T&T’s ju­nior girls’ trio, Suri Ram­cha­ran, Make­da Bain, and Samiyah Mo­hammed, cruised in­to the semi­fi­nals of the North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and the Caribbean Pre-Qual­i­fy­ing Tour­na­ment for the In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion’s (ITF) World Ju­nior Ten­nis Com­pe­ti­tion in El Sal­vador Sat­ur­day.

​The T&T side eked out a 2-1 vic­to­ry over Guatemala, de­spite a spir­it­ed come­back from the Guatemalans in the sec­ond rub­ber to lev­el the scores at one apiece. Ram­cha­ran drew first blood, claim­ing a grit­ty 6-2, 6-7(5), 10-4 tri­umph over Valenti­na Scha­ef­fer in the open­ing match.

​T&T hoped to clinch the se­ries in the sec­ond rub­ber, but the usu­al­ly pro­lif­ic Bain fell 7-5, 6-1, forc­ing the Guatemalans in­to a de­cider in the dou­bles. How­ev­er, there was no let­ting up with the pair of Bain and Ram­cha­ran pre­vail­ing over the duo of Giu­liana Al­vara­do So­lis and Valenti­na Scha­ef­fer 6-3, 6-2 for their en­try in­to the round of four.

​Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for­tune did not favour the boys’ team of Eli Paty, Josi­ah Hills, and Justin Dun­can in their 1st - 5th place play­off against Bar­ba­dos. Un­like their fe­male com­pa­tri­ots, the T&T boys got an un­favourable start when Paty suc­cumbed to Cruz Thorn­ton in two sets, 6-3, 6-1, to hand the Ba­jans the ad­van­tage.

How­ev­er, a dogged dis­play in the sec­ond rub­ber from Hills put the boys in red, white and black back on lev­el terms 1-1, when he dis­posed of Zane Kir­ton 6-2, 6-1, giv­ing their pair of Hills and Paty the op­por­tu­ni­ty to seal the over­all win in the dou­bles.

But in­stead, the Ba­jans dou­bled their ef­forts when the team of Kir­ton and Thorn­ton got the bet­ter of the Hills/Paty com­bi­na­tion 7-6(4) and 6-4.