2009 NZ Open Championships
by Matthew Hetherington

The 2009 NZ Open Championships proved to be another building point for Waikato Table Tennis. With both Senior and Junior players engaging in the fierce competition both as Waikato teams and individually. Auckland hosted the tournament, most of the Waikato players feeling quite at home on familiar territory. Starting with the Senior teams, the women doing very well to reach the women’s final and the men’s A finishing 5th in the men’s A grade competition a very good effort. A superb effort was put forward by the men’s B team, beating Wellington A in their first teams match, an outstanding effort for Waikato. The strong results continued on into the individual events with some excellent results, a key performance highlight was James Harter's 4-1 win over Ryan Zhu an exceptional victory, we can now definitely lay claim to James as a Waikato player.

Once again the high performance programme played a major role in the successes and improvements of many of the players involved. The programme also led to a greater team gelling, the team spirit of Waikato out on the tables was formidable even offering a hand to ex-Waikato player Yotam Bar-Shalom which proved to be a loud but supportive backing for his match against an Auckland player.
The accommodation services were well up to standard, a few issues with fold out beds but all in all most players were comfortable with the quality of the accommodation and the comfort of the rooms. The teams stayed together and it was a great opportunity once again for us to support each other and socialise with our team mates. We must thank Lynnette for organising the accommodation, a strenuous task which she undertakes every year which always works out well for the Waikato Teams. Also thanks to Tanya for providing the food for the team, with meals provided for the whole team convenient at any time for those players competing and even coming in under budget which was very well done.
Waikato showed support for our dedicated coaches by funding both Richard Lee and Tom Liu to attend the national champs as Waikato coaches, their expertise came to the foray to help us achieve the best results possible and we thank them both for their contribution. Tom had the pleasure of coaching a large force of junior players, an example of the transition Waikato is attempting to drive into bringing in developing junior players, the Waikato Open was the forerunner to the NZ Open, the junior players having a great time and experiencing some top level NZ table tennis.
Doubles proved to be a strong point for the Waikato players, the strength of our doubles partnerships was reflected out on the table with James and Simon taking out the B grade men’s and Jess and Armindeep taking out the B grade women’s. These wins are reflective of the atmosphere and relationships created at Waikato, where players are able to win as a result of strong team work even though they may be underdogs individually. Doubles has been a strong point for us over the whole year of 2009 and no doubt will continue into 2010 and beyond.
The star performance for the tournament came from Myles Collins making an impressive effort in the under 18 boys, beating Kevin Wu 3-0, this is an outstanding effort from Myles and we hope his drive and passion for the sport will carry him into 2010.

Overall Waikato once again had a great national, with top organisation and care for players. The performance of our players was noted by high level individuals such as Li Chunli and the general friendliness of our players and team spirit was on high as usual. With the tournament done and dusted the players can come away with goals for 2010 and the executive committee ready for the year coming.

Posted 07.01.2010