After months of intense training sessions with various high performance coaches, the national junior and senior table tennis players will get down to business and test how they are now able to produce in intense competition.
They will converge for a two-day tournament Saturday and Sunday at the Malteenoes Sports Club. The main aim is to give players more time testing their skills and given this format, share information as well.
The initiative will see one junior player paired with a senior. Pairs will be divided into two groups of five and will contest on a round-robin format to advance to the knockout rounds.
According to Olympic hopeful Shemar Britton, the tournament will be a good test for players and should be extremely competitive.
“Since both the juniors and the seniors have been involved in intense training over the last couple of months, this is a great initiative to put us all together to see where we are at going into 2020. It is a big year for us, with the Olympics and Caribbean championships and this will test how much we can improve. We can also share expertise between competitive matches.”
He added that it will give all stakeholders in the sport a chance to mend issues and plot a way forward in the new year.
It will be the three best of five matches and the top three teams will be rewarded prizes in the form of hampers and trophies. Teams will be selected by way of pulling names from a bag.
The junior players are Kaysan Ninvalle, Terrence Rausch, Johnathan VanLange, Colin Wong, Isiah Layne, Niran Bissu, Dhanesh Persaud, Curtis McRae, Thuria Thomas and Linden’s top junior southpaw Joshua Lucas.
The seniors will come from Christopher Franklin, Shemar Britton, Joel Alleyne, Nigel Bryan, Orin Hickerson, Devon Richmond, Warren Hackshaw, Elishaba Johnson, Johnathan Sankar and Natalie Cummings.
The entry fee is $2,000 per team. Action on Saturday is from 15:00h, while on Sunday play starts 16:00h.
