11 Dec 2011
8 December 2011 - Aspire Academy For Sports Excellence’s table tennis team maintained a cool demeanour to win accolades at the recently-concluded 4th International Youth Sports Challenge (IYSC), organized by Singapore Sports School.
The Aspire team, consisting of Jassim Al-Sanadi (13), Abdulrahman Al-Naggar (13) and Mohammed Al-Sulaiti (14), were all instrumental in raking in a number of medals while beating strong competition from some of the Asian giants such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
In the group part of the competition, the trio beat off stiff competition and made it all the way to the semi-finals and won the bronze medal.
On the way to semi-finals, they saw off the Malaysian team as well as the Singapore Sports School’s B team with 3-0 victories respectively. A surprising, yet resolute performance in the quarter-final of 3-1 then against the Singapore Sports School’s A team guaranteed the spot in semi-finals, where Aspire students showed an excellent fight against the players of Thailand Sports Schools, who exceeded them by age by two years. The closely-contested match ended Aspire 2 to Thailand 3.
The 4th IYSC was open to players born on or after January 1, 1996 with league matches played to the best-of-5 games of 11 points each, while singles and doubles events were played on a single knock-out system. Semi-finals onwards were played to the best-of-7 games of 11 points each.
In the doubles discipline, Aspire students again repeated their strong showing, as a determined duo of Al-Sanadi and Al-Naggar reached the finals. They were the eventual silver medal winners.
Aspire head table tennis coach, Zlatko Novakovic said: “The silver medal (in the doubles), which was won against a competition of Asian players, is a very meaningful and unexpected success for our players, as well as a stimulus for further work and development.”
“We also achieved solid results in the singles competition, as our boys fought their way through the qualifications into the final draw. The players makes us tremendously proud,” added Novakovic.
The IYSC seeks to elevate the standard of play among youths in netball, football and table tennis. Many international youth teams trot the globe in search of worthy opponents and the event serves as an excellent platform for them to improve their game by playing with their peers, network with one another and generally improve the international standard in sports.
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