Newbridge Table Tennis Club in Co Kildare on Sat March 1st was the scene for a round of Stiga Challenger. Formed in Oct of 2013 the club has had a steady growth of players from as young as six all from the surrounding areas. Currently they are based in St Patricks School hall which was the venue for this event.
59 players from various clubs in Leinster including Mountrath, Rathdowney (Laois) Milltown (Westmeath) St Ronan’s (Dublin) Crosspatrick {Kilkenny) and Newbridge entered the event. The day started off with qualifing rounds for each of four divisions all of which were split into two groups. This lead to semi-finals and finals for all.
Division 1 provided many exciting matches and after much play the semi-finals brought together Jessie and Katie Hayes in one and Leanne Delaney all (Mountrath) and Benjamin Duffield (Newbridge) in the other. Jessie and Leanne progressed to the final where Jessie took the honours on a 3-0 scoreline.
Division 2 semi-finals were contested by Richard Adegboyega (St Ronan’s) v Luke Redmond (Milltown) and Jonathan Kelly (Rathdowney) v Ed Adegboyega (St Ronan’s). Richard and Jonathan progressed with Richard recording a victory over Jonathan in the final.
Division 3 brought many younger players into semi-final action. Billy Garrett (Crosspatrick) overcame Conor Gibney (Milltown) while Minh Nguyen (St Ronan’s) had a win over Omar Ramadam (Newbridge). In the final Nguyen took the honours.
Division 4 had its own interesting contests for the very young. Teslim Lawal (St Ronan’s) and Darragh O’Grady (Crosspatrick) battled hard as did Rory Garrett (Crosspatrick) and Sean Cong (Newbridge) in the semi finals. Garrett and Lawal contested the final with Lawal finally taking the spoils.
Overall it was a most entertaining, well attended action packed table tennis event. Great credit must go to Brenda Duffield of Newbridge ttc who pulled out all the stops in the weeks leading up to the event to get new players from the Co Kildare area and further afield involved. Tournament director Jimmy Hayes was greatly assisted on the day by Amylou, Niamh, Sr. Annette, Fintan, Sharon, Brenda, Pat, Michael and William as table stuarts while Karen and Deirdre made sure food and goodies were available.A big thanks to sponsor STIGA and Tommy Fitzgerald who provided a good spread of prizes on the day.
*Many thanks to Jimmy Hayes for the above report