T&T boys and girls teams both end­ed in sev­enth spot af­ter win­ning their fi­nal play­off match­es in the ITF COTECC World Ju­nior (Un­der-14) Ten­nis North/Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & Caribbean Pre-Qual­i­fy­ing Tour­na­ment in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, on Sat­ur­day.

In their play­off for the sev­enth spot, the Che-Sanchez-coached lo­cal boys' trio of Ni­rav Dougdeen, Con­nor Car­ring­ton and Jo­van Garib­ana de­feat­ed Cu­ra­cao, 2-1.

This af­ter Car­ring­ton won his match, 6-1, 6-2, against Neevin Mar­cos and Dougdeeen was a 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 win­ner over Bran­don Bridge­wa­ter to seal the best-of-three match­es se­ries ahead of the dou­bles tie which the Cu­ra­cao pair of Mar­cos and Leonar­do Winkel won against Car­ring­ton and Garib­ana, 6-4, 6-2.

On Fri­day, in their fifth to eighth losers quar­ter­fi­nal, Cos­ta Ri­ca de­feat­ed T&T boys 3-0 with Al­ber­to Cor­rales whip­ping Garib­ana, 6-0, 6-2, and Ale­jan­dro Morales pun­ish­ing Dougdeen, 6-1, 6-1, and in the dou­bles, An­to­nio Bermudez and Cor­rales swept past Garib­ana and Car­ring­ton, 6-2, 6-2.

When the main draw quar­ter­fi­nals took place on Wednes­day, Hon­duras de­feat­ed T&T 3-0 cour­tesy of Ed­uar­do Matute's 6-0, 6-2 de­feat of Car­ring­ton, Christofer Nunez's 6-2, 6-0 beat­ing of Dougdeen and Nunez and Mario Nunez's 6-1, 6-0 win against Dougdeen and Garib­ana in the dou­bles con­test.

In the oth­er last-eight main draw match-ups, Guatemala won 3-0 over Puer­to Ri­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic al­so had a sim­i­lar 3-0 tri­umph against Cu­ra­cao while El Sal­vador bat­tled past Cos­ta Ri­ca, 2-1.

In the oth­er fifth-to-eight semi­fi­nals, Puer­to Ri­co blanked Cu­ra­cao 3-0 while in the main draw, Guatemala beat Do­mini­ca Re­pub­lic and El Sal­vador stopped Hon­duras, both by 2-1 mar­gins.

In their round-robin match­es, the T&T boys de­feat­ed St Lu­cia and Ja­maica both by 2-1 mar­gins be­fore los­ing by a 0-3 mar­gin to Guatemala in their Group A de­cider.

The Shenelle Mo­hammed-coached T&T girls’ team of Em-Miryam Camp­bell-Smith, Gabriel­la Prince, and Madi­son Khan de­feat­ed Pana­ma 2-0 in their clash for the sev­enth po­si­tion.

In the open­ing tie, Khan pro­vid­ed her team with a win­ning start 6-0, 6-2 over Jes­si­ca Baez and Camp­bell-Smith won in sim­i­lar fash­ion, 6-0, 6-2, against Romi­na Archi­bold while the dou­bles match was not played.

On Fri­day, in their fifth to eight losers semi­fi­nal, T&T suf­fered a 3-0 loss to Hon­duras with Khan falling to Mar­la Pin­to 3-6, 3-6; and Camp­bell-Smith los­ing to Ar­i­an­na Kafati 2-6, 6-7(3) be­fore the lo­cal duo of Gabriel­la Prince and Khad were hum­bled in the Dou­bles, 1-6, 2-6 by Pin­to, and Ana Be­len Al­vara­do.

In the oth­er fifth-to-eight semi­fi­nals, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic won 2-0 over Pana­ma while in the main draw, last-four Cos­ta Ri­ca de­feat­ed El Sal­vador 2-0 and Guatemala won 3-0 against Ba­hamas.

When the knock­out stage served off, Ba­hamas beat the T&T girls 2-1 with Prince los­ing to Kay­la Fox, 1-6, 6-4, 4-6 and Camp­bell-Smith com­ing up short against Tatyana Madu­abuchuk­wu, 4-6, 6-3, 4-6, be­fore the lo­cal pair of Khana and Prince won the dou­bles against Fox and Bri­ana Houl­grave, 6-3, 6-2.

In the round-robin phase, T&T girls swept both Ja­maica and Pana­ma 3-0 to top their round-robin Group C stand­ings.

Guatemala fin­ished as the top team in both the boys’ and girls’ tour­na­ments and se­cured qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the oth­er Amer­i­c­as Tour­na­ment where Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the USA await in April from which the top two na­tions will ad­vance to the world event.

Top Eight:

Boys: 1. Guatemala; 2. El Sal­vador; 3. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; 4. Hon­duras; 5. Cos­ta Ri­ca; 6. Puer­to Ri­co; 7. T&T; 8. Cu­ra­cao.

Girls: 1. Guatemala; 2. Cos­ta Ri­ca; 3. El Sal­vador; 4. Ba­hamas; 5. Hon­duras; 6. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; 7. T&T; 8. Pana­ma