The Brian Barker-coached New Zealand Junior Boys Team of Dean Shu, Victor Ma and Alfred dela Pena recently travelled to Cape Town in South Africa for the World Junior Champs.

The Kiwi Boys finished 18th in the teams event, after a rather unexpected 3-0 victory over Brazil in the 17-20 play-offs.  When the match scorecard was promptly posted on facebook by Alfred's dad, Tony, team supporters could have been forgiven for thinking it was probably the score from an impromptu game of Futsal.  Closer analysis will have shown that the Brazilians were earlier beaten by Australia 3-2 after a serious injury to their top player, Rodrigo Yonesake.  

As it transpired, Yonesake could not play against New Zealand, and the Brazilians had only 3 players.  This set the scene for Alfred dela Pena to clinch a nail-biting first match against Carlos Ishida 11-9 in the seventh set.  Inspired by this, Dean Shu pulled away from Gustavo Kodama in the third set of an otherwise tightly contested match, clinching the win 12-10 in the 4th set.  All that was left for Victor Ma was to collect a default win over Yonesake to complete the victory.

In their final match the New Zealand trio were defeated by Nigeria 3-1.  The highlight of the match was dela Pena’s 3-1 victory over Amadi Omeh, who subsequently defeated Dean Shu.  

In pool play the kiwi boys struggled, with Victor Ma’s battle in the third and ultimately final match against American Adar Alguetti being the high point.  Victor also took a set off the highly ranked Argentinian Horacio Cifuentes, and Alfred won a set off American, Jack Wang.

In the singles pools Alfred dela Pena fought his way to a 4-3 win over Zakeer Moosa, who had the benefit of playing at home.  He also played strongly against Italian, Daniele Pinto before going down 4-2, in the match that decided the second qualifier for the main draw.

Dean Shu fought hard in his pool, particularly against the unbeaten Belgian Thibault Darcis, losing 11-13 in the seventh after racing out to a 3-0 lead and looking to have the winning of the match.  Despite playing strongly, he ultimately failed to register a win.  

Victor Ma had a comfortable 4-1 victory over his South African opponent, Cade Peters, and started well in his crucial match against Dane, Andreas Dilling, but then fell away.

After an inauspicious start to the event, there was a rather encouraging finish, with Alfred dela Pena impressing greatly with his ability and resilience at this level.  Dean Shu played strongly throughout, while Victor Ma may have been affected by injury as he struggled for consistency.  Coach, Brian Barker should have been well pleased from his swansong event as National Junior Boys coach, having supported  and developed this group of boys for several years.