Junior tennis players Krystal Sukra and Aruna Ramrattan were both trounced by Barbados players in the first round of the Coca Cola International Tennis Federation (ITF) Junior Tournament being held in St Lucia.
According to results posted on the ITF website, it was a double bagel that scripted Sukra’s elimination from the tournament’s singles category. On the delivering end of Sukra’s 6 – 0, 6 – 0 defeat was Bajan Alyssa Fuentes while Ramrattan received her thrashing from Fuentes’ colleague, Melena Lopez.
In the girls doubles category Sukra and Ramrattan teamed up but once again were out-mastered, this time by a mixed continental team of The Bahamas and America. Their adversaries, Bahamian Chelsi Russell and American Kayla Gammie, treated the Guyanese to another double bagel, to end their participation in the tournament.
Sukra and Ramrattan attended the tournament along with Benedict Sukra but nothing of his participation was reported on the website.
The trio had departed Guyana last Friday to launch the first of a circuit of three tournaments that the national junior players, selected by the Guyana Lawn Tennis Association, will be attending.
The next tournament will be the St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) ITF Junior Tennis Championships, which the trio is scheduled to attend along with six other Guyanese players, who will depart Guyana today to travel to SVG.
Ramrattan and the Sukra siblings will also today travel from St Lucia to SVG.
While the tournament is scheduled to run from August 16-21, the entry level preliminaries for the tournament will begin tomorrow and the players will be expected to participate in this.
Departing from Guyana will be Gavin Lopes, Daniel Lopes, Khalif Gobin, Judha Stephney, girls’ junior number one seed Shawna Gentle, and Nicola Ramdyhan.
At the SVG Championships, Gentle will for the first time debut in the girls 18 category at an ITF tournament.
Following the SVG tournament, Ramdyhan and Lopes will be joined by Aretta Dey to participate in a 13-and-under developmental tournament to be held in Curacao from August 23-28.
The team will be travelling to the tournaments accompanied by their coach, Shelly Daly-Ramdyhan.
