The popular School Kids Saturday tennis competition is three weeks away from closing, says Tennis Samoa Inc. Development Coordinator, Yvonne Wilson Carruthers.

The competition is currently being held at the Apia Park Tennis Courts and is open to students from all schools between the ages of 5-16.

Ms Carruthers said there are different sections within their Saturday competition that caters to different age groups. 

"We have a red-ball competition which is for Year 1-4, an orange-ball competition for Year 5-8, green-ball competition for juniors and a yellow-ball ladder competition for our advanced juniors," she said.  

Ever since the Saturday competition started, points from all the players who joined every Saturday are accumulated to create the end results, from which the winners for the whole competition will be announced. 

"There are always new players who come every Saturday and they just hop in the tournament," she added. "Last Saturday we had about 50 players and they came in on separate times. The kids love the sport. When I go for our program in schools and then on Saturday when we have our competition, I see the kids there.

"I went to Ah Mu [Academy] recently and then I saw a number of those kids on Saturday." 

Ms Carruthers said she has been doing in-school competitions as well which first started at the Vaiala Beach School, Samoa Primary, St Mary's, Ah Mu Academy and then hopefully Marist Boys Primary. 

These players are also a part of the Saturday competition. However, through their in-school competitions, they select their final teams for the major competition in August which is the inter-school competition. 

"So after the inter-school competitions, we can then select top players for the squad who will represent Samoa," Ms Carruthers added.  "Our biggest sponsor at the moment is Business Systems Limited [B.S.L.], International Tennis Federation [I.T.F.], Samoa Tennis Inc. and Australian open, but hopefully ANZ will join in as well."

Ms Carruthers believes tennis is a good sport due to its pathways which can enable players to go further and make it a career. 

She says this pathway begins in schools to clubs and then national squads to regional competitions, then they select the very top players who will then receive scholarships.

"Our players who are recipients of these scholarships will go to I.T.F. in Fiji where all the scholarship recipients are and they will train there and have online schooling," she added. "We have four players who were recipients of those scholarships."

For players who were unable to receive a scholarship, Ms Carruthers said an end-of-year tour of New Zealand has been running for over 13 years to enable players to still be actively involved with playing tennis. 

Saturday 27th Competition Results 

RED Ball Competition:

1st = Lelelorisa (Ah Mu), Lizzie(Ah Mu).

 2nd = Shretha ( Vaiala Beach School), Elijah ( Vaivase Primary School).

 3rd = Rina (Ah Mu Academy), Amelia (Ah Mu Academy).

ORANGE Ball Competition:

1st Place: =Vera ( St.Marys School), Tyrela (Ah Mu Primary School).

 2nd = Agnes(Vaimea Prim. sch), Cisco (Ah Mu Primary ).

 3rd Place : Mizarael ( Ah Mu Academy ).

GREEN Ball Competition:

 1st = Nellica/ Arnulf/Dereck- Ah Mu Academy School.

 2nd-Avilla (Ah Mu Academy)

 3rd- Tony (Ah Mu Academy)

YELLOW Ball Competition:

*No results due to washout brought on by rain.