Teens thrive in Sydney Tennis championship

FOURTEEN-year-old Sugar-Ray Hakena and his 12-year-old sister Coco Hakena are now doing exceptionally well in Sydney under their coach Luke Bourgeois.
Both the siblings have left for Australia a week after being named as the 2022 SP Sports award Wespact junior runner up in the male and female category respectively.
Though it is the first time for both young athletes to travel overseas however both the Hakena sibling have hit the Sydney tennis courts running and are already gaining popularity amongst their peers in Australia.
“We moved the kids to college in Sydney a week after the SP Sports Awards and both are doing exceptionally well in tennis and winning most of their UTR matches,” Dian Hasavi Hakena said.
She said given that the two have never been overseas and have done all their training and fitness in PNG, their Sydney coach Luke Bourgeois is happy that these kids are “hitting the ground running” when they arrived in Sydney and his working to improve their game.
“The kids attended their first Tennis New South Wales championships on July 7-8, 2022” making it their first appearance in the Tennis New South Wales tournament.
They participated in 2022 Sydney closed junior championships with over 280 participants in U12, U14, U16 held over two days at the Sydney Olympic Park Tennis World and the Parramatta City Tennis Courts.
Sugar-Ray with 6 Universal Tennis rating (UTR) in the U16 Boys Singles and bowed out in round two to third seeded Finn Taylor while Colita with 5 UTR fought her way through to the grand final beating Tia McIntosh 6-1.
Both the siblings are hard at work after their first appearance in Sydney to improve their performances.
Moreover, Sugar-Ray and Colita did not compete in the Western Pacific Junior Championships in Fiji, instead they will be competing in the Tennis New South Wales tournaments to improve their UTRs. The teens are hoping that they will be considered to receive wild card entries into the 2022 Pacific Oceania Junior Championships to represent the Western Pacific Junior Team later this year.