(by Steve Hopkins, photo TTCanada)
The Canadian Nationals are split into two events with the senior event first and then the junior event immediately thereafter. This week, Richmond’s Olympic Oval in British Columbia was also host to the 2025 Canadian Junior Table Tennis Championships. The top prizes in the U19 Boys and U19 Girls Singles events went to Butterfly players – Laurent Jutras-Vigneault and Natalie Chan.
Jutras-Vigneault entered the tournament as the top seed in U19 Boys Singles, and after dropping his first game (a 10-12 loss to Parsa Abdolahi in the Second Round), he won every game. That included a 3-1 victory over Abdolahi, a 3-0 win over Zonggang Li, and a 3-0 win over Jason Louie, and his 3-0 Finals win over second-seeded Kenny Ly.
In U19 Girls Singles, Natalie Chan entered as the second seed but needed all five games to win two of her three matches. After a BYE in the first round, Chan fell behind 0-2 to Ivy Pan before winning three in a row to advance to the Semifinals. After defeating Emily Liu 3-0, she advanced to face the top seeded Sunny Zhang in the Final. In that Final, Zhang won the first and fourth games, but Natalie Chan took the second and third and then sealed the victory with a dominating 11-4 win in the fifth.
Sunuka Herath won both U17 Boys and U15 Boys. Sunny Zhang, who finished second in U19 Girls, also won the U15 Girls event. Ivy Pan won U17 Girls. Shangyu Jiang won U13 Boys. Amber Xihan Lin won U13 Girls. Kevin Wang won U11 Boys. And Olivia Ziyi Wang won U11 Girls.
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