Y7 & 10 Success at State Table Tennis

On Friday the 29th of November 2024, 12 students set out on an adventure to take part in state table tennis. The confident set of Year 7s and experienced group of Year 10s. Our school has won the state championship in the not so distant past, really just 3 years ago, and now was our chance to make it 2 for 3 and assert dominance. The teams we faced had all come to the same conclusion as us and it was going to be a long day.

From this point forward, this article will talk about the struggles and successes of mostly the year 7 team but I believe that the Y10s had faced a similar challenge.

We hopped into our taxi all feeling a bit nervous but still quite energetic as we made our way to what I believe to be one of the most prestigious sporting facilities in all of Melbourne, MSAC. Both teams had been here for their divisional competition and were familiar with the venue, giving us the feeling that we sort of had the home court advantage.

When we arrived at the competition hall, there were about 20 tables set up for the 2 different categories, Year 7 and intermediate. We settled onto our courts and proceeded to warm up. Looking around, we realised that winning gold was not going to be an easy task, and nowhere as close to as easy as division and regional.

The Year 7 team got rather lucky as their first round opponent had been unable to show up, so we express our understanding to the regional school that was not present on the day. This gave the Year 7 team further time to observe the other teams while still getting a load of time to warm up. Then after maybe an hour's wait of nervousness we played our first school, coming out from a win against East Doncaster, we played Bendigo South East SC. With relatively minor difficulties and debates, we got through the matches and eventually won 5 sets to 1 and moved on to our second opponent, coming out of a bye, East Doncaster SC. Surprisingly, this was a much more competitive set of matches, some of which taking it all the  way through to the 5th set of the best of 5 matches, however, just like as predicted, UHS came out on top, winning 4 matches to 2 and moved onto the semi-final.

The semi-final was going to be more or less a new experience, as we had not seen our opponent play against any other since their pool was in a different hall. Facing the stress of not knowing what to expect we set off onto our 4 courts to play singles, it was then when we realised what it meant to be playing at state level. We lost 2 of our 4 singles and it came down to the wire as we managed to steal the win in the higher doubles draw, however the game was still running on court 13; the match score being 3:2 and the game score being 11:12 we were ahead in rubbers but behind in sets, this match was a must win. Stress broke out as we headed into the final set with the game score being 2:2, the game flew back and forth until we entered what became the most carefully played point in the game, match point for UHS and the 4 players, near perfectly as skilful as each other battled it out in a 28 shot rally, UHS coming out on top!

Our efforts had guaranteed us a medal and flag. Going into the final, we were put in our place and knew that the opposing team was by far the best we had seen on that day. All good things come to and end and I guess our time at regionals was a good one. We lost to Alamanda P-9 College in an underwhelming final. We came second and had enjoyed our run while it lasted and we thank Mr Fisher and Theo for giving their time to us and taking us to this amazing experience. 

And finally the names of the players who represented UHS at state table tennis are:

Year 7:

1. Riley Park
2. Darren Hung
3. Kingsley Cheng
4. Ishaan Sharan
5. Harshul Jhanwar
6. Min Li

Year 10:

1. Vindu Buddhadasa
2. Rohan Oliver
3. Joseph White
4. Austin Sellick
5. Henry Wiegard
6. Hamish Spark  

By Ishaan Sharan – Year 7