Sports
Jonathan Ramnanansingh
GABRIEL JOHN of Carenage Blasters and Derron Douglas of Queen’s Park were respectively crowned champions of the boys’ Under-15 and Under-19 divisions of the Trinidad and Tobago Table Tennis Association (TTTTA) Silverbowl Youth Tournament on Saturday.
At the Warrenville United Table Tennis Club in Warrenville, both players played unbeaten to the end.
In the Under-15 final, John battled hard to get past Solo Crusaders’ Malik Gopaul 12-14, 12-10, 7-11, 11-9, 11-3. In the semi-finals, John defeated WASA’s Jonathan Cottoy 3-0 (11-9, 11-7, 11-3) while Gopaul had to dig deep to get past D’Abadie Youths’ Sekel McIntosh 9-11, 11-9, 11-9, 11-8 .
John also had a perfect start in the group one round robin as he beat Queen’s Park’s Anthony Mansoor 3-0 and then McIntosh 3-1. Similarly, Gopaul eased past Queen’s Park’s Luke Govia 3-0 and PowerGen’s Jamal David by the same margin.
Meanwhile Douglas was crowned Under-19 singles winner when he triumphed 3-0 (11-8, 11-7, 11-5) over WASA’s Christoff Roberts.
In their respective semi-finals, Douglas had to claw from behind to win 9-11, 11-8, 11-7, 11-9 against Carenage Blasters’ Nicolas Lee while Roberts bettered Lee’s clubmate Jamalli Mauge 6-11, 12-10, 11-5, 11-8.
In the first stage round robin, Douglas topped his group with 3-0 wins over Esaa Mohammed (WUTTC) and Yirah McIntosh (D’Abadie Youths).
Roberts however, defied odds later on in the tourney as he progressed out of the round robin group as the second best. He beat Shareef Khan (WUTTC) 3-0 but went down to Lee 3-0 in the opening rounds.
