KATHMANDU: Sonu Gupta of AIMS won the Under-16 boys’ section trophy at the fourth Hariram Joshi Memorial Inter-school Table Tennis Tournament here today.

Gupta fought hard to register a 3-1 victory over Anish Maharjan of Bijeshwori School. Gupta won the first set 11-7 and lost the second 8-11. Gupta, who also gave an impressive performance in the recently held Asian Youth Games in Singapore, had no trouble winning the remaining two sets 11-7 and 11-8. Gopal Acharya of New Summit and Bibek Gautam of AVM took bronze medals.

Kritan Awal of Prabhat School won the U-14 boys’ category title crushing Biplav Adhikari of AVM School 11-9, 8-11, 11-9, 11-8. Kritesh Chaudhary of AVM and Piyush Awal of Prabhat finished joint third. Likewise, the U-12 gold went to Sarat Nakarmi of AVM who outplayed Bipin Acharya of Suryodaya School 11-8, 11-7, 11-4. Krishna Thapa of Nyatapol School and Kiran Shahi of New Summit took the bronze.

In girls’ section, Arika Maharjan of Bijeshwori School clinched gold in the U-14 category defeating Sushma Basnet of AIMS 11-3, 11-3, 11- 8. Kajal Rauniyar of Annapurna School and Sunita Lama of Bijeshwori came third.

All the winners and runners received Rs 1,500 and Rs 1,000 respectively. The third place winning players got Rs 500 each. A total of 163 students from 20 schools participated in the tournament organised by National Table Tennis Training Centre, Lainchaur.