Hosts Provide Severe Test for Second Seeds, Crystal Wang Steers United States Home
Courtesy of ITTF

May 11, 2014 – Two groups in the first stage of the Junior Girls’ Team event at the Butterfly 2015 Canadian Junior and Cadet Open in Markham; at the end of the initial day of play, Monday May 11th, it was first place in the group for the highest rated teams.

The United States ‘A’, the top seeds, with Angela Guan and Prachi Jha in action, duly finished on first place in their group; furthermore, they reserved pole position in a most impressive manner.

They beat the Canada ‘C’ Team outfit of Jean Fei and Vida Sieu by three matches to nil, before recording the same margin of victory against the Canada ‘B’ Team duo of Liu Jiabao and Justina Yeung.

Main Draw Place Booked
Liu Jiabao and Justina Yeung duly finished in second position in the group and thus advanced to the semi-finals; teams finishing in first and second places in each group progressed to the second stage.

Full Distance Duel
Comfortable progress for Angela Guan and Prachi Jha; for Amy Wang and Crystal Wang, representing the United States ‘B’, life was somewhat more tense.

They needed to full five matches to beat Canada ‘B’ with Crystal Wang being the player to steady the ship. She beat Amy Nicholls in the opening match of the fixture (13-11, 11-4, 12-10), before in the concluding contest overcoming Alicia Cote (11-3, 11-5, 11-4).

The one remaining win for the Americans came from Amy Wang in the second match of the fixture against Alicia Cote (11-8, 11-8, 11-9); while for the Canadians, success was gained in a titanic doubles contest (7-11, 13-11, 11-9, 3-11, 17-15) and in the immediate ensuing fourth match of the engagement when Amy Nicholls accounted for Amy Wang (11-6, 11-8, 11-8).

Felt Confident
“I felt confident today, I’d played the Canadians before and I won, I have a good record against them”, said Crystal Wang. “They made mistakes when I played with a great deal of top spin, they made mistakes blocking.”

Comfortable wins for Crystal Wang her two singles contests but the doubles proved very different.

“We had a lead in the fifth game, we were ahead 5-2 and we had match point at 10-9”, explained Crystal Wang. “I think we played to their strengths.”

Punched Backhand
Nevertheless, Crystal Wang was pleased with her performance while Amy Wang perhaps felt she was not at her best.

“Against Alicia I felt confident; she made errors from the forehand”, explained Amy Wang. “The last time I played Amy I won but today she punched the ball very fast from the backhand and that caused me problems.”

Second Place
Defeat for Alicia Cote and Amy Nicholls second place was the eventual outcome and thus progress to the main draw.

Amy Wang and Crystal Wang recorded a three matches to nil victory over the combination of Canada’s Sidonie Barey-Carron who partnered, while earlier the Canadians had pointed a three-one success.

Meanwhile, in the Cadet Girls’ Team event, where the teams finishing in first and second places qualified for the second stage; it was first place for the United States ‘A’ (Ishana Deb, Grace Yang); Canada ‘A’ (Ivy Liao, Joyce Xu) and the United States ‘C’ (Angie Tan, Emilie Shen Lin).

Second places went to Canada ‘C’ (Laura Lai, rose Huang), Canada ‘E’ (Naomi Tran, Marika Labrie) and Canada ‘F’ (Margaret Huang, Joy Xu).

Play Concludes
Play in both the Junior Girls’ Team and the Cadet Girls’ Team event concludes on Tuesday May 12th.