Eugenia avenges CIMB loss with hard-fought victory over Claudia

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Margaret (second left), Southern Zone Secretariat head Louis Barieng (second right), coach Emmanuel David (left) and other team officials pose with the players after the prize presentation.

MIRI: Eugenia David of Southern Zone gained her sweet revenge when she beat Northern Zone’s Claudia Yong in the women’s singles of the team event in the 2nd Sukan Sarawak 2019 squash competition at Pei Min Secondary School yesterday.

The 15-year-old lass from Kuching, who is struggling with hamstring injury, had to dig deep into her reserves to overcome the challenge from Claudia, having gone down 9-11 in the first set but bounced to take the second and third sets 11-4, 12-10.

Claudia forced the game into a rubber after winning the fourth set 11-2 but Eugenia held on to win the deciding set 11-9 to hand Southern Zone the winning point and the solitary gold offered in the squash competition.

Claudia had beaten Eugenia in the Girls U15 of the CIMB Grand Final as the latter was already nursing the injury sustained at the Sportsexcel Junior Championship 1st Leg in September this year.

Earlier, Clifford Tay and Eugenia-Aiman Hakim Roslan had delivered two points for Southern Zone and Northern Zone levelled the score 2-2 through Wong Lee Hong-Harith Danial Jefri and Jovyn Lau Wen Nie-Wong Su Fei.

“I feel very happy for winning this game against Claudia and securing the winning point for my team.

“As we have played against each other before, I know her strengths and also her weaknesses so I focus my attack on her backhand,” said Eugenia.

Southern Zone team manager Margaret Kechendai also expressed satisfaction with the players’ performance as she didn’t expect the team to win the gold.

“In fact, we were gunning for the silver medal as we did not have a strong women’s team because the elite players like Rachel Kong and Nathalie Sim went to compete in the Singapore Open and the men’s team are second stringers.

“Eugenia has done very well and got the winning point for us despite still being injured,” she added.

The Southern Zone players had played in back to back tournaments – Sportexcel Junior Championship 2nd Leg from Nov 28 to Dec 1 and the REDTone Kuala Lumpur Open from Dec 2 to 8 – before flying straight to Miri for Suksar II.