QPCC, Blasters, WASA win Premier League openers

Source: Trinidad Guardian

FILE: Guyana's Shemar Britton, right, of Queen's Park Cricket Club, shows off his Men's A1 Division title winnings in the Classified Table Tennis Championships after beating clubmate Yuvraaj Dookram, left, in the final at the National Racquet Centre, Orange Grove Road, Tacarigua, on March 4. Britton won 11-8, 11-6, 11-9.

The reign­ing men's and women's cham­pi­ons in the T&T Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion Men's Di­vi­sion One and Women's Team com­pe­ti­tions, Queen's Park Ta­ble Ten­nis Club, Care­nage Blasters, and WASA all won their open­ing match­es when the T&TT­TA Pre­mier Di­vi­sion 11-team league com­pe­ti­tion served off with three match­es on Mon­day night.

How­ev­er, it wasn't all smooth sail­ing for QPCC as they got off to a shaky start in their en­counter with Hillview Rene­gades with Clas­si­fied Men's A-1 Di­vi­sion fi­nal­ist Yu­vraaj Dookram falling to Den­nis Web­ster 6-11, 8-11, 12-14 for the un­der­dogs to take a 1-0 lead.

But, that was the on­ly bright spark for Rene­gades on the night as Guyana's She­mar Brit­ton, the re­cent Clas­si­fied A-1 men's cham­pi­on came from be­hind to beat Franklyn Seechan 8-11, 11-7, 11-5, 11-6 to lev­el the con­test at 1-1.

Na­tion­al youth play­er Joshua Maxwell then put the Parkites 2-1 up cour­tesy of his 11-4, 11-4, 7-11, 11-8 vic­to­ry over Jonathan Cot­toy be­fore Brit­ton won his sec­ond match of the night, 11-3, 11-8, 11-8 against Web­ster to seal his team win.

Al­so at St Joseph, host club WASA reg­is­tered the most con­vinc­ing win on the first day of com­pe­ti­tion with the trio of Alar­ic Humphreys, his broth­er and for­mer top lo­cal play­er Cur­tis Humphreys, and Jean-Marc Lee Fai whip­ping Ser­vivors 3-0.

The old­er of the Humphreys' broth­ers, Alar­ic de­feat­ed Ser­vivors' Musaahib Newaj 11-8, 7-11, 11-7, 14-12 for a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five se­ries while Cur­tis swept Ri­ad Abasali 11-5, 11-8, 11-6, and Lee Fai bat­tled past Isa Mo­hammed 10-12, 11-6, 6-11, 12-10, 11-8 to clinch the win.

Down at the Care­nage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Haig Street, Care­nage, Nicholas O'Young de­feat­ed Ed­win Humphreys in a de­cid­ing clash 6-11, 11-8, 11-5, 11-6 to earn Care­nage Blasters an en­ter­tain­ing 3-2 tri­umph over D'Abadie Youths.

Re­cent na­tion­al se­nior men's tri­als for the Caribbean Cham­pi­onship win­ner, Luc O'Young had ear­li­er hand­ed Blasters a 1-0 lead af­ter he out­last­ed Humphreys 10-12, 11-7, 11-9, 7-11, 11-5 while Ab­hai Lal made it 2-1 when he dis­patched Shaquille Mitchell 11-3, 11-9, 11-9 be­fore O'Young (N) came up trumps when need­ed.

Ever­ton Sorzano had ear­li­er drawn D'Abadie Youths lev­el at 1-1 by beat­ing O'Young (N) 11-8, 12-10, 9-11, 11-8 while he al­so got the bet­ter of Luc 4-11, 11-6, 11-6, 10-12, 11-5 to even up the fix­ture for the sec­ond time, at 2-2.

Last night, Smal­ta Cru­saders and Ari­ma Hawks clashed at Hi­malaya Sports Club, Barataria while WASA Ta­ble Ten­nis Club went af­ter their sec­ond win at home this time to Pow­er­gen. The oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing teams in the com­pe­ti­tion are the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), and Trail­blaz­ers.