Francesca Clark, together with one of her coaches in the National Badminton Academy, Patrick Cassar travelled to Portugal last week to be part of the U17 Portugal Open. Good results came to Francesca’s way when she managed to arrive to the semi-final together with her Portuguese partner Jessica Almeida and only bowing down to the first seeds.
In their first doubles match, Francesca and Jessica won very confidently against Portuguese pair Mafalda Avellino and Anastasia Iurkova 21-6, 21-6. Following the first win, Francesca and Jessica continued on their positive path by winning against Beatriz Araujo and Leonor Silva 21-8, 21-10. In the semi-final, Clark and Almeida did not manage to continue their positive streak and lost their semi-final match against first seeds Carolina Mendes and Marta Sousa, 7-21, 12-21. Mendes and Sousa lost then their final match against very strong Malaysian pair Carina Huang and Ella Mak.
In the singles category, Francesca faces very strong opposition when she faced Maria Wilkinson in her first match and lost 11-21, 2-21. Wilkinson managed to make it to the quarter finals and then she lost to second seed Amber Boonen from Belgium in 3 games.
All in all, it was a very positive competition for Francesca, who is still 16 years of age and has already achieved the National title and positive results Internationally. Francesca was a student at the National Sports School and is aiming to continue getting positive results in the international scene.
