Two of Southland’s foremost table tennis coaches, Shelley Smith and Barry Ellis, have experienced plenty of success of their own in recent times.
Both excelled in the recent Southland Residential Championships, Smith achieving the rare feat of the Triple Crown in winning the Women’s Open Singles, Women’s Open Doubles and Mixed Doubles titles. She then carried her form onto the New Zealand Championship’s in Christchurch where she won two golds and a silver medal.
The gold medals came in the B Grade Doubles where she took the title with Armindeep Singh of Waikato and in the Over 30 Doubles with partner Helen Beumelburg of Canterbury.
The silver medal was won in the B Grade Singles, a title won by Smith in 2015. One of the highlights of the tournament for Smith was a narrow single’s loss to New Zealand’s thirteenth ranked player, Michelle McCarthy, 11-9 in the fifth set of their match.
Meanwhile Ellis almost replicated Smith’s Triple Crown at the Southland Residential Championships where he won the Open Doubles and Open Mixed Doubles titles.
He also had a successful foray at the Nationals, taking gold in the D Grade Singles and silver in both the Over 55 Men’s Doubles with Subhash Kumar Batra of Wellington and in the D Grade Doubles with Kelly Martin of Southland.
Martin was part of the Southland Senior Men’s Team at the Nationals along with Nathan Geraghty and Andrew Fleming. The trio finished fourth in the C Grade event with good wins over Auckland and Manawatu during the tournament.
Both Ellis and Smith moved to Southland after beginning their table tennis careers further north, Ellis in Dunedin and Smith in Auckland. This year marks 50 years of interclub play for Ellis while Smith moved south 10 years ago. She began playing at the age of ten.
Her father, Eric Neal, who has just returned from competing in the Australian Veteran Championships was the reason she got into the sport and she has never looked back.
Both Ellis and Smith are heavily involved in junior coaching in the south and are proud to be a part of a growing sport in Southland. They have several players who will be involved in regional and national training squads next year and are looking at 2018 as a promising year.
While that is testament to the success of the coaching duo they say it is not always about winning but also about juniors learning new skills and playing to the best of their ability, meeting new people and having fun along the way.