GTTA National Youth Talent Discovery Series Set for Saturday

The Ghana Table Tennis Association is poised to hold the maiden edition of the National Junior Talent Discovery Series on Saturday, 2nd October, 2021 at the Accra Sports Stadium.

The event is in line with the association's objectives of unearthing young prospects for the various national teams and for future glory.

Over 300 young players have been billed to partake in the highly anticipated event in the U-11, U-15, U-18 and U-21 of the boys and girls categories respectively.

The president of the GTTA, Mr. Mawuko Afadzinu in an interaction with the media on Monday, 27th September, 2021 stated that the comeback of the sports is significant to the association.

"The reason why the National Youth tournament is significant is that for us, is one of our important foundational stones, it is the path to progress and to ensure the sports grows to a level where will not only be significant in this country but will be back as the biggest in Africa.

"And therefore, getting the youth heavily energized and playing actively is very important to us and that is the reason why the table tennis season is breaking on the back of the national youth tournament," he added.

He added that the association has put in place measures to ensure the spread of the game to the grassroot level across the country.

"We are getting interest from all across the nation. Table tennis is a national sport and rightly so, our competitions must see participation from all the regions, now we are nowhere near the 16 regions coverage.

"But our objective is that by the time we are done with this season, going into a competition we should have a structure and to ensure every region has a representation and every region is able to provide a path for the young ones there to actively play. And not just actively playing but have a right mind of technical support and where it is that there is talent, we provide the means for that talent to flourish," President of the GTTA, Mr. Mawuko Afadzinu stated.

According to the president, the association is keen on improving female participation in all major competitions.

He disclosed that they have introduced an all-important female platform to be implemented.

"One of the most important interventions the GTTA is rolling out is a project called the "SHEROES Project". The essence of the project with support from the ITTF is to ensure that we create the space where females thrive in tables tennis.

"And so it is not just at the level of players but the entire support system that will allow females to be able to play table tennis, participate in table tennis, live in a table tennis community, be part of the table tennis universe to the highest level in a which role they find themselves.

"So we are looking at players primarily, but we are also looking at coaches, umpires, administrators, indeed our vision and our dream is that very soon we will have a GTTA president who is a female," he stressed.