Saipan Tribune

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Thursday, January 10, 2013

CNMI jr. players survive opener

Negahr Rastguiy and Tammy Ackerman lasted the opening round of the 2013 Victorian Junior Grasscourt Championships held yesterday at the Wodonga Tennis Centre in Victoria, Australia.

Both CNMI junior tennis players competed in the girls U14 doubles with different partners and advanced to the next round after posting contrasting wins. Rastguiy joined forces with Ayana Rengiil of Palau and they eliminated Australia's Annabel Jaskiewicz and Maddison Stark in three sets. The Pacific Oceania Team tandem dropped the opening set of their 11am match, 4-6, but stole the win after prevailing in the last two sets, 6-4, 11-9.

The three-set opening match took one hour and 20 minutes to be completed and the victory allowed Rastguiy and Rengiil to set up a quarterfinals showdown against the third-ranked pair of Beatrice and Kate Vaughan. The Aussie duo drew a bye in the opening round and will test Rastguiy and Rengiil's mettle at 9:30am today (8:30am Saipan time).

Ackerman, who is fresh from a finals stint in the consolation draw of a singles event in Albury, and teammate Emma Adelaide Graham of Australia needed only two sets to oust their foe, but their opening match was longer than Rastguiy and Rengiil's.

Ackerman and Graham topped the Japanese duo of Hina Fukuchi and Momoko Ishizaka, 7-5, 6-4, after one hour and 50 minutes to book the fourth and last quarterfinals berth in the upper half of the 13-team field. Next up for Ackerman and Graham will be the top-seeded tandem of Alana Bourgeois and Samantha Nyika.

The 13-year-old Ackerman, who advanced to the quarterfinals in her singles debut at the Victorian Junior Grasscourt Championships last year, is also entered in the girls U14 singles. She was scheduled to duel Kellie Bairstow in the upper half of the 25-player field yesterday, but results of the match were unavailable at press time. Rastguiy is in the lower half of the same age group competition and was set to face Nada Milenkovic in the first round.
Mikayla Lopez is also competing in the same tournament and had one game in the opening day. She was pitted against Micaela Mckimmie in the first round of the girls U16 singles, but results of their tiff were also unavailable at press time. In doubles, Lopez will team up with American Samoa's Anastasia Tapusoa and they will debut against No. 2 seed Maddison Brackenreg and Julia Stutsel today at 10am. (Saipan Tribune)