What a weekend!

On Friday, the ITTF rankings came out showing a new ranking record for Maria, at the 185th position. This was a good omen for what it was to follow for the National Championships taking place at Nottingham University, 1-3 March 2019. On Sunday after a hard fought semi final against Denise Payet Maria proceeded to the final with a 4-2 score despite being two sets down to begin with. The same pattern, going 2-0 down followed next for the womens doubles final with Emily Bolton and Denise Payet forcing Maria and Tin Tin Ho to raise their game and win at the end with a 3-2 score. At the singles final Maria kept on the table (the vast majority of the time) and she was aggressive to take a 2-0 lead versus Tin Tin. As usual, Tin Tin who never gives up came back to equalise to 2 all. Maria though was determined not to throw away her opportunity and triumphed 4-2 to be crowned for the first time the senior womens national champion. Time to celebrate!

Maria would like to acknowledge all the support she has received in the past from the Kingfisher club where all started, sponsors, and various coaches and hitting partners (too many to name!). Special mention to Peter Charters for organising sessions and a big thank you to the late Brian Halliday who instilled the love and belief. Thank you all for providing the foundation for this achievement.

Maria's games plus other games can be seen at the BBC site.

The achievement has been reported widely at ETTU , TTE as well as in the Hellenic Table Tennis Federation.

Good friends!

with Liam

Since Maria also plays for AEK Table Tennis the AEK family were happy to announce the results and wish Maria all success for the future.

Maria's post interview 

Breaking into world’s top 200

Maria for the first time has broken into the world's top 200 for the first time, position 194 in particular. Hopefully onward and upwards.

Report at TTE

Maria guest speaker at Reading Boys

As reported by the Reading Boys tweet

Fantastic Sports Personality Evening with Commonwealth Bronze Medallist in table tennis Maria Tsaptsinos giving an inspirational speech pic.twitter.com/YSqvWh4KnY

— RS Sport and PE (@RSSportandPE) December 11, 2018

Italian escapades

Maria is a member of the Tennistavolo Vallecamonica team in Italy, participating at the A1 division.
A report on the  second weekend where the team drew 3-3 and videos of the first weekends can be found at YouTube.
versus Li Xiang
versus Stribikova
 versus Barani
versus Loan

EuropeanChampionships Away Win at Norway

Maria  put England ahead by defeating Ilka Doval 3-1 (11-3, 11-7, 12-14, 11-9), then Tin Tin made it 2-0 versus Rebekka Carlsen (11-8, 11-7, 9-11, 11-4). Denise Payet unfortunately lost to Rikke Skattet 3-0 but Tin Tin made sure that England won by winning 3-1 verus Doval (12-10, 12-14, 11-9, 11-3).

European Table Tennis Championships

At Alicante, Spain the ITTF European Table Tennis Championships took place with Maria representing England. Maria was drawn in group 14 as a third seed with JEGER Mateja (CRO), MARCHETTI Nathalie (Bel) and IMANOVA Maryam (AZE).
For the first game Maria won versus the Belgian player with a 4-0 score (10, 7, 5, 7), a great win considering that Nathalie was 150 ranking places above. For the second game lost to the Croatian player 2-4 (-8, -5, 8, -12, 3, -6), with the fourth set being a critical one when at 10-8 it was a great opportunity to equalise the score. A 4-1 win over the Azerbaijan player it was enough for the next round qualification (-12, 5, 7, 6, 3) where Maria met BERGSTROM Linda and she lost 4-0 (-8, -3, -8, -9).

TASS Star of the Year

Maria was announced as the Star of the Year at the TASS awards. In the words of TASS:

"Table tennis player Maria Tsaptsinos was named as the winner of the Star of the Year category, the ultimate accolade in recognition of an outstanding achievement in sport or study. In April, the 21-year-old won a historic women’s team bronze medal at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games whilst also working towards a first class honours Geography degree."

Read more here

Because Maria was not able to attend the ceremony she was presented with the award prior to her university graduation by the TASS representative at Nottingham University.

And the TTE report can be found here