Creating a gaping hole in Sri Lanka’s women’s tennis, Jithmie Jayawickrema, the 17-year-old four-time and reigning Sri Lanka women’s national champion, left Sri Lanka last Monday (1) to USA hoping to play in the women’s circuit there.

As a result, Jayawickrema, holder of the 339th rank of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) junior ratings at present, is unlikely to be available for the forthcoming Sri Lanka nationals and any of the major international tournaments like Fed Cup or Commonwealth Games.

One of the few players in recent history to dominate local women’s tennis, Jayawickrema, a Bishop’s College schoolgirl, held a career high ITF world junior rank of 309 last March. She was coached by Shalini de Silva, Arul Amalanathan and Ganendran Subramaniam during her illustrious career where she dominated the girls’ and women’s segment in the island for over four years while being the main hope for Sri Lanka in Fed Cup and numerous other international tournaments.

According to her family sources, she will be initially based in the state of Indiana and will be playing at the inter-university level in USA shortly. Jayawickrema thus becomes one of the latest victims of the marginalisation of national level tennis players here who eventually ended up in USA university teams. Two of Jayawickrema’s contemporaries Ruchika Alahakoon and Thiyumi Abesinghe are the most recent examples.

Jayawickrema was unduly debarred from a major national level sports award last year. She was struggling to find a sponsorship throughout the last few years so as to pursue a professional career which would have been an added boost for Sri Lanka’s women’s tennis.