(by Steve Hopkins)
The ITTF-Americas Youth Championships have taken over Guatemala City this week, with the best U15 and U19 juniors converging in Guatemala City August 23-30. The event included singles, doubles, mixed doubles, and team competition across both U15 and U19 age divisions.
Starting at the top, the U19 Boys Singles title went to Puerto Rico’s Steven Moreno, the top seed. Second went to Ramon Vila of the Dominican Republic. USA’s Daniel Tran and Brazil’s Hamilton Yamane shared third place. The top seed in U19 Girls was USA’s Sally Moyland who dropped only 2 games in the five matches she won. Fifteen year old Lilian Ma of the USA was a surprise runner up with Canada’s Sunny Zhang and Brazil’s Beatriz Fiore sharing third.
USA’s Daniel Tran and Darryl Tsao won U19 Doubles. USA’s Sally Moyland and Lilian Ma won U19 Girls Doubles. Sally Moyland won her third title pairing with Daniel Tran to Win U19 Mixed Doubles.
Brazil won the U19 Boys Team even over Ecuador with USA and Peru in third. USA’s U19 Girls team dominated their event without dropping a match. They topped Brazil in the Final (3-0) and Colombia and Canada finished third.
Cadet Boys Singles went to Brazil’s Vitor Thiofilo over Canada’s Shangyu Jiang (USA’s Lucas Wu and Brazil’s Flavio De Sousa finished third). Three Americans finished at the top of the Cadet Girls event with Irene Yeoh in first, Abigail Yu in second, and Tiana Piyadasa in third.
Cadet Boys Doubles went to a Brazil team of De Sousa and Thiofilo over USA’s Kyler Chen and Lucas Wu. Another USA squad with Carlough Francis and Chirag Pradhan finished third. USA’s Irene Yeoh and Abigail Yu won Cadet Girls Doubles over Argentina’s Camila Perez and Marta Salazar. USA’s Isabella Luo and Tiana Piyadasa and Canada’s Sophia Bai and Cindy Zhu finished third. Cadet Mixed Doubles was an all-American Final with Lucas Wu and Irene Yeoh finishing first and Abigail Yu and Kyler Chen finishing second.
Brazil topped TeamUSA 3-2 in Cadet Teams with Canada and Argentina in third. USA’s Cadet team won the Cadet girls 3-0 over Brazil. Costa Rica and Guatemala finished third.
Full brackets, scores, and standings for every event are available on the ITTF results site.
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