Luca Shamsi and Ella Carrington, T&T's highest-ranked junior tennis players will carry the burden for the red, white and black when the country's youth tennis players prepare to compete at the JITIC-sanction Junior Tennis Championships at the National Racquet Centre (NRC) in Tacarigua over the next three weeks.
Shamsi who is ranked seventh in the COTECC region and Carrington among the top 20, will be among nine boys and seven girls for the Under-14 Sub Regional Four COTECC Championship starting today (July 6) and will until July 11.
Apart from Shamsi, the other players on the country's u-14 boys team are Jamal Alexis, who performed with credit at the World Juniors in the Dominican Republic in March this year, Sebastian Byng, Beckham Sylvester, Zackery Byng, Thomas Chung, Nathan Martin, Jaylon Chapman and James Hadden.
The girls' team will be led by Carrington but will include the in-form Cameron Wong who did not receive much international exposure lately because of her studies. However, both are to form an unstoppable duo for the T&T team, which will also comprise of Zara Ghuran, Charlotte Ready, Jordane Dookie, Jaeda-Lee Daniel-Joseph and another in-form player in Kiera Youssef.
Ninety-six players from 19 countries will participate at the tournament and the T&T players will attempt to turn back a series of struggling performances at international circuits over the past two years. The country's best finish at the junior jitic tournaments came from Aidan Carter two years ago in El Salvador, which resulted in a winning performance for the St Mary's College student. Since that, the T&T players have found it difficult to go beyond the round of 16s.
Tournament director Jermille Danclar, who is secretary of the Tennis Association of T&T (TATT), that is also called (tennistt), said the tournament will be a round-robin format that will lead to the main draw of 16 for both boys and girls.
According to Danclar, points will be given to the top-performing players, likely to be from the round of 16s. He noted the number of points will be determined by the distance the players reach in the tournament.
Meanwhile, the JITIC Sub Region Four Under-16 Team Championship, which will be contested in a similar format, will take place at the same venue from July 11-4 and will bring out the country's best u-16 juniors. This will be followed by the Sub Region Four under-12 Development play-off from July 15-20 at the same Tacarigua venue.
