2010 Spring Season

What a great response we have had to this year’s spring competition, we received 79 entries and have had several more enquiries since then.  The only problem is that due to the size of our hall and the way we run our competition we can normally only have 66 players.  As we do not want to turn 13 players away we have been busy trying to find ways to accommodate as many players as possible.  In order to do this we have been looking into shifting a division to a Thursday night, hiring another nearby hall and the structure of our competition.

We came close to being able to play a division on a Thursday night but we could not quite get enough people together of a similar standard to justify doing this.  We also looked at hiring another hall but due to the short notice and the fact we do not have any of our own spare tables to place in another hall we could not proceed with this option. 

So we looked at the structure of our competition and whether we could fit in more than 66 players on the one night of play and still finish at a reasonable time.  We have decided that we can actually have 72 players if we have 3 divisions with 4 players in each team where each player will play 3 singles matches but there will only be 1 doubles match instead of the normal 3 doubles matches.  The players who play in this doubles match will be rotated each week as set out on the program sheet, in the finals teams will be able to play whoever they wish in the doubles match.  This means that each team will have to play 13 matches on a night using their allocated table and the use of the 2 spare tables.  

In order to further help things along we are going to ask the division 3 teams to start their matches early by allocating them all of the tables on the eastern side of the hall from 7.00 pm to 7.30 pm.  The aim of this is to allow the junior players in division 3 to finish at a reasonable time and to also free up further spare tables towards the end of the night.  We are also going to roster the use of the two spare tables so that everybody gets an equal opportunity to use them.  This should result in division 3 finishing around 10.00 pm and everybody else around 10.30 pm. 

This still left us with 7 players more than we can fit in.  Fortunately we have managed to get 7 people to agree to be first choice reserves. I would really like to thank Tom Bloch, Hon Chu, Nicole Agardi, Nathan Agardi, David Powell, Sylvia Westerlaken and Marcel Storken for dropping out of the competition and saving me from telling somebody that they could not play.  We will be using these people as reserves at every opportunity even if their ranking is not quite as close to the player that they are replacing compared to what has occurred in the past. 

We would also like to remind everybody that if you are going to be missing on any particular week please let your division coordinator know as soon as possible so a reserve can be organized.  We believe that this spring is going to be a close competition and that you should all be in for some tough matches and hope that you all have an enjoyable season.

                                                                          Marcel STORKEN

                                                                          President Southern Table Tennis