Coquitlam Tennis Club Junior Program 2016: 1 Silver, 3 Bronze + 1 Consolation Gold Placings

Coquitlam Junior Spring Challenger | The first outdoor junior tournament of the season happened in our own backyard. For the eighth year, CTC hosted this spring tournament in cooperation with the Hollyburn Junior Classic at the Hollyburn Country Club in West Vancouver. While the tournament in Hollyburn is a selection level competition and is one of the designed tournament for the summer Canadian National selection for B.C., our tournament is designated as a development level.

Our club juniors provided modest results at this early stage of the outdoor season. Alex Dong, recently turned 14 a week earlier, reached the semi-finals of his singles event in his first tournament. He surprised himself to beat the number four seed, Neo Huang, 6-4, 7-6 in his second match previously. Moving through he had the top seed Jack Lindsay waiting for him in his semi-final encounter. Dong proved no match for Lindsday, going down 6-0, 6-1.

Turned 15 a month back, Jenny Jia made it through to the semi-finals as well after she beat Emily Horacek 6-4, 7-5 in her quarter-final match. Kyla Davies, seeded second, stopped her with a decisive 6-0, 6-2 win.

The most interesting results came in the boys under 16 draw. With five club juniors represented in the largest draw in the tournament, fifteen year old Riley Friend rose up to the challenge and reached his first ever final in an open tournament. Friend impressive run of match wins started off with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Spencer Kwok. Facing the fourth seed Jacob Adam Ismail-Keys in his next match, he fought through after losing the first set 6-3. He won his next two sets 6-2, 7-5. He met his club mate Zach Amaral in his next round. Amaral has previously beaten Omar Mitha 6-0, 6-2 to set up this meeting. Friend prevailed with a tough three set match win, 7-6, 4-6, 6-3. For the second consecutive match Friend would meet his club-mate once more. Matthew Wong had upset the second seed Kasra Kamal in his previous quarter-final match. After being down 6-1 in the first set, Wong went on to win his next two sets 6-4, 6-3. Friend versus Wong was once again a hard fought match between these two club mates. Friend claimed victory with a 6-4, 6-4 result. The pressure of doing well in his first final hampered his focus to remain grounded with his game. Playing the top seed did not help either. Finally it boiled down to experience and Friend easily lost 6-0, 6-2.

The other two under 16 representatives also made it past their first round matches. Benjamin Loewen defeated Aish Singh 6-3, 6-1. The second seed Kamal defeated him in his next match. Sam Yan beat Parsa Ameri 6-2, 6-2 before falling 6-1, 6-4 to the third seed Andrew Partyka.

Alaina Ge lost to Linda Otamendi after taking the tie-break in the first set of her first round match. She went on to beat Neer Bimbrahw 6-3, 6-2 in her next match before topping Jaewon Jenny Yoon 6-3, 6-1 to claim her first medal in the consolation final.

Two other club juniors that made it past their first round main draw matches: third seed Steven Baumann made it to his quarter final round after beating Philip Dziarmaga 6-4, 6-4 in his under 12 singles event. He was then beaten by Aramis Macovei 6-1, 7-6. In the boys under 14 event, Jason Wu beat Matthew Chin 6-3, 7-5 in his first round before going down to Andrew Huang, the third seed, 6-0, 6-1. In the consolation round Joseph Christopher Curtis beat Seiji A Hagai 6-4, 6-4 before he suffered his second defeat to Nikola Grubac 6-0, 6-1.