Top three finish the goal, team events commence play in Santo Domingo
(by Ian Marshall, Editor)

Places at stake in the forthcoming World Junior Championships to be staged later in the year in the Australian city of Bendigo; it is the Boys’ Team and Girls’ Team events which commence play at the forthcoming 2018 Pan American Junior Championships.

Proceedings commence in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, on Tuesday 10th July and conclude on Sunday 15th July.

Organised on the now well established World Championships formula of three players per team and five singles matches should a fixture go the full distance, the United States represented by Sharon Alguetti, Kanak Jha, Nikhil Kumar and Nicholas Tio head the Boys’ Team seeding.

They are followed by the South American countries of Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

Argentina selects from Martin Bentancor, Leandro Fuentes, Santiago Lorenzo and Alexis Orencel; for Brazil the line-up reads Sergio Bignardi, Enzo Nakashima, Guilherme Teodoro and Eduardo Tomoike. Meanwhile, for Chile, Nicolas Burgos, Gustavo Castillo, Andres Martinez and Jorge Paredes form the squad of players.

Similarly in the Girls’ Team competition, the United States head the list; Rachel Sung, Amy Wang, Crystal Wang and Rachel Yang being the players on duty. Next in the order of merit is Puerto Rico represented by Adriana Diaz, Fabiola Diaz, Kassandra Maldonado and Mileysha Sanchez.

Brazil who select from Tamyres Fukase, Fernanda Kodama, Livia Lima and Bruna Takashasi occupy the third seeded spot with Canada’s Ivy Liao, Isabelle Xiong, Joyce Xu amd Benita Zhou completing the top four seeded outfits.

The immediate target in each of the Boys’ Team and Girls’ Team events is a top three finish; that is the allotted number for Pan America in the 2018 World Junior Championships.

Winners and runners up qualify automatically; to gain third place a further series of fixtures follows. The losing teams in each half of the draw in the quarter-final stage of proceedings compete against each other, the winners then play the losing semi-finalists from the opposite half; the successful teams in that contest then play to decide third place.

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