Sunshine Coast TT Club uses World Table Tennis Day to drive junior participation

Table tennis clubs across Australia are gearing up to make the most of World Table Tennis Day (WTTD) on 6 April, a day which was established by the ITTF Foundation to celebrate our sport and try to get as many people as possible involved with table tennis.

The Sunshine Coast Table Tennis Club has already registered to organise a special WTTD event in a bid to drive table tennis participation and awareness in the community, especially amongst juniors.

Joel Carpenter, Spinneroos coach and Sunshine Coast TT Club Committee’s member, said that the club has recently started a junior program and will be running a Girls Spinneroos program during school term 2, so World Table Tennis Day comes at a perfect time to further incentivize participation. 

“We had intended to participate in World Table Tennis Day last year, but then obviously COVID happened.  This year the timing is pretty good for us as the event falls during school holidays. We’ve recently become involved with the Spinneroos program for the first time in the last term of 2020 and we’re delivering our second program at the moment,” Carpenter said.

The club decided to take the opportunity of World Table Tennis Day to organise an all-juniors open day. The event is meant to attract much interest, getting as many kids as possible to experience the sport and eventually boost the club’s junior numbers.

“We decided it was a good opportunity to invite families to come along, try out some table tennis and have a look at the programs we’re running. We think it’s a great way to get more people involved and join the club. 

“We’ll have a couple of hours of free hitting for the juniors and then we’ll have some of our better athletes and coaches play in a few demonstration matches. Of course we’ll finish up with a free barbecue to have an opportunity to get together and connect,” Carpenter said.

World Table Tennis Day promotes a strong message of #GenderEquality in 2021 and Carpenter said he was pleased that one of their former juniors, Jayde Treloar, now a coach at Sunshine Coast TT Club, will be running the Girls Spinneroos program for next term.

“We’d really like to get more girls involved. We have female members, but of course we’d like to increase the number even more and ensure we get as many as we can to participate. Table tennis really is a sport for everybody and there is a lot of potential to increase female representation.”

Clubs and associations can find more information on the ITTF Foundation website, or register their event directly at  https://ittffoundation.org/2021-WTTD-registration. 

Table Tennis Australia will donate 20 free bats to the first six affiliated clubs and/or associations that register an event for World Table Tennis Day. Please get in touch with Table Tennis Australia once you have completed your registration on the ITTF Foundation website.