2 Cebuano netters bag golds in Batang Pinoy

CEBUANO netters earned two gold medals in the tennis competition of the Batang Pinoy National Championships in Iloilo City yesterday.

Jana Pages of Bright Academy bagged the girls title while Jan Godfrey Seno of the University of San Carlos (USC) notched the boys title for Cebu.

Pages upstaged Melanie Dizon of Sta. Rosa, 6-1, 6-1, while Seno eclipsed fellow Cebuano Christopher “Tophe” Encarnacion, 6-1, 6-3, to rule the boys division.

Seno overcame a scare in the semifinals when he was down five match points against Jan Andrei Rodriguez of the National Capital Region (NCR).

After trailing 4-9 in the the third set super-tiebreak, Seno won seven straight points to win the set, 11-9.

Competing in the Batang Pinoy was liberating for Seno, who had come from a semifinal defeat in the Central Visayas Regional Athletics Association (CVIRAA) meet in Dumaguete City.

From Dumaguete, he travelled to Iloilo to represent Cebu as well in the Batang Pinoy nationals. He qualified for the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC)-organized competition after he clinched the boys title during the regionals held in Tacloban last month.

Aside from the golds, the Cebu team also grabbed a silver courtesy of Encarnacion and a bronze contributed by Pages and Shyne Villareal in the girls doubles competition.  /CORRESPONDENT MARS G. ALISON