After a seven-year hiatus from the Guyana Table Tennis Association’s (GTTA) calendar of events, the National Table Tennis Championships will serve off next Thursday at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
According to the GTTA, this tournament which will be sponsored by the National Sports Commission (NSC) plans to make an emphatic return to the calendar, and there is already evidence of this judging from the huge number of top players who have already indicated their participation in this year’s competition.
Tournament coordinator Linden Johnson said that since this tournament would be replacing the GTTA’s Annual Mashramani Tourna-ment, the GTTA hoped to surpass the number of participants from last year’s event.
Johnson said last year more than 600 persons registered with about 375 persons actually competing.
Johnson said that players from as far as Berbice and Essequibo had already called to confirm their participation.
The association is also confident that the competition will run smoothly, with enough practice for players before games, and with games beginning and ending at the scheduled times.
This new confidence comes about because the GTTA hopes to have full use of the equipment that they will be receiving, compliments of a special grant from the International Table Tennis Federation.
Johnson said that the equipment was already in the country and would be cleared from Customs shortly so that they would have enough blades, balls and a total of twelve tables for use in the national championships.
The event includes some twenty-five categories to be contested by some of the country’s top table tennis players including Trenace Lowe, Michelle John, Jody Ann Blake, Matthew Khan, 2007 Mashramani men’s singles champion Christopher Franklin, Colin France, Paul Meusa, Triston Gaime, Dwain Dick and Godfrey Munroe in the senior categories. The last time the national championships were held in 2001, Sydney Christophe won the men’s singles title.
Acoording to the GTTA some of the junior players expected are Nigel Bryan, Warren Hackshaw, Stephan Patoir, Samuel Fraser, Denzel Hopkinson Brandon Baldie, Elishaba Johnson, Jamal and Denzil Duff, Joshua Sue-Ho, Tiffany Blair, Ambrose Thomas, Chelsea Edghill, and Tiara Narine.
The competition will run from February 14-24 in order to allow out-of-town players to travel back and forth. There will be a novices’ category in the competition which is scheduled to begin from Saturday, February 9 and the deadline for all entries for this competition is Friday February 8.
The top three finishers in each category will receive medals/trophies and cash prizes.
Players are asked to be at the CASH at least 30 minutes before their scheduled games.
