(by Steve Hopkins, photo by USATT)

The ITTF World Youth Championships is now underway in Tunisia and many of the worlds best are present to compete in U19 and U15 events over the next week.

For the USA, we have Sarah Jalli, Sally Moyland, Tiffany Ke, Kayla Goodwin, Rachel Wang, Hannah Song, Amy Zhang, Daniel Tran, Darryl Tsao, Andrew Yang, and Anav Gupta competing in three team events: U19 Girls Teams, U15 Girls Teams, and U15 Boys Teams.

The three US Team entries are all out before the Semifinals.  TeamUSA’s U19 Girls squad defeated Chinese Taipei 3-2 but then fell to China 0-3.  TeamUSA drew the top seeded Japan squad in the U15 Girls Team event and fell 0-3. And the U15 Boys team met a similar fate on Saturday – drawing the top seeded French team with Daniel Tran, Darryl Tsao, and Anav Gupta each losing their singles match.  Our team will have more opportunities in the upcoming singles and doubles events over the next few days.

In the U19 Boys Teams, France will face China in one Semifinal, and Poland will face Taipei in the other.  In the U19Girls Teams the match-ups for the Semifinals are Japan versus China and Romania versus France.  In the U15 Boys Teams the Semifinals will be France versus Australia and China versus Japan, and in the U15 Girls Teams event it will be Japan versus Korea and Romania versus China.

Visit ButterflyOnline.com for updates and results.