Maria Tsaptsinos: National Champion for the Under21s

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

Monday, 21 March 2016

National Champion for the Under21s

The English National Championships took place at Hatfield, Friday to Sunday. Maria had one game on Friday versus Ella Patel and progressed to the next round with a comfortable 3-0 win (0, 5, 9). On Saturday the competition intensified asMaria faced Denise Payet (4-0, 6, 5, 20, 5) and Emily Bolton (4-1, 6, 6, -10, 7, 5) to reach the final against Tin Tin Ho.

with Tom Jarvis (U21s winner)

with Liam McTiernan (bronze at U21s , Kingfisher team mate)

The final was one of the most dramatic table tennis games one could wish for. It had great shots, change of scores, medical attention. Maria took the first set 12-10 but Tin Tin took the next three ones (8-11, 8-11 6-11) cruising towards the national title. Maria determined as always took the next set 13-11 saving one championship point. The next set was fought hard by both girls but Maria edged it with a an 11-8 win to set up a decider set. Maria started well taking a 5-1 lead which Tin Tin slowly and steadily eroded. With 10-11 and Tin Tin ready to serve Maria had a bad fall hurting her back. This resulted in a medical break for almost the allowed ten minutes. Maria won the next three points. Unfortunately, she was not in the mood to celebrate because she knew her fall had affected her good friend and subsequently apologised for making her wait.