Zecily Fung is the first Oceania player on court at the LI-NING BWF World Junior Championships 2018.
On Monday 12 November (local time in Markham, Canada) the LI-NING BWF World Junior Championships 2018 begin as the future stars of badminton compete on the big stage.
Oceania sees a number of athletes competing from both Australia and New Zealand this year:
| Australia | New Zelaand |
| Angela Yu | Dacmen Vong |
| Jodee Vega | Edward Lau |
| Kai Chen Teoh | Ella Smith |
| Kaitlyn Ea | Jacqueline Yu |
| Peter Yan | Oscar Guo |
| Ricky Tang | Roanne Apalisok |
| Ryan Venpin | Ryan Tong |
| Zecily Fung | Shaunna Li |
The players are lucky to escape the cold outdoors in Canada, where the weather forecast is currently snow, and are instead out to shine on court today. Zecily Fung (ranked 47 in the current Junior World Rankings) kicked off the competition for Oceania in a women’s singles battle against Lena Maria Joensen (ranked 929) from the Faroe Islands with a comfortable win 21-13 21-13, setting up a second round tie against Slovakia’s Alexandra Remenova (231).
Other successes throughout the morning came from New Zealand’s Ella Smith (82) who defeated Munkhnar Lkhagvasuren from Mongolia (612) with a 21-2 21-12 victory, while in the men’s singles, Edward Lau (188) from New Zealand overcame the challenge from the higher-ranked Ivan Medynskiy (63) from Ukraine 21-16 21-8 and Australia’s Peter Yan (59) secured his place in the second round by defeating Mongolia’s Sumiyasuren Enkhbat (161) 21-13 21-15. Kai Chen Teoh (81) also managed to fight off the higher-ranked challenge of Miguel San Luis (43) Spain with an empathic 21-18 21-13 victory to progress into the next round.
It wasn’t to be for the other players on the day as a number of our players faced defeat in the first round of the women’s and men’s singles:
- Marion Le Turdu, France (52) vs Roanne Apalisok, New Zealand (127) 21-8 21-13
- Nerea Diaz, Spain (83) vs Kaitlyn Ea, Australia (798) 22-20 21-15
- Talia Ng, Canada (46) vs Angela Yu, Australia (290) 21-5 21-11
- Han Qianxi, China (110) vs Shaunna Li, New Zealand (60) 21-8 21-8
- Markus Barth, Norway (35) vs Ricky Tang, Australia (605) 21-15 21-10
- Setthanan Piyawatcharavuit, Thailand (68) vs Oscar Guo, New Zealand (30) 21-19 21-17
- Nicola Rudolf, Austria (57) vs Ryan Tong, New Zealand (510) 21-17 28-26
The men’s, women’s and mixed doubles competition continues into the evening. You can stay up to date with the latest results here.
