Atkinson picked for Kiwi team

Wairarapa's Sade Atkinson has been included in a team of 15 players named by Tennis New Zealand to contest the 2012 Oceania closed junior championships in Lautoka, Fiji, next month.

Atkinson, 18, is joined in the girls line-up by Danielle Fereridis (Northern), Claudia Williams (Auckland), Bridget Liddell (Central), Mia Middleton (Northern), Rosie Cheng (Northern) and CT Ampornachariya (Canterbury).

The boys section consists of Cameron Norrie (Auckland), Kyle Butters (Central), Nic Brown (Waikato/Bays), Alex Klintcharov (Auckland), William Matheson (Auckland), Olly Sadler (Central), Ryan Henderson (Auckland) and Joseph Bray (Canterbury).

The Oceania championships doubles as a B2 ITF world junior circuit event where entry is restricted to players from the Oceania region.

Atkinson was a member of the Ngatitoa team which last summer won the Wellington interclub regional competition for the first time. That competition involved teams from Wellington, Hutt Valley and Kapi Mana

She has also achieved major success for Central in national age group tournaments and has been playing on the ITF junior circuit.

At the Air Pacific Open junior championships in Fiji earlier this month, Atkinson, who has a world junior singles ranking of 1072, beat the fourth and 14th seeds in the singles before losing to her Kiwi doubles partner Liddell in three sets in the quarter-finals.

Those two players then combined to make it through to the final of the doubles where they lost to the top seeds.

Atkinson then played in Wollowin and Kawana, Queensland, reaching the last 16 in the singles in both tournaments.