Maria Tsaptsinos: A good start to the new season

Maria Tsaptsinos

...started playing table tennis during the last year of her primary schooling and then joined Kingfisher club whereas she trained with Brian Halliday and later had weekly sessions with Gareth Herbert. Then she was invited to Lilleshall and Sheffield for the Youth Development Squad and consequently to the International Youth Squad. Represented England in various tournaments since 2012 and participated at the Youth Europeans as a Caded and Junior. In 2015 the first call for a senior cap came for the Europeans and Table Tennis Commonwealth.
Maria currently is a scholar at University of Nottingham studying Geography.
Her other interests include football, music and spends time socialising on facebook.

Sponsors: Tees Sport, Spire Dunedin Hospital, SSE with the help of SportsAid, Table Tennis 365, TASS

Sunday, 8 September 2013

A good start to the new season

Over the weekend the Guildford Grand Prix took place with a record number of participants. Maria took part at the following three competitions:

Women's Band 1

Women's Band 2

Women's

She was the winner of band 2, a finalist for band 1 and a semi-finalist for women's.

One the first day, and after spending 12 hours at the hall, Maria won her band 2 group with three 3-0 wins against Zoe Cheesman (11-8 11-8 11-5), Sabina Devereux (11-4 11-8 12-10) and Kelsey Le_Maistre (11-3 12-1011-6). Then for the quarter final she met Sue Collier, the number one veteran, and won 3-1 (11-9 11-8 7-1111-2) and for the semifinal Teresa Bennett whom she beat with the same score (11-7 13-15 11-9 11-9). For the final she met the Welsh player and a good friend Nicole Hall. Nicole took the first set 9-11 but Maria followed with three set wins (11-7 11-8 11-8)

For band 1 Maria was drawn in the first group with the French girl Sarah Berge, Cherith Graham and Kelsey Le_Maistre. Maria qualified for the quarter finals after recording two wins against Kelsey (11-9 11-4 11-7) and Cherith (9-11 11-8 11-3 11-7 after losing to Sarah (2-11 6-11 10-12). At the quarter final Maria faced one of the Welsh twins Megan Phillips that she beat 3-2 (9-11 11-8 12-10 9-11 11-3) and for the next round the high ranked Yolanda King and for the first time ever she beat 3-0 (11-2 11-7 11-4). In the final Sarah proved strong once again despite that Maria took the first set 11-7 and won three consecutive sets by 5-11 5-11 7-11.

And then it was time to drive home!

On Sunday Maria beat the following players during the group:

Juliet Mussata 11-4 11-2 11-3

Megan Phillips 7-11 11-6 12-10 11-8

Jas Ould 11-7 10-12 11-6 11-5

Naomi Jackson 11-8 11-8 11-13 11-7

Kelly Skeggs 11-9 11-3 11-7

For the quarter final Maria faced another higher ranked player Chloe Thomas and despite losing the first two sets 8-11 8-11 she came back strongly to win 11-7 13-11 11-5 to set up a semifinal game against England's number three Hannah Hicks. The experience and consistency of Hannah saw her through to the final after winning 6-11 11-13 4-11.

Overall Maria played 20 games and she won 17 of them. The interesting part is that all her three defeats came in the hands of defenders. So more practice against choppers is required!