Top guns Luke Lu and Charlie Chen were flawless Sunday and led their Tinian team to victory against Saipan in the 3rd Saipan-Tinian Goodwill Table Tennis Tournament at the Northern Marianas College Gymnasium.<\/p>\n
Lu and Chen both dominated and breezed through the competition for six wins apiece while not even dropping a match to finish in a tie for first place in the individual competition.<\/p>\n
The tie forced Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association officials Mario Espeleta and Budhi Gurung to turn to their quotient system, and after reviewing all the matches played by both players, determined that Lu was champion and Chen was first runner-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took all the matches into consideration, and on one match, Charlie had to play four sets to win, which means he lost a set,\u201d Espeleta said. \u201cAs for Luke, he didn\u2019t drop a set throughout the entire tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite having his way and turning back the opposition, Lu still took time to credit the Saipan team for improving their game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played okay, but I feel that the Saipan team improve a lot since last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Saipan delegation didn\u2019t go home empty handed as Gurung bagged the third place trophy. Gurung and teammate Su Yong Dong were tied with four wins apiece in the tournament, however, the quotient system determined Gurung as the winner. Both players were part of the bronze medal team that competed in the Palau South Pacific Mini Games.<\/p>\n
Saipan came back strong in the doubles competition and took top honors as Gurung and Su Dong joined forces for first place, while Espeleta and Constantino Pobre placed second. Lu brothers Luke and Robin of Tinian placed third.<\/p>\n
Tinian Dynasty & Casino assistant chairman Liang Weibin, also a member of the Tinian delegation, explained that the tournament promotes friendship among the two groups and that he is already looking forward to future tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels wonderful,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is important is to move the local ping-pong improvement and emphasize how important team work is besides improving skills. The relationship between us is wonderful\u2026we\u2019re sharing opinions about skills and feelings about ping-pong and it\u2019s just wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Champion Lu also stressed similar thoughts, adding that players from both groups improve because of the exchange of ideas between the two delegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love this kind of tournament very much because it gives us a chance to learn many new things and new skills for ping-pong and also we can meet new friends even with different nationalities, so we\u2019re happy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The tournament was sponsored by Transamerica Corp. and Pacific Trading Co.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top guns Luke Lu and Charlie Chen were flawless Sunday and led their Tinian team to victory against Saipan in the 3rd Saipan-Tinian Goodwill Table Tennis Tournament at the Northern Marianas College Gymnasium.<\/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-96229","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\/96229","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=96229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}