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| Oyinlomo Quadri was one of the players at the week-long event in Togo |
National junior tennis coach, Mohammed Ubale, has hailed Nigeria’s superlative performance at the just concluded African Junior Tennic Championship, AJTC Qualifying series in Lome, Togo where the country emerged as the overall winner.
Ubale, who spoke with Naija Tennis Special on Monday, 19 January, explained that the tournament has helped bring the best out of the players, singling out South Africa-based Adetayo Adetunji as the outstanding performer.
Nigeria ended the eight-day two-legged tournament with seven gold, four silver and two bronze medals for an accumulated 1,355 points.
Hosts Togo came second with 850 points by bagging four gold, three silver and three bronze medals while Benin Republic came third with 500 points by winning two gold, two silver and one bronze.
And Ubale believes that it will only enable the players to get better in future endeavours.
He said: “the players gave a very good account of themselves during the tournament and were really outstanding.
“But Adetunji was particularly impressive with the way she defeated her opponents and I was really excited that she had improved that much.”
The ITF-Certified coach however explained that the points accumulated were just to decide the best team in
“With the total number of points that we had, we were given a team trophy and that was where it ended. The points were for our country and not the individual players,” Ubale explained.
The players will now commence preparations ahead of the main AJTC which will hold in Tunisia, starting from 10 March, 2015.
the tournament and not necessarily the players’ ITF ranking.