T&T’s pair of Chloe Fras­er and Jor­dan Thong moved to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Women’s Dou­bles af­ter an en­thralling con­test in the 1/8 fi­nal round of ta­ble ten­nis ac­tion at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Asun­cion, Paraguay on Sat­ur­day, in which the team in red, white, and black pre­vailed 3-2.

Play­ing on ta­ble three against the El Sal­vado­ri­an team of Sami­rah Munoz and Clau­dia Castil­lo, the T&T team was made to fight from be­hind af­ter the El Sal­vado­ri­ans took the ear­ly ad­van­tage with an 11-9 vic­to­ry in the open­ing set. How­ev­er, the Fras­er/Thong com­bi­na­tion flipped the script in the fol­low­ing two sets that pushed them ahead 2-1.

In the sec­ond set, the T&T women dis­rupt­ed the El Sal­vado­ri­ans from in­creas­ing their ad­van­tage by win­ning the con­test 11-7. And with con­fi­dence grow­ing, they lat­er clinched the third set by the same mar­gin, 11-7, to fire them­selves in­to the po­si­tion of as­cen­dan­cy. The Cen­tral Amer­i­cans, though, did not give up and dug deep to put the game back on even foot­ing at 2-2 when they pre­vailed 11-8 in the fourth set of a fluc­tu­at­ing af­fair.

Fras­er and Thong, who were set to con­test the women’s sin­gles af­ter­wards, then put the game to rest by beat­ing the team of Sami­rah Munoz and Clau­dia Castil­lo 15-13 to se­cure the over­all vic­to­ry 3-2.

Luck did not fol­low Thong in the round of 32 of the sin­gles, though. In her first con­test against Ana Isaza of Colom­bia, the Trin­bag­on­ian was brushed aside in four straight sets, 4-0 (11-8, 11-4, 11-2, and 11-5), as­sur­ing that Isaza ad­vanced to the round of 16. But in the oth­er sin­gles’ af­fair, Fras­er bat­tled to a 4-2 tri­umph over Ar­i­an­na Es­trel­la of Do­mini­ca.

France-based Fras­er, who de­feat­ed Stu­ti Kashyap of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 3–0 in the Un­der-17 Girls’ Sin­gles fi­nal at the World Ta­ble Ten­nis Youth Con­tender Cara­cas Tour­na­ment ear­li­er this year, faced an ear­ly set­back in the con­test with an 11-7 loss in the round of 32, on­ly for her to storm back with wins in the oth­er two sets, 11-5 and 11-9, to push ahead af­ter three sets.

Hav­ing won every youth ti­tle avail­able on lo­cal and re­gion­al soil, Fras­er, for a sec­ond time, was beat­en in the game 11-6, push­ing the game back on lev­el terms 2-2. But she lift­ed her game in the re­main­ing sets, 11-4 and 11-9, to claim vic­to­ry 4-2 and seal a berth in the round of 16.

<3x3 bas­ket­baller falls to Chile>

Mean­while, in bas­ket­ball, the coun­try’s 3x3 team got four points each from the pair of Tyrese Fields and Joseph Fri­day, two points from Josi­ah Mar­ryshow, and a point from Le Shaun Mc­Dougall, which proved to be in­suf­fi­cient in pre­vent­ing them from go­ing down 21-11 to Chile in their fi­nal Group A en­counter that en­sured they fin­ished 11th over­all in the tour­na­ment.

In their first game against Ecuador, the T&T men went down by the same mar­gin, 21-11, with Fri­day lead­ing the scor­ing in that con­test with 5 points, while Fields got three, Mc­Dougall got two points, and Mar­ryshow got a point. El Sal­vador claimed the 12th po­si­tion, with Brazil and Mex­i­co seal­ing po­si­tions nine and ten, re­spec­tive­ly.

Mean­while, in rug­by, the T&T Sev­ens men’s team was set to face Bermu­da last night af­ter a draw-and-loss record against Paraguay and Ar­genti­na. Against the Paraguayans, the men in red, white and black could not be sep­a­rat­ed 14-14 in the open­ing group en­counter.Adri­ano Bap­tiste got a try and con­ver­sion for half of the T&T points. The oth­er half came when Ed­mund George’s try was con­vert­ed by Matthew Ed­wards.

In T&T’s oth­er game, they went down to a heavy de­feat to Ar­genti­na, 56-0.

In hock­ey, T&T was beat­en 5-4 by their South Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts, Brazil, in a 5th-8th clas­si­fi­ca­tion match. T&T got a dou­ble strike from Alexan­der Nieves and a goal each from Nicholas Siu Butt and Wayne Ed­wards in their los­ing ef­fort. Gabriel Mor­eira al­so scored a brace in lead­ing the Brazil­ians to vic­to­ry. Apart from his hero­ics, the oth­er goals came from Muri­lo Xavier, Fran­cis­co Buzat­to, and Hen­rique Da Sil­va.