An easy win for Newcastle’s table tennis team helps boost the confidence of the new additions to the team and also of the returning player Matthew Hopkins who was doing his placement last year.
Each member of the four-man team played against all four of their opponents, with Newcastle winning all 17 of the 17 matches to claim the overall victory, also throwing in a win in the doubles.
Newcastle took the lead with top seed Chia Ying crushing the Leeds opponent for the first game of the day. At any time in the match was there a doubt about Chia Ying losing a set against his first opponent. Following on for his next matches, Chia Ying did an amazing job of winning all his matches with a very comfortable win of 3-0 for two of his matches and a 3-1 for one of his matches.
Having played a few years for the Newcastle team led to returning player Matthew Hopkins having enough confidence and experience to crush all of his opponents (3-0 for all his matches) like it was child’s play. He even won a set at 11-0. He never gave a single opportunity for the opponent to attack and he was very clinical in his shots, not making a single unforced error.
His teammate Daviest marked his debut in the Newcastle team against Leeds second by also winning against his
opponents with a score of 3-0 for each match without having to break any sweat for it. Daviest had regular table tennis training from age 8-16 back in Singapore and stopped playing completely for 7 years until he came to Newcastle university. Despite this large gap without training ,his technique and footwork were still impeccable during the matches.
Fourth seed Jeremy Ng started the afternoon against Leeds’ top two second-team players. He had comfortable wins against the first and second Leeds opponents with a score of 3-0 and 3-1 respectively. Skillful plays by Jeremy Ng led to two further victories of 3-0 against the other two Leeds players. Not having played a lot of competitive matches before , this afternoon allowed Jeremy Ng to boost his confidence in handling stress in matches and to improve his self-esteem.
Chia Ying and Matthew Hopkins went on to play the doubles which was a simple victory of 3-0. The last match meant that the Newcastle players were undefeated , bringing the final score to an exceptional 17-0 .