Table Tennis - Junior Nationals

By Rhys Dunbar and Zishen Fu | Posted: Tuesday October 23, 2018

The Junior Table Tennis Nationals where held in Tauranga during the recent school holidays.

OBHS students Rhys Dunbar and Zishen Fu both represented Otago in their respective age groups.  

Rhys captained the Under 18 boys team who won gold in their division having played extremely well with some very close matches. Zishen was a member of the Under 15 boys team who placed 7th.

Following are the boys reports:

Under 18

The Otago Under 18 Team consisted of Charlie Grey, Martin Page, Jiacong Ruan and Rhys Dunbar. Excitement levels were high as none of us had been to Tauranga before and we were all reasonably nervous before our first game. We were placed in B grade with 5 other teams. Our first game was against Manawatu B in which we won 6-1 which was a great warm up game for us, allowing us to get used to the hall and playing conditions. Our second game was against Southland in which we knew would be a tough hard fought match. We all played very well and managed to beat them 5-2 (a great result considering we lost to the same team at South Islands). Our last game for the first day of matches was North Shore where we won 6-1 again.

Second day of matches included playing South Canterbury and Manawatu A. We comfortably won 6-1 again, dropping the doubles match where we did not play so well. Our last game against Manawatu A was the final as both teams had won all their games up until this point. We had some very close matches during this game - a couple of close losses against their top player and dropping the doubles game. We won 4-3 in the final game meaning we managed to obtain gold in B grade. It felt great to win and the whole team played extremely well, supporting each other throughout.

Rhys Dunbar

Under 15

The Under 15 boys was comprised of Zishen Fu, Isaac Hobbes, Oscar Grey and Sunny McCabe. We played reasonably. We were seeded 7th and overall we came 7th out of the ten competing teams. Out of the 4 pool matches we won only one against Canterbury 2 which we won 5-2. We lost to Auckland and Manawatu 2-5 and Bay of Plenty 4-3. We beat New Caledonia in the playoffs 6-1.

Zishen Fu

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