Cebu Stars Shine at PCL Asia Rising Stars Grand Finals With Upset Wins

Ziku Lacida and Lieryanne Bacaron delivered the defining upset of the PCL Asia Rising Stars Grand Finals in Hainan, dismissing Chinese pair Chen Zhirui and Guo Zidan 15-10 in mixed doubles to power Cebu to a 2-1 team victory over Foshan. The result, reached across three days of competition from April 3-5, confirmed that the Filipino sectional qualifier had arrived as a genuine force among Asia's youth pickleball elite.

Under PCL's 15-point rally-point format, where a single rubber can swing the entire team tie, Cebu's composure at the sharp end of games proved its most reliable weapon. Baseline's court-by-court logs show Cebu converting critical finishing points across multiple pool fixtures, a pattern that tournament organizers linked, in part, to the pre-competition mentorship day that preceded the draw. Finalists trained directly with professional coaches before their opening matches, and multiple head coaches credited the clinic format with sharper first-day execution from their players.

Lacida and Bacaron's 15-10 win over Chen and Guo was the clearest illustration of Cebu's closing acumen. For scouts and national program directors reviewing the Hainan logs, the metrics that matter most are third-shot discipline under pressure, conversion in tight game situations, and the ability to shift from defensive to offensive positioning within a single sequence. Cebu demonstrated those qualities across the team event.

Chinese regional entries retained considerable depth despite the upset. Shen Shubing paired with Wang Peiyu in mixed doubles and with Chen Yiming in men's doubles, posting wins of 15-4 and 15-6 in the GA bracket. The Shen-Wang partnership, which recorded 15-8-type wins in pool play, drew the most attention from scouts among the Chinese entries and figures to be the pairing most likely to surface in U21 transition competition through the next youth cycle.

The tournament's most compelling subplot came from Indore, where Aditya Gupta and Parth Vijayvargiya pushed experienced opponents to 15-12 in group play before contributing to a 2-1 defeat of Wuhan in the GA round. Vijayvargiya also combined with Kavya Nandardhane in mixed doubles to notch 15-point wins in pool play. The Wuhan result was the starkest evidence of bracket parity and positioned Indore as India's most credible contender at this level.

Irfan Kamil and Chan Yu Chi posted one of the most one-sided scorelines of the event, a 15-3 win over Jek Patrick and Liam Divinagracia, signaling a readiness gap among some pairings that development programs will need to address before the next youth cycle gets underway.

With summer academies across Southeast Asia, India, and China set to finalize rosters using data from events like this one, the Hainan logs give selectors something unusually concrete: not just results, but game-by-game evidence of who performs when it counts. Lacida and Bacaron have put themselves directly in that conversation.