Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Pingpong Night


Tonight I will be playing one of my sports Table Tennis. I play for "Sessions" have a match in the York & district league which is against the team (Groves "B") that are bottom and already relegated. It could be a close match however because we are not at full strength. I expect to win my three games (I shouldn't have said that) but I don't know what my teamates will do. Up to two years ago we won the league 8 seasons in a row but we have lost a couple of key players and are rebuilding.
One of my teamates is Nigel who has played with me for years but he is now 60 years old and past his best, he is the oldest player in the top division. My other teamate is a 17 year old called Nathan who has only just moved up to this level from the 3rd division, he won two games for the first time last week.
I am currently averaging around 75% wins but this is a crap season for me, I usually aim at 90%. I had a poor 1st half losing 9 games but I have only lost 2 since christmas.
One of our other two squad players that are not playing tonight is Richard who is 19 years old but away at University, He is a very strong player and ranked in England. The squad is made up with 15 year old James who represents Yorkshire juniors, he is an excellent prospect and is averaging 50% at senior level.
This match is only a warm up for this weekend when I will be playing British league for Derwent T.T.C. We are at Blackpool and have two matches saturday and another two on sunday.
Both our 1st & 2nd teams are there, the 1st team are in 2nd place in division one north and a good weekend will see them promoted to the national premier division. I will be playing for the 2nd team as the experienced man in a otherwise inexperienced team. We are bottom of Division 3 North and need a good weekend to stay up. The standard is hard but we are confident.

The picture is of James our star junior who is also playing for our British League team.

5 comments:

Joel said...

I was always pretty good at just about any sport despite being overweight most of my life... We had a table tennis tournament in gym class when I was like 12, and I won... I don't get the chance to play very often, maybe at a party or get togther where someone has a table... I thought I was pretty good.
Then I went to a co-workers house and he mentioned that he and his brother used to be in some league and were pretty good... being the cocky guy I am, I figured I'd give him a tough match and surprise him... it didn't turn out that way. he made the ball crazy shit that I didn't even know a ball could do... he'd make me think the ball was going to bounce low and it would explode off the table at a high angle- directly for my face... it was pretty humiliating game and I had a new respect for table tennis.

Regina Rodriguez-Martin said...

You sure as heck write regularly and at length for a guy who was reluctant to start a blog and claims to not write very well. You're a natural!

Joel said...

I second that Regina

Mick & Cathy said...

Dcnats - Yes that sounds familiar, I did something similar with a county badminton player just because I thought I was good at school.
I just faced been run all over the place until I was knackered.
But to be honest I've done it to others at TT.

Mick & Cathy said...

Forgot to mention (as if anyone is interested) we won 9-1. James played instead of Nathan who was ill.
Off to a training session tonight ready for the weekend.