...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.
Maria was crowned the 2015 Bristol Grand Prix Women's and Under 21s Singles champion on Sunday the 15th of November. The competition took place at the University of West England Sport Centre. Maria finished her group stage with three wins against Edyta Schmid (3-0), Amelia Chan (3-1) and the very promising Anna Hursey (3-0). At the quarter final stage Maria defeated Emily Bolton (3-1) and progressed to the semi final where she met fellow Nottingham University player Emma Ludlow and with a 3-1win she reached the final. At the final she met the Grantham-based Italian Chiara Colantoni.
The final was a constant battle, highly entertaining with Maria winning the first two sets 12-10 and 14-12. The next two sets were won by Chiara (11-13 and 5-11). The momentum was now with the Italian girl, especially when the score was 6-10 in her favour. At 7-10 a time out was taken by Chiara and Maria determined as always believed that the game is not finished yet. The next 5 points went Maria's way for a fifth set win of 12-10. For the Under 21s group Maria progressed with three 3-0 wins against Kate Roberts, Amy Blagbrough and Medha Verma. Maria faced Kelsey LeMaistre for the quarter final and Gina Rieck for the semi final winning with the same score 3-0 both games. In the final she faced the second seed Emily Bolton and Maria won the second title of the day with yet another 3-0.
Maria was crowned the 2015 Bristol Grand Prix Women's and Under 21s Singles champion on Sunday the 15th of November. The competition took place at the University of West England Sport Centre.
No comments:
Post a Comment