Deb was sched­uled to face Puer­to Ri­cans Gabriela Di­az and Car­o­line Resto in the round-of-16. The tour­na­ment con­cludes to­day af­ter which Wil­son and Roop­nar­ine will link up with the se­nior na­tion­al team for the Se­nior Caribbean Cham­pi­onships card­ed for Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.