Burnaby's Shirley Fu was in tough company at the Canadian junior table tennis open in North Vancouver last week.
The Burnaby North Secondary School teen and Anqi Luo made it to the semifinals of the junior girls' doubles before falling in four sets to eventual runner-up Linda Bergstrom and Maria Engelson of Sweden at Capilano University.
Fu and Luo won the third set 11-6 but dropped the fourth by a close 11-9 score.
The Canadian pairing advanced into the semifinals with a 3-1 victory over the American pairing of Ellen Hwang and Erica Wu.
In team play, Fu won both her singles matches against U.S.A. B competition and then teamed again with Luo to win their Group B tie 3-1.
Fu blanked both Hwang and Wu by the same 3-0 score before getting by the U.S. pair 3-1 in group doubles play.
Group winner Chinese Taipei defeated the second-place Canada A team 3-0 in the opening group matchup. In singles play, Fu stretched Taipei's TungYi Yeh to four sets, taking the third by an 11-5 score. Fu and Luo also took the doubles match to four sets in the loss.
In singles play, Fu
topped Group 9, blanking Leila Lok and Phoebe Wong of Canada and Trinidad's Catherine Spicer to move into the round of 32.
Fu took her opening match 11-5, 11-4, 11-5, 11-6 over Hong Kong's Desiree Hung.
The Burnaby teen then dropped her following match 4-1 to Puerto Rico's Carelyn Cordero.
In cadet boys' table tennis, Canada C teammates Michael Luo of Burnaby and New Westminster's Mike Yue placed third in Group B behind Sweden and U.S.A. A.
Yue opened with a 3-2 win over Elias Ranefur, coming back from a two-game deficit to beat the Swede 10-12, 7-11, 11-5, 12-10, 12-10. Yue also dropped a close five-set-ter to Ethan Jin in an opening matchup against the U.S. team.
Luo took Alfred Lindblad to four sets in his group singles match versus Sweden.
In singles qualifying, Luo lost his group matches to Ka Tak Hung of Hong Kong and Sagar Arun of the U.S. by a similar 3-0 score.
Yue placed second in his group but did not move on despite a 3-1 victory over American Nathan Hsu.
In boys' doubles, both Yue and Luo, playing with different Canadian partners, were stopped in the quarterfinals.
Yue and Jeremy Lau lost 3-0 to Hung and Yat Hin Lee of Hong Kong, while Luo and Yi Wang of Canada took American's Jonathan Ou and Ethan Jin to five sets before falling 7-11, 4-11, 11-9, 14-12, 5-11.
