The quar­tet of Will Lee, Re­ece Mar­cano, Cheque­da De Boulet and Ama­ra Urquhart all im­proved to 3-0 win-loss records and se­cured semi­fi­nal spots in their re­spec­tive men's and women's di­vi­sions in the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­BA) in­au­gur­al “Top 10” Tour­na­ment on Thurs­day night.

Play­ing at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre, Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua, the quar­tet were ex­pect­ed to meet in their group de­ciders (last night) ahead of the semi­fi­nals and to­day's fi­nal day of com­pe­ti­tion.

Fol­low­ing wins over Kyrese To­bias and Za­mir Ali in his first two match­es in Group A on Wednes­day's open­ing night of com­pe­ti­tion, the top-ranked Lee scold­ed Ja­son Ram­jass 21-9, 21-14 and shares the top spot in the pool with teenag­er Vishal Ram­sub­hag who added to his win over Ali by beat­ing To­bias 21-5, 21-8 and Ram­jass 21-14, 21-14 ahead of his show­down with the top seed which was sched­uled for last night.

To­bias had a 21-18, 21-16 win over Ali in the oth­er Group A match on Thurs­day night.

On the oth­er hand, sec­ond-ranked Mar­cano added to his tri­umphs against Mikael Joachim and Verone Sal­ick in Group B by eas­ing past Ron­dell De Fre­itas 21-16, 21-10 while Travis Sinanan al­so im­proved his record to 3-0 cour­tesy his wins against Joachim 21-19, 21-15 and De Fre­itas, 21-17, 13-21, 21-6. Joachim won his oth­er match on the day, 21-11, 21-12 over Sal­ick.

In the women's cat­e­go­ry, De Boulet hum­bled Zyah Hold­er 21-5, 21-5 to add to vic­to­ries over Kara-Ash­ley Robert­son and Sid­ney Mor­ris 21-1, 21-1 in Group A while Robert­son strength­ened her claims for the run­ner-up spot by de­feat­ing Ten­niya To­bias 14-21, 21-16, 21-17 and Mor­ris won by walkover for a 3-1 record while To­bias over­came Hold­er, 18-21, 21-10, 21-12.

In Group B, Urquhart downed Cheyenne Bho­la 21-9, 21-8 for her third win af­ter bat­tling past her sib­ling Aliyah Urquhart and Is­abelle Waller on Wednes­day.

Al­so on Thurs­day, Bho­la bat­tled past Boodoos­ingh 21-16, 21-17 be­fore the lat­ter ral­lied past the younger Urquhart sis­ter, Aliyah 17-21, 21-19, 22-20 and Waller al­so won against Aliyah, 21-7, 21-12.

At the end of the two round-robin pools in each of the men’s and women’s com­pe­ti­tions, the top two play­ers in each pool will ad­vance to cross-over semi­fi­nals, ahead of the third-place play­off and fi­nal. The tour­na­ment con­tin­ued last evening and re­sumes to­day from 1 pm with the cel­e­bra­tion of World Bad­minton Day which is be­ing cel­e­brat­ed glob­al­ly to high­light the ver­sa­til­i­ty and nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits of bad­minton.

Ac­cord­ing to the TT­BA Pres­i­dent, Chan­dri­ka Ram­sub­hag, "This year marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone, as we will be in­tro­duc­ing an ex­po for­mat to show­case the sport, com­ple­ment­ed by an open clin­ic for par­tic­i­pants.

"The goal is to es­tab­lish this cel­e­bra­tion as an an­nu­al event, fos­ter­ing greater aware­ness and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for bad­minton with­in our com­mu­ni­ty."