GTTA National School tourney to serve off next Friday

THE NATIONAL Schools Table Tennis tournament will now commence one week from today, Friday, at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall and conclude two days later, after the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) was forced to push back the start by one week, due to unforeseen events. Secretary of the GTTA, Linden Johnson, yesterday disclosed that registration has been extended to next Wednesday and approximately 20 schools from across the country are expected to participate. The tournament is being sponsored by Digicel.
It is aimed at fostering camaraderie among students, promoting healthy lifestyle through sport, providing opportunities for individuals to participate in recreational activities and promoting the basic objectives of the GTTA by having more players actively participate in table tennis activities both recreational and competitively.
According to Johnson, the cream of Guyana’s youth players would be on show during the competition which concludes on November 9. Last year St Stanislaus College captured gold in the Under-18 category while Marian Academy collected honours at the Under-15 level.
Mae’s School proved too strong in the Pre and Mini Cadet categories, by sweeping both the Under-13 and Under-11 divisions. This year the GTTA will include an Open Novices category for beginners with the aim of encouraging more participation in the sport.
That segment of the competition will commence this Saturday. Johnson said that this is being done to lessen the number of players participating next week. “The numbers can be very high so we have seen it fit to have the beginners’ competition very early,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, GTTA is planning to stage the National Senior and Junior competitions early in December. The National Table Tennis competition was not held last year due to difficulty in securing sponsorship. However, the secretary is confident that if all goes well players will be vying for national titles by the second week in December.
Johnson added that it would be important to hold the competition before Mini Cadets and Pre Cadets leave to represent Guyana at the Caribbean Championship billed for Puerto Rico from December 16 to 20.
Earlier this month, lack of funds forced GTTA to shelve plans of sending a team to the Mini and Pre Cadet Latin America Championship in the Dominican Republic.

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