Young talents shine at city championship

A very enjoyable and competitive Bath Junior Table Tennis Championships took place at the Bathampton Scout HQ.

There were eight entries for both the U15 and U19 closed championships held by the Bath & District Table Tennis Association on on Saturday, February 19.

All matches were best of five sets. Six of the eight playing in the U15 event attend the junior coaching at Ralph Allen School and performed well in their first competition.

The U15 event was dominated by Joshua Branch from Keynsham Table Tennis Club whose cultured left-handed forehand drive saw him through his group without losing a match.

Freddie Weeks, at 11 one of the youngest competitors, reached the semi-final as runner-up.

Monty Tobin and Jack Wells fought out a hard battle with Jack eventually winning 3-2 to take third place.

In the other group Jacky Jiang, a steady all-round player, came second in the group; his only loss was to Andy Wei.

Both players have masses of potential and benefit from their advanced coaching.

Sol Stanoson and Joshua (JJ) Norman filled the 3rd and 4th places respectively.

The first semi-final went to a fourth game with a strong comeback by Jacky with fierce counter attacking. But Joshua’s attack was too strong in the end.

In the second semi-final, despite defending manfully, ‘ducking and diving,’ Freddie lost in straight sets to Andy.

In the final between Joshua and Andy both players displayed excellent use of the whole table; Joshua running out the winner 3-1.

Joshua and Andy joined the U19 competition and played each other in the semi-finals with the same result: 3-1 to Joshua.

Leon Kashdan-brown dominated this event, not losing a game all evening, defeating Nathan Cundy from the Methodist Key Centre Club (MKC) in the semi-final and Joshua in the final.

Joshua narrowly lost the third game 13-11 to Leon, the much more experienced Premier Division player. Jeff and Thom Tribe (the local Bathampton Club players), Andrew Quinn (MKC) and Henri Abbot (Norton Hill School) acquitted themselves well with Thom missing the semi-finals by one game, having defeated Nathan in his group.

Ray Bennett (BDTTL president) presented the prizes to the winners and runners-up, and thanked the scorers (Nigel Dagger, Ricardo Perpetua and Tim Francis) and the parents attending for their support.