Five young enthusiastic Cook Islanders have qualified for the Pacific Oceania Junior Championships.

The competition will see a number of Pacific youths competing against each other in Lautoka, Fiji from July 10-19.

The players are under-12 boys Mareko Webb, Luca Rossouw and Harold Browne, U14s Raetea Rongo and U16s Luke Pierre.

Tennis Cook Islands chief executive Kura Karika-Une said 14 youngsters recently participated in the East Pacific Regional Championships in Apia, Samoa and five of them qualified for the Pacific Oceania event.

The tournament was held from April 17 to 22 in Apia, Samoa, featuring U12, U14 and U16 competitions.

Karika-Une said for half of the Cook Islands team, Samoa event was their first regional tournament.

“We wanted to give them that exposure and push them to get to the next level. The others, like the 12-year-old boys, joined for the first-time last year and they did well,” she said.

“We are happy each child got a win somewhere along the way, they kept pushing themselves. They had a good experience and it really opened their eyes to see what competition is like in the Pacific.”

Karika-Une said the countries that participated in the regional event in Samoa were Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, Tahiti and Cook Islands.

“From that week of tennis, we have five children who qualified for the Pacific Oceania Championships, to go and play against the rest of the Pacific.

“Each region has their own competition and then the top from each competition meets in Fiji in July.”

Karika-Une said as soon as they returned from Samoa, they took a short break as it was the school holidays and returned to training on the second week.