After a week of training, in Colombia, the COSAT 2012 touring team joined the competitive fray this week with an encouraging start.
D’ Jeri Raymond, the only Antiguan and Barbudan on the team, playing on clay in her first ever Grade 1 level event held her own against Uruguay’s Maria Zanella before falling 4-6, 3-6. She subsequently teamed up with her colleague on the ITF Grand Slam touring team Honduras’s Daniela Obando for a 6-1, 7-5 win over Colombia’s Valentina Lemos and Karen Romero. The Surinamese coach, John Goede, expressed happiness with the outcome, posting on facebook after the first day of play, “four hard fights! Three victories. One (Raymond) had an amazing fight in a first time South American experience! Coach is happy!”
The touring team includes, in addition to Raymond, three juniors from Central America: Daniela Obando
(HON), Eduardo Camacho (CRC) and Atilio Flores (El Salvador)
The Copa Indervalle is one of several scheduled tournaments on the COSAT 2012 tour; Raymond is slated, between January and February, to participate in four of the 13 scheduled tournaments – Copa Indervalle in Columbia, the Guayaquil Bowl in Ecuador, the Regatas Bowl in Peru, and the Concorde Plata in Bolivia.
The opportunities given to our athlete D’Jeri Raymond on this tour is as a result of the ITF Grand Slam development fund which facilitated Raymond’s Air Travel and Accommodations, along with ABI Bank
