Season 2 of Fixtures Wrapped!

There has been plenty of action lately at Rockhampton’s Table Tennis Centre at Leichhardt Park on Campbell Street. Just after the bumper annual Rocky Open Championships the local club’s second season for the year in open grade wound up prior to the school holiday period. In the top division fixture the combination of Rayden Smith and Ann-Louise Stewart held out their talented counterparts to win the premiership that was decided on the first team past the post basis. Towards the end of the season this pair started to stretch their lead due to a combination of some solid results and other sides that unfortunately were weakened due to work-related absences.

In addition, it’s no coincidence that this pair have been playing some pretty consistent table tennis as evidenced by their results at the Rocky Open when the Chauvel Industrial Services men’s and women’s open singles were won by Smith and Stewart respectively. In their last contest for the season this pair had too many answers for James O’Sullivan and Jakob Baker and they put a solid 4-1 win on them where their only loss was when O’Sullivan ousted Stewart in a good quality battle 3-1 after Stewart won the opening set. Later Stewart narrowly closed out Baker 11-9 in the decider after being in trouble when following by two games to one.           

The fixture in second division had a few different leaders during a very competitive season and the consistency of Pam Clarke and Patricia Green paid off in the long-run as this side crept home by a solitary point over previous front-runners in Julien Wright and Sajan Baral. The runners-up were slight favourites three weeks out from the final round but results, including some their own, conspired against them in the count down to the contest for the flag. Wright and Baral put on some big victories in the first half of the comp but were run down and the sides that were captained by Chris Leitner and Geoff Geddes also had their chances to end up on top but faltered as the season wore on.   

In the last round Green was out of town on work commitments for the match against Geoff Geddes and Hilton Kane and Clarke was partnered by a capable sub in Linda O’Sullivan who has not been able to play full-time this season. Clarke’s team won three rubbers to two when she and O’Sullivan both downed Kane and they won the crucial doubles tie. Geddes did beat both opponents on the night in incredibly tight score-lines – O’Sullivan 12-10, 9-11, 11-7, 10-12, 14-12 and Clarke by 13-11 in the decider of another marathon encounter.        

This week Cooper Bulow is attending the National Youth Titles as he represents Queensland in the state’s under-21 men’s team at the Australian Senior, Youth and Para Championships at Goulburn, NSW. Hopefully he will play as well as he did in the Bolsover Radiology age-events at the Rocky Open where he won the under-19 singles and did well in the under-21 singles event.

In other representative news three of the city’s masters of the sport in Monica Deeth, James O’Sullivan and Dave Hockings will soon head off to the Queensland Veterans Championships that are being staged at the South Pine Sports Centre at Brendale starting next Tuesday morning with last-balls being hit on the following Saturday afternoon.