Townsville Table Tennis Association celebrated 90th anniversary with ping pong festival

As the country slowly reopens after a challenging 18 months riddled with event postponements and cancellations, table tennis clubs across Australia are coming up with innovative ideas to bring their communities together and continue promoting the sport. 

Queensland table tennis clubs in particular were keen to leverage their COVID-free environment to find alternative ways to connect after Table Tennis Australia was forced to announce the cancellation of the 2021 Veterans Championships. The community turned to the Townsville Table Tennis Association (TTTA) in the hope they would be able to save their Ping Pong Battle, one of the main events on their calendar, traditionally scheduled in early October.

TTTA was experiencing challenges of its own at the time. A club with a rich history that was about to celebrate its 90th anniversary, TTTA was looking at alternative ways to mark the significant milestone, a traditional social function not the best option in the current climate. 

Trying to make the best of the circumstances, TTTA came up with an innovative idea: postponing the Ping Pong Battle and using the event to anchor a 5-day long festival of table tennis, something that would give the veterans community an opportunity to get together to play and at the same time provide  the club with a chance to celebrate its tradition.

Despite being organised in a short amount of time, the festival was a success, getting more than 150 participants involved (about two thirds of which were players - a significant result considering the limitations imposed by COVID-19 measures.

“We knew people from Interstate unfortunately wouldn’t be able to come, but the event came to fruition anyway, which was good,” said TTTA President Brendan Gaeta. 

“We were able to pull it off and everyone who came had a fantastic time,” he said.

The community valued the opportunity to come together and the Ping Pong Battle served as the hero event in a week of table tennis celebrations. TTTA have been hosting their Ping Pong Battle for the last 13 years, with the event originally introduced as a warm-up tournament for veteran players in the lead-up to the National Veterans Championships. 

The event quickly grew into a prestigious event with many top caliber veteran players taking the title, a list that includes Table Tennis Australia Hall of Famer Paul Pinkewich, who won the inaugural edition, and record eight-time winner Bruno Levis. For the delight of the locals, this year David Fielding became the first Townsvillian to have his name etched on the Stan Walmsley memorial trophy. 

If the Ping Pong Battle was the main event of the festival, a number of other activities generated very positive feedback. Whether it was participating in training sessions with local head coach George Logothetis, signing up for team challenges or competing in handicap events, players of all ages got involved and had a terrific time.
 
“A few of the events were structured in quite a different way compared to what you find in traditional tournaments,” Gaeta explained. 

“There was a lot of positive feedback around not doing anything based on age or gender. A lot of people really enjoyed having events based on divisions and having the opportunity to play with people they would not normally be able to face. So there was a lot of positive feedback about that as well,” he said.

Table Tennis Queensland Executive Officer Jason Walsh echoed that positive feedback and wanted to congratulate the Townsville Table Tennis Association on their 90th anniversary.

“It’s fantastic to see the club continue to lead the way in coordinating innovative events such as this,'' Walsh said. “It’s a credit to the leadership that Club President Brendan Gaeta and the Townsville committee provide to the club.”

Townsville Table Tennis Association is a very active club, with Committee members, volunteers and coaching staff driven by an intense passion for the sport, a desire to contribute to the community and an ambition to get more and more people of all ages involved with table tennis. 

“It’s a combination of everything,” Gaeta agreed. “We have a community where everyone is just as passionate as I am, not just about table tennis in Townsville, but about growing the sport. 

“Programs like Spinneroos are amazing concepts to build around. It’s not necessarily just about growing the junior programs, which of course we want to do, but again it’s about developing the practice of sport in general.

“In many Australian schools you feel like every kid has to get into netball, or soccer, or football, almost like it’s part of the curriculum. But they’re not the only three sports in the world and we want to do our part to create awareness in the community about table tennis as well. We try to do as much as possible to push the sport,” he said.

Gaeta is also extremely grateful for the support of the people who got behind the event despite the short timeframe. He hopes the experience might encourage other clubs to come up with similar innovative ideas to bring the table tennis community together.

“Nothing would please me more than seeing other clubs coming up with similar concepts. 

“When you get creative people who are passionate about the sport involved, the sky is really the limit of what you can do. Then it’s just a matter of putting everything together, but people love these kinds of experiences,” he said.