Lewis bats aside the opposition to take memorial trophy

LAST Saturday, the Huddersfield Table Tennis Centre hosted a Sandpaper Bat tournament in memory of past Huddersfield table tennis league chairman John Vaughan – and his son, Jonathan, presented the trophies to the respective winners and runners up.

Singles and a mixed ability doubles competition were played during an event attended by many Huddersfield league players.

A couple of weeks ago the centre hosted the first round of matches in the Yorkshire Veterans League and it was good to see entrants from that level along with top players from the Halifax, Bradford and Leeds leagues.

Needless to say it was the County level standard of play that prevailed on the day.

The mixed ability doubles format paired randomly drawn players together, with the winning two going into the draw for the next round, where again pairings were randomly drawn.

This format provided an opportunity for players of low league level standard to face or play with someone of a much higher standard.

Huddersfield had three players in the final – Tim Dyson, Russell Senior and Paul Simpson. Dyson was paired with Ivan Lewis, the latter going on to attain further success, and they came out on top over Senior and Simpson.

The singles event started with groups of four or five playing in a mini league against each other – scoring as per the doubles tournament best of three games up to 15 points.

The top two from each group went on to contest the knockout main event, with the third and fourth places entering a knockout for the consolation awards.

As previously mentioned, Ivan Lewis gained further success, beating Louis Bigallet in the main event to claim the John Vaughan Memorial Trophy. Deighton player Kevin Senior came runner up to Rob Robertson in the consolation final.

Positive feedback was received from a number of players and it is hoped to run a similar event sometime next year.