Payet bags a brace of silver medals at Nationals!
Denise delighted after being awarded one of her two silver medals
Nine year old Denise Payet stole the show at the recent English Table Tennis Association’s National U11-14 table tennis championships in Doncaster with table tennis that defied her age. Competing against girls one or two years her senior, Denise finished runner-up in both the under 11 and under 12 girls singles events having won eleven out of her thirteen matches. Her only losses were against number one seed Jane Li in the final of the U12s and Kate Cheer very narrowly (13-11 in the fifth game) in the final of the U11s (having beaten her in the semi-final of the U12s earlier in the day).
Stacey & Wright reach U14 Semi-Final's in National's
Daniel Wright (partnered by Daniel McTiernan) and Vincent Stacey (partnered by Tom Jarvis) both reached the semi-finals of the U14 Boys Doubles. The two Daniels had a good win over Billy Foster and Alec Ward in the first round and gave the No.1 seeds and eventual winners, Helshan Weerasinghe and Sam Maybe, a good run for their money in the semi-final.
Vincent Stacey U14 Boys Doubles semi-finalist
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Daniel Wright U14 Boys doubles semi-finalist
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Astonishingly, for a community table tennis club, Ellenborough TTC had nine juniors in the national finals (others being Eda Aydin, Jasmine Chan, Anthony Close, Samantha Lai, Ryan Williams and Sam Wilson). Eda Aydin reached the quarter finals of the U13 Girls Singles losing in five games to Emily Bolton. Anthony Close and Sam Wilson both reached the quarter finals U11 Boys Singles with Anthony showing tremendous fighting spirit in his 18-16 loss in the fifth to Joseph Clark(after having just come through a five set match in the previous round).
Club spokesman, Roger Close, said that “The fact that nobody was surprised by the success of the juniors at national level is a testament to the continued development of the juniors at Ellenborough TTC. It is great to see the development of new players such as Ryan Williams. Furthermore, the reaction of the juniors in defeat was excellent. Without exception, they said they were enjoying their table tennis and wanted to practice with even more purpose. Purposeful practice and enjoyment is a winning combination that I am sure will bring gold medals to Ellenborough next year”.
Close went on to say a personal thanks to the coaches – Gergely Urban, Tibor Kadar, Zoltan Hosszu and Kristina Dimitrova - for all their hard work during the season.
Source - Roger Close
