Hundreds for NTTF National Junior League
Nine days preceding the official serveoff of the 2018 Nigeria Open on August 8, hundreds of junior players across the country will converge in Lagos from July 27 to August 4 for the annual Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) National Junior League. The players will slug it out for places in the grand finale on August 4 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall of Teslim Balogun Stadium where top 16 players in the boys and girls events will compete at the grand finale, while the qualifying matches will hold at the National Training Centre, National Stadium from July 27 to August 2.
The tournament serves as a platform to unearth new players and assemble teams for major international table tennis competitions for the country.
According to NTTF President, Ishaku Tikon, the championship is expected to throw up talents that will replace the ageing players in the national teams.
“Primarily, the aim of the national junior league is to discover the young talent that are hidden before and preparing them to step into the shoes of older players like Aruna Quadri and the rest. “It is very important to us and it is a platform we developed to take table tennis to a higher level. “Through this league, we are going to discover a lot of players, have them identified and we now begin to work with them in synergy with great players like Quadri and rest of them that are already ageing,” the NTTF boss added.