Fourtennis players including two boys and two girls leave for Bujumbura this morning for the ITF East Africa Junior Circuit U-18 tournament that runs from November 17 to December 6 in Bujumbura, Burundi. Olive Tuyisenge and Chantal Mutuyimana will play in the girls’ category while Olivier Havugimana and Irene Habiyambere will search for glory in the boys’ fray. The team’s head coach Jean Pierre Nshimiyimana expects better performance from the players although he acknowledges that the level of competition is high. The tournament that will attract the best junior tennis players from Africa and Europe is a stage for the players to accumulate points to move up in ITF rankings. Havugimana reached the third round last year while David Uwimana, who had played the qualifiers to find his way into the main draw lost in the first round. In January this year, Russian Alexey Nesterov and Portugal’s Mariana Carreira won the boys’ and girls’ categories at the ITF East Africa Junior Circuit U-18 and Junior event hosted in Kenya. Damon Kesaris (South Africa) and Nikolai Manchev (Bulgaria) dominated the boys’ doubles competition while the girls’ pairing of Carreira and Georgia Lawson (Great Britain) clinched the doubles title.
