Eleven-year-old Kanani Ashraf stamped her name among the top netters in the girls 14-and-under division, finishing in fourth place at the 2004 ITF Pacific Oceania Junior Tennis Championships in Lautoka, Fiji. <\/p>\n
The youngest of all 48 players in the tournament, Ashraf caught the eyes of officials after splashing into the semifinal round. <\/p>\n
Despite dropping the match, and faltering in a battle for third place Saturday, Ashraf sent a statement as she finished ahead of eight other players in her class.<\/p>\n
She was also the top finisher among the NMI representatives. <\/p>\n
Ashraf was faced with a shot at avenging an earlier loss to Zinnia Leaman of the Solomon Islands, and fought hard in their opening set only to fall short, 4-6. <\/p>\n
Leaman then put the match away with a 6-1 clincher to win third place.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mayuko Arriola bounced back and closed her tourney on a good note after pounding away Akanesi Fa of Fiji in straight sets for a seventh place finish in the girl\u2019s 14-and-under category.<\/p>\n
Arriola was quick on her feet and simply dominated the opening set en route to an easy 6-1 win. She then hit cruise control in the second set and strolled to a 6-0 win.<\/p>\n
Winning the division was Abbey Tere-Apisah of Papua New Guinea, who failed to lose a set in the tourney. For their part, Arriola and Ashraf, despite losing in straight sets to Tere-Apisah, gave her a run for her money as both proved to be tough challenges for the Papua New Guinea champion.<\/p>\n
In the boy\u2019s draw, Ji Hoon Heo had a respectable finish, beating Justin Dugan of Guam 6-1, 6-0 for a shot at fifth place. <\/p>\n
He then outclassed Manu Priest of Cook Islands to secure the fifth place finish. <\/p>\n
Having beaten Priest in their regular round encounter, Heo entered with confidence and again tormented Priest for a 6-4 win. He then followed it up with a clinching 6-3 win in the second set.<\/p>\n
Winning the division was Daneric Hazelman of Fiji, who lost only one set in the tournament.<\/p>\n
Also representing the Commonwealth was Tim Quan, who placed eighth in the boy\u2019s 18-and-under division. Quan faltered in his final match, losing to Willence Seymour of Nauru 3-6, 0-6.<\/p>\n
The four NMI netters, along with players from Naura, Kiribati, and Guam represented the North Pacific.<\/p>\n
Other countries include Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea representing the Western Pacific, and Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa, and American Samoa representing the Eastern Pacific.<\/p>\n
In team results, West Pacific dominated and won with 139 points, while North Pacific surprised many with a second place finished with 90 points. East Pacific had 82 points.<\/p>\n
Points were determined by individual placing. First place gets 12 points, second place 11, third place 10, and so forth. <\/p>\n
According to Dr. Mohammad Ashraf, who accompanied to the team to Fiji, the four NMI netters will return early Saturday morning on board Asiana Airlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eleven-year-old Kanani Ashraf stamped her name among the top netters in the girls 14-and-under division, finishing in fourth place at the 2004 ITF Pacific Oceania Junior Tennis Championships in Lautoka, Fiji.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83489","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}