News

Help and Volunteers Needed!

Please read!

Like most table tennis clubs Kintbury TTC relies on volunteers to take on the tasks needed to keep the club running. As some of you know, I will be moving away from Newbury and the club needs volunteers to help pick up some of the roles which I currently cover. In order to allow plenty of time for a smooth handover, I hope that people will step forward to help with some of these as soon as possible. The objective is to complete any handover required well before preparations start for next Winter League season.

To initiate this, I have documented the roles for running the club in the document linked below. Please consider stepping forward to help with one or more of the roles which I currently cover, especially those marked as "Must have" because they really are! If you can help, please get in touch with me.

Click here to view roles

On a personal note, I believe we have a great bunch of people at the club and I have found it rewarding to see the growth and success over the past few years. I am confident that with such tremendous resources to call on, the club will continue to flourish and hopefully grow. Please do consider helping if you can as I am sure that you will find it as rewarding as I have.

Thanks!

Ian Wu

League Players Practice Sessions - on trial Wednesdays

Our Thursday evening practice sessions have been full on a few occasions during the league season and this is good news. It does mean that sometimes some of us have not been able to get a practice session when we would like. The waitlist facility does help and as some of you have experienced, sometimes spaces are released to those on the waitlist. Please do continue to register on the waitlist if applicable because not only might a space become available, also it helps to have an indication of unmet demand. Thanks.

We want to try out having an additional session on Wednesdays to see if players find this worthwhile. During Februay, we have booked half the hall on Wednesday 7:30pm to 9:30pm, i.e. enough room for 3 tables. We will limit this to 8 spaces and the cost will be £3.50 per session. As this will be an unsupervised session and no coaches will be in attendance, these sessions are for league players who will be responsible for setting up and packing away. Being on a Wednesday it provides an opportunity for league players to practice even if they have a league match on Thursday. New players and juniors can continue to play on Thursdays when there is lots of informal coaching and advice on hand. To book a slot on the trial Wednesday session, use the link below. There will be a link added to the website menus to display bookings for Wednesdays, but it will be a raw spreadsheet so won't be neatly collated and formatted as the table for Thursday sessions. If we take Wednesday sessions forward after the trial, we can look at improving that.

Wednesday league players practice (trial)

After the end of the trail, we will invite feedback and assess how best to take this forward.

Thanks.

Ping Aspire at Kintbury

Table Tennis England are running a series of Ping Aspire competitions aimed at players taking their first steps into competition or returning to the fold after a break. There will one at Kintbury on Sunday 30th November. Information about this event and how to enter can be found using this link myTT | Play Table Tennis Your Way

UPDATE on entry criteria: we have been advised by the organiser of these competitions that they are open to anyone who does not have a Table Tennis England ranking in any age category. Therefore, most of our league players are eligible. It should be a fun event, so we encourage you to enter. There will be prizes!

Practice arrangements over Christmas and New Year

With two forthcoming Thursdays coinciding with Christmas Day and New Year's Day, this coming Thursday's (18th) practice is the last one for 2025 and we restart for 2026 on 8th January. If anyone wants to practise during this period, please let us know and we can facilitate with hall booking. We hope everyone has enjoyed their table tennis during 2025 and look forward to seeing you all in action next year.

Just one plea. Please do keep the bookings system updated, especially if plans change and bookings need to be cancelled. We deliberately operate on a finely balanced financial basis, so lost revenue from unused spaces will have an impact. This especially applies to cancelled home matches because that affects 3 spaces and we rely on the bookings information to allocate and set up match tables accordingly. Thank you for your help in this regard.

Level 1 Coaching course- expressions of interest

At the NDTTA AGM, we raised the possibility of arranging a Level 1 Coach course to be hosted at Kintbury TTC. There was a good level of interest and we have sent a query to Table Tennis England about the minimum number required and possible dates. Our venue has already been accepted as meeting the requirements to host a coaching course.

The greater the interest we get, the more likely we will be able to organise one with Table Tennis England. If you are interested, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. For Kintbury TTC players, the club is offering to subsidise 50% of the cost of the course for the first 4 people who commit to taking the course.

Information about coaching courses can be found at the link below, or you can email queries to the email address above.

Coaching courses - Table Tennis England

UPDATE

Having contacted Table Tennis England, they have advised that they are in the process of updating their training courses and new courses will be launched in September 2025, We have logged our interest in hosting courses when available. Please do contact us if you are interested so that we can provide Table Tennis England with an indication of numbers. Thanks.