Lydia McQuillan blasted her way to the Girls U19 Italian Junior Open title on Sunday, completing her three-match campaign with a convincing 3-1 win in the final at the National Technical Centre in Riccione.
McQuillan, who had a bye in the round of 16, began her title charge on Friday with a 3-1 quarter-final win over Luxembourg’s Elisenda Ruiz-Kaiser (4-11, 11-7, 11-8, 11-8).
The Lisburn club player then defeated Hungary’s Nora Juhasz 3-1 on Saturday in the semi-finals (10-12, 11-8, 11-8, 11-5) before wrapping up her tournament title win with another 3-1 success in Sunday’s final, beating Romania’s Timeea Maria Dumitrascu (6-11, 11-6, 11-8, 11-8).
There was also a podium finish for Sutton’s Zoe Yeomans in the Girls U17s. She saw off Poland’s Zuzanna Gora 3-2 in her third/fourth place play-off on Sunday (11-9, 8-11, 9-11, 11-4, 12-10).
In the Boys U15 event, Sutton’s Harry Yeomans’ tournament ended with his 0-3 defeat to Konstantinos Christos Papatheodorou (8-11, 4-11, 7-11). His 23rd/24th place match with Hungary’s Lorant Szijarto was cancelled.
In his earlier matches, Yeomans lost 1-3 to Switzerland’s Kuba Wesolowski in the round of 32, defeated Italy’s Orlando Silvio Rustighi 3-0 in the 17th/32nd place play-off and lost to Poland’s Beniamin Morzyc 0-3 in the 17th/24th place play-off.
Meanwhile, Ridit Thapar – another Sutton club player – finished his six-match Boys U13 programme with a 3-2 win on Sunday over Poland’s Nicolas Lanza 3-2 (11-7, 7-11, 11-5, 11-13, 12-10) in the 19th/20th place play-off.
He began with a 3-0 round of 64 win over Italy’s Vincent Cusumano and then lost 0-3 to Poland’s Maciej Dziech in the round of 32.
Two play-off wins followed, 3-0 against Italy’s Paolo Ficorella and 3-1 versus Romania’s Radu Andrei Petrescu before he was beaten 1-3 by Bulgaria’s Boris Braykov in the 17th/20th place match.
