Fixtures Play Key Role in Rocky Open Prep

The city’s leading table tennis players will be using their weekly fixtures in top-grade, as well as a few practice sessions, in the lead up the annual Rockhampton Open Championships that will be played out over the weekend between Friday evening 19^th June through to Sunday afternoon 21^st June.   

With the entries closing on Monday 15th June local players need to organise their doubles partners as well as consider the events in which they wish to compete. Intending participants need to ensure their membership registration level allows them to participate in tournaments. This annual championship which is the premier table tennis event for the year in Rocky has again been sponsored by Chauvel Industrial Services and Bolsover Radiology. Details are available at the local club where entries can be lodged in person or alternatively intending participants can lodge their nominations on-line.    

Players in the top-grade fixtures continue to post solid results and in the first division during the last outing Monica Deeth put a good win on Glen McDonald who has been in good form lately. In a match where Deeth went down in the opening set, she made a good come-back to win the next three games and the match with plenty of long rallies being the feature of the encounter.   

Kerrod Coughlan is a good quality sub and this is his position due to work commitments that have kept him away from weekly competition for a while after a few years when he was a very competitive player on the state tournament circuit including his time at junior level where he represented the state at national titles.

In the latest outing he covered the absence of Judd Carr and while James O’Sullivan outed him in straight sets he held off a bold challenge from Jakob Barker, who is playing quite well this season 9-11, 11-9, 8-11, 11-6, 12-10. In this match Nick Green returned to form when he bundled out O’Sullivan by three very tight sets to one.  

The second division competition continues to provides many of the closest outcomes this season and on this outing the clash between two of the frontrunning teams in the fixture produced exciting matches. Geoff Geddes and Hilton Kane prevailed over Chris and Helga Leitner and in the doubles tie the victors won 12-10 in the decider after the other four sets were decided with narrow outcome.

In the always important clash between the two captains Geddes was the victor in a very good five-game encounter which meant that Chris Leitner lost his 100 per-cent winning average for the season. To put the match firmly in the hands of the winners Hilton Kane played quite well to oust Helga Leitner over four good sets.

June will be a busy month for volunteers at the Rocky association. The local play-offs for the Queensland Schools Championships are being held on Friday 12^th and record entries have been received for this year’s comp to sort out which school-teams will represent the region at the state finals later in the year and this promises to be a hectic day for both the players and organisers.