Lae tennis stars impress at national junior open championship

THE Lae Tennis Club is focused on developing more young talents through its junior programme following an increased participation at the 2024 PNG Junior Tennis Open championship over the weekend.
Club president and coach Glenn Cabasug said after successfully ticking off some of their achievements in 2023, more kids from different age-groups turned up this year to join the sport.
“Our milestone that we’re gearing for this year is to now start reaching out to schools because of the increased participation. Because we don’t have our own facility, we rely on the Chinese club for our coaching and have the tournament over at the golf club,” Cabasug said.
“Junior coaching wise, we are trying to reach out to schools within the city first and run clinics over the weekend as well.
“We’ve seen a lot of kids getting interested to join especially in the last few months since we started posting on our social media page.”
Cabasug said there was potential and more talents waiting to be discovered.
He said the result was positive, bringing eight juniors to compete in the 2023 Junior Tennis Open championship where two juniors made their debut for PNG juniors in regional tournaments, and 12 juniors taking part in this year’s edition in Port Moresby.
“There’s a lot of interest and a lot of talent to be discovered that is why we are pushing for this to take place,” he said.
“We have had discussions with the PNG Tennis Association president to trial the programme during the term break and see where we go from there.”
The championship serves as a selection tournament for juniors in the 2024 West Pacific Regional Championship in Lautoka, Fiji.
“There’s talent in Lae and by chance if we get two on the junior national team, maybe we could still maintain two but if we get three, that’s a bonus for us to keep identifying and training our juniors for more opportunities as such in the future,” he said.
Cabasug also thanked sponsors who supported the club in the JTO that concluded on Monday.