{"id":199705,"date":"2015-04-21T04:10:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T18:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=199705"},"modified":"2015-04-21T04:10:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T18:10:05","slug":"lee-lizama-triumph-anew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lee-lizama-triumph-anew\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee, Lizama triumph anew"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carol Lee notched her third straight division crown, while Luther Lizama earned back-to-back, as they ruled the U18 singles competitions in the 2015 CNMI Junior Tennis Championships held over the weekend at the American Memorial Park tennis courts.<\/p>\n

Lee bagged the girls U18 tiara in Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association\u2019s last junior tournament for the 2014-2015 season after topping the round-robin contest with her unbeaten 3-0 record. Lee, who won the same division title in the Coconut Tennis Classic and PIC Tennis Championships this year, boosted her chances for the third straight championship after downing Isabel Heras, 6-0, 6-1, and Negahr Rastguiy, 6-1, 6-4, last Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"nmita\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Saipan Community School student then clinched the division crown last Sunday after surviving Mikayla Lopez in three sets. Lopez prevailed in the opening set, 6-3, but failed to stop Lee\u2019s string of successes in the girls U18 finale after the latter swept the last two sets, 6-4, 6-0. Lopez settled for another runner-up honor as she also defeated Heras, 6-2, 6-0, and Rastguiy, 6-1, 6-1, in the earlier games last weekend.<\/p>\n

In the boys U18 singles, which had a round-robin format, too, Lizama went perfect in three games to gain his second consecutive title this season.<\/p>\n

Lizama, who earned his first boys U18 plum in last month\u2019s PIC tournament, won NMITA\u2019s last event after outclassing Michael Ren last Sunday, 6-3, 7-5. Lizama\u2019s two other victories in the weekend competition were against Steve Lee, 6-1, 6-0, and Coconut Classic champion Colin Ramsey, 6-2 6-4.<\/p>\n

Ren took the second place as he prevailed over Steve Lee via walkover and against Ramsey, 6-4, 6-1.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Eu Bin Park, Mimi Sakano, and Tania Tan joined Carol Lee and Lizama in the singles champions circle after topping their respective divisions.<\/p>\n

Tan nailed the girls U16 singles tiara after notching two victories in the round-robin contest. She was first paired against Ami Tsukagoshi and needed only two sets to win, 6-2, 6-0. The eventual champion picked up where she left off last Sunday and swept long-time doubles partner Julia Ishikawa, 6-1, 6-1. Ishikawa finished second as he also downed Tsukagoshi, 6-4, 6-1.<\/p>\n

In the girls U14, Mimi Sakano took the short route to beating Asia Raulerson, 6-2, 6-1, while Park also had an easier time against Anthony Gregoire, 6-1.<\/p>\n

Besides the singles events, NMITA\u2019s season-ending local tournament also featured doubles contests and results in various age groups will be reported later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol Lee notched her third straight division crown, while Luther Lizama earned back-to-back, as they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":199706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2587,2773,4004,4005],"class_list":["post-199705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-colin-ramsey","tag-mimi-sakano","tag-nmita","tag-steve-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}