Fernando leads Petes to tennis titles

The recently concluded inter schools tennis tournament played at the SLTA and Queens club, saw St Peter's College, captained by Shalain Fernando, running away with both the Junior and Overall championship.

The schools tournament during the past several years has been dominated by Royal College, with St Peter's lying second since their re-entry into tennis seven years ago.

For the past two years St Peter's tied with Royal for the junior title. This year St Peter's completely outclassed all the schools bagging a total 17 points to Royal's 9 points and Ananda's 8 points. In the Junior title Royal was relegated to third place with Ananda becoming Runners up to St Peter's.

Rev Fr. Sunil Perera, the St Peter's Sports Co-ordinator, commended the intensity and discipline in the coaching programme, which placed emphasis on constantly infusing new blood starting at the age of 8.

St Peter's fully exploited the mini tennis programme introduced to the schools by the SLTA, in developing a nursery of talented boys to be fed into the tournament age groups. Fr Sunil speaking with justifiable pride said that coaching at the college courts takes place all seven days of the week.

The college coach is Dinith Pathiraja assisted by P. Thizant and Bagirath Kumar from India. Coach Pathiraja said that besides taking over the No 1 slot in schools tennis, the Peterites have won several ranking tournaments over the years and have contributed several players to the Junior National teams and the Davis Cup squad.

For him this year's Championship did not come as a surprise. He said it was only a matter of time judging by the amount of effort and hard work that was put in.

The most notable Peterite is T. Dineshkanthan who was ranked as the No. 1 player at the ITF 14 & under Zone 2 event in Vietnam in January this year. While Stephan Martin is another promising player being one of the leading players in the under 12 age group. P. Niroshan has also represented a Junior Sri Lanka Team. Stephan De Costa was also selected to tour Maldives with the Sri Lanka team in December of last year.

St. Peter's has a pool of nearly 100 players in age groups ranging from 8 to 19 undergoing training in the College, which has 2 playing courts and 1 practice court. The tennis programme is directly supervised by the Rector, Rev Fr Felician Ranjith Perera assisted by a Tennis Committee. Bernard Jesuthasan and Miss Marina Tharsisius are the teachers in charge.