MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Kheith Cruz, a 13-year-old Philippine female table tennis national team player, defended the high school event title with her classmates in the 16th Uni-Oriental Cup Interscholastic Table Tennis League.
Paco Citizen Academic Foundation, the school which Cruz studied in, beat the opponent 3-0 in the high school event final to attain its three consecutive years' trophy.
"I played nearly ten games today and feel exhausted. Fortunately, I stuck to the final and won. I'm very satisfied with the result," Cruz said.
She will represent her country as the youngest table tennis national team player in history to attend the 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games later this year after placing top-five in the national qualifiers last month.
As a middle school student, Cruz has been to China four times. In November 2018, Cruz and other four Philippine teenagers trained nearly a month in the Chinese National Table Tennis Training Base in Hebei Province.
"I think I improved a lot during last year's visit," she said, adding that she hoped to go to China again for training before or after the SEA Games which will be held from November 30 to December 11.
Dozens of teenager champions in the Uni-Oriental Cup have been invited to China for exchanging and training with experienced Chinese table tennis athletes, according to the organizer.
This year's Uni-oriental Cup is held by Philippine Table Tennis Association for National Development (TATAND) and Uni-Orient Travel Inc., attracting 1,180 players from 295 teams across the country.
"Uni-Oriental Cup has become a highly competitive and influential large-scale table tennis tournament, attracting many young Filipinos to join. And we hope the cup could develop the Philippine-China table tennis exchanges. This is of great significance to the promotion of the friendship between the Philippines and China," said Wilson Techico, the vice chairman of the Uni-Orient Travel Inc.
