T&T’s Un­der-12 girls ten­nis aces went down to Mex­i­co 3-0 in their open­ing match of the In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion’s (ITF) World Ten­nis/Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ten­nis Con­fed­er­a­tion (COTECC) U-12 Team Fi­nals at the Cos­ta Ri­ca Ten­nis Club on Fri­day.

​The team of Tei­jha Welling­ton, Anaya Roberts, and Zara Walk­er, ac­com­pa­nied by na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme coach Javier Lewis, earned its place in the tour­na­ment by win­ning the COTECC Sub-Re­gion 4 U-12 qual­i­fy­ing event host­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go in Au­gust. As Sub-Re­gion 4 cham­pi­ons, they joined the re­gion’s top U-12 teams—Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic—in the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion.

​Fol­low­ing Fri­day’s re­sult, the trio needs to beat Cos­ta Ri­ca and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic to ad­vance. Sat­ur­day, a de­layed start due to per­sis­tent rain pushed the T&T ver­sus Cos­ta Ri­ca en­counter well in­to the night.

​In the open­ing rub­ber, Roberts was swept aside by Sofia Guillen in straight sets, 6-0, 6-3, on court nine.

​Welling­ton dropped her open­ing set 3-6 against Ana Rafaela Re­sendiz be­fore show­ing true grit to lev­el the match at 1-1 with a 7-5 win in the sec­ond. How­ev­er, for­tune elud­ed her in the tiebreak, which she lost 3-10 to hand Mex­i­co the over­all tie vic­to­ry.

​Look­ing for a con­so­la­tion win in the con­clud­ing dou­bles match lat­er on, Roberts and Welling­ton teamed up to face Na­talia Bernal and Guillen.

Again, there was no stop­ping the Mex­i­cans, who took a quick 6-1 lead at the end of the first set. Show­ing their su­pe­ri­or­i­ty, the Mex­i­can pair con­firmed their tri­umph with a 6-4 vic­to­ry in the sec­ond set.