Guatemala City is playing host to the 2025 ITTF-Americas Youth Championships, and a little-known Caribbean under-19 boys’ table tennis squad from Saint Lucia has pulled off a stunning turnaround, capturing the first two international team wins in the nation’s youth table tennis history. The Saint Lucian side entered the tournament facing unique disadvantages from the start, and their opening matches reflected those unplanned struggles, but a dominant performance from a talented 15-year-old prodigy powered the team to back-to-back 3-2 upset wins over Costa Rica and Mexico on the tournament’s second competition day.
The Saint Lucia delegation features three male under-19 competitors – national junior champion Manie Eleuthere, runner-up Leshon Francis, and Khamari Harris – plus a single female entrant, Shatal Charles, who is set to compete in girls’ singles and mixed doubles after the team event wraps. The squad ultimately finished the team phase of the tournament in ninth place, a result that feels far more celebratory than it might on paper given the challenges the team overtook to get there.
In an interview after the turnaround wins, head coach Chris Wells opened up about the unexpected hurdles his team faced before they even stepped onto the competition court. The squad arrived in Guatemala City, which sits roughly 5,000 feet above sea level, and was denied any opportunity to practice on the official venue ahead of their opening matches. This lack of preparation hit the team particularly hard, because Saint Lucia’s highest natural peak stands just over 3,000 feet above sea level – meaning the team was competing 2,000 feet higher than the highest point in their home country, with no prior chance to acclimatize to the thin air.
“The ball travels differently through the air at this altitude,” Wells explained. “The first two days were really tough, as we tried to adjust to the conditions and play the way we do when we train back home. We had no way to replicate this environment in preparation.”
Those early obstacles showed in the team’s opening group stage matches on day one, where Saint Lucia dropped back-to-back 3-0 defeats to Peru and Canada. Even in those losses, however, there were signs of the team’s potential: Eleuthere pushed his higher-ranked Canadian opponent to a full five-set thriller before narrowly falling 3-2.
By the second day of competition, the team had started to acclimatize, and they pulled off a historic turnaround no one saw coming. Against Costa Rica and Mexico, the squad notched their first-ever wins in international team play, both by a tight 3-2 score. Leading the charge was 15-year-old Leshon Francis, who was competing up an age group against the older U19 field, and finished the day undefeated across both matches.
Against Costa Rica, Francis took both of his singles matches, including a dominant straight-set win in the do-or-die fifth match that sealed the historic victory for Saint Lucia. Against Mexico, he repeated the feat, again winning both of his matches in straight sets – including a victory over the defending Central American U19 champion, one of the highest-profile upsets of the day. The performance cemented Francis as the catalyst for Saint Lucia’s historic comeback, captured in official tournament photos credited to the Saint Lucia National Table Tennis Association.
The ITTF-Americas Youth Championships run through August 31, and the Saint Lucian team is far from done. After the conclusion of the team event, Charles will continue her run in girls’ singles and mixed doubles, while all three male competitors will move on to compete in individual singles and doubles events in the coming days.