After setting the ball rolling with a gold in the junior girls team category, Maharashtra paddlers reigned supreme in the individual events too as they added eight more medals to their kitty which included three gold, one silver and four bronze medals in the junior and youth Nationals in Sonepat.
The medal rush started off with Maharashtra’s Shruti Amrute, representing RSPB, earning a hard-fought 4-2 win by defeating PSPB’s Prapti Sen in the finals of the youth girls’ singles category.
State mates, Chinmaya Somaiya and Raegan Albuquerque also followed suit as they set up an all-Maharashtra final clash against the pair of Deepit Patil and Dev Shroff in the junior boys’ doubles.
Somaiya and Albuquerque had to toil hard but held onto their nerves to prevail over their opponents in a nail-biting encounter.
In the junior girls’ doubles, Diya Chitale and Manushree Patil also bagged the national champion crown as they defeated West Bengal’s Poymantee Baisya and Munmun Kundu in emphatic fashion (3-1).
However, Chitale and Patil bowed out in the semi-finals of the individual category and settled for a bronze each.
In the junior boys’ singles group, Albuquerque lost to Delhi’s Payas Jain to settle for the third spot. Another lad from Maharashtra – Deepit Patil – shared the third spot with Raegan as he also bowed out in the last-four.