The RP boys lawn tennis squad from Cebu composed of brothers James and Oswaldo Dumoran pocketed the gold in the boys lawn tennis team competitions. It formalized its gold medal finish with a breezy win over their compatriots from RP-B (Davao Oriental) 2-1 at the Darwin Tennis Center. They swept all their four ties against East Timor-1, Northern Territory, East Timor-2 and RP-B.
With the tennis gold, the Philippines increased its medal haul to four golds and six silvers and stayed in hunt for the top ten overall.
On Wednesday night, six boxers from RP-Davao and RP Cebu – lightweight Rico Laput, flyweights Franklin Albia and Welbert Eballes, bantamweights Deck Varron and Ninolito Jalnaiz, and featherweight Jesar Ancajas – marched to the finals after scoring crunching wins over their rivals.
Laput (Davao) started the carnage with a quick first round RSC-O stoppage of East Timor’s Manuel Mendonca, followed by a similar opening round RSC-O win by teammate Eballes (Davao) over local hero David Solly of Northern Territory.
Cebu’s Albia failed to sustain the Filipinos’ romp somewhat with a hard-earned points win over Sapok Biki of Malaysia but his Cebuano termmate Ninolito Jalnaiz put the crowd on its feet with a RSC-O first round triumph over John Renwarin of Indonesia. Ancajas capped the night with an RSC-injuries victory over a bloodied Robin Tarea of Bougainvide.
The Filipinos are assured of two golds as two bouts will feature all-Filipino finals.
This bizarre finals came about when the RP-Cebu and RP-Davao teams sent boxers in similar weight divisions here against the advice of PSC commissioner William "Butch" Ramirez, who heads the Philippine delegation.
Even so, the Filipinos remained the crowd favorites here although most of the Filipino throng regularly watching the bouts at the Gardens Oval would have wished for a different finals other than all-Filipinos.
"Mas masaya sana kung hindi Pinoy sa Pinoy, pero okay na rin. At least siguradong atin ang gold," said Allan Galera, one of the Filipino-Aussie migrants here who play hosts to the RP athletes.
The all-Filipino finals is an interesting toss-up featuring the hard-hitting Eballes going up against Albia for the 51-kg gold while Varron will stake his title against Jalnaiz in the 54-kg class. Laput will take on Malaysian Zamzai Azizi for the 48-kg gold and Ancajas will gun for the gold against a tough Gregory Eadie of North South Wales in the 57-kg division.