{"id":208033,"date":"2015-08-14T14:10:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T04:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=208033"},"modified":"2015-08-14T14:10:08","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T04:10:08","slug":"lee-surpasses-goal-in-itf-juniors-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lee-surpasses-goal-in-itf-juniors-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee surpasses goal in ITF Juniors event"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_208034\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-208034\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ITF-pix.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-208034\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ITF-pix.jpg\" alt=\"Carol Lee, seen here competing in an ITF Juniors event held on Saipan in May this year, made it to the semifinals of another ranking tournament in Fiji last month. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)\" width=\"600\" height=\"465\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-208034\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carol Lee, seen here competing in an ITF Juniors event held on Saipan in May this year, made it to the semifinals of another ranking tournament in Fiji last month. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>CNMI junior tennis player Carol Lee more than lived up to her expectations in the Oceania Open Junior Championships 2015 held in Lautoka, Fiji late last month.<br \/>\nLee made it to the semifinals of the girls U18 singles to barge into the Final Four of an ITF Juniors event for the first time since joining the circuit this year.<br \/>\n\u201cI expect myself to at least get into the quarterfinals, so at first I couldn\u2019t really believe that I made it to the semifinals,\u201d the 13-year-old player said.<br \/>\nLee advanced to the semifinals of the competition held from July 27 to Aug. 1 after sweeping Hong Kong\u2019s Justine Sophie Leong in their quarterfinals showdown in the upper half of the draw, 6-1, 6-2. In the earlier rounds, the unranked Lee dominated Australia\u2019s Emily Thompson, 6-1, 6-0, and then stunned the third-seeded Stella Cliffe, also of Australia, 6-0, 6-3, to earn a Round of 8 slot.<br \/>\nWith her three wins, Lee arranged a semis duel against another seeded foe in Hong Kong\u2019s Claudia Ng, who was ranked fifth in the draw. The Hong Kong bet went on to end Lee\u2019s streak after notching a 6-3, 6-2 victory in the semifinals. Ng eventually topped the event following a 7-5 (6), 6-1 victory over the second-ranked Ella Husrefovic of Australia. Husrefovic took the other finals berth after eliminating Lee\u2019s fellow Pacific Oceania player Ayana Rengiil of Palau in the bottom draw semifinals, 6-3, 6-0.<br \/>\nDespite losing in the semifinals, Lee was happy with her accomplishment in the Grade 5 tournament.<br \/>\n\u201cI was happy and proud of myself because I have never been into the semifinals of the ITF Juniors event before,\u201d Lee said.<br \/>\nThe Saipan Community School student also joined the doubles event of the same competition, but she and Rengiil bowed to Australia\u2019s Emily Price and Daniela Kovacevic. Lee and Rengiil won the opening set, 6-3, but dropped the last two, 3-6, 2-10.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, Lee also played in the Oceania Closed Junior Championships 2015, which was held in Fiji too, from Aug. 4 to 8.<br \/>\nThe CNMI bet managed to make it past the opening round after topping Australia\u2019s Monique Belovukovic, 6-2, 6-2, before falling to Australia\u2019s Michaela Haet, 5-7, 1-6, in the second round. In the doubles, Lee teamed up anew with Rengiil and they lost to Husrefovic and Jessica Zaviacic of Australia in the first round, 5-7, 4-6.<br \/>\nLee is still in Fiji and will be reunited with 13 other CNMI players as they anchor the North Pacific Team\u2019s campaign in next week\u2019s Pacific Oceania Junior Championships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; CNMI junior tennis player Carol Lee more than lived up to her expectations in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":208034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[195,26,164,338],"class_list":["post-208033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-australia","tag-cnmi","tag-fiji","tag-hong-kong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208033","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=208033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}