Table Tennis: Annual Asoju Oba championships serves off with 200 participants

The 47th edition of the Asoju Oba Molade Okoya-Thomas Table Tennis Championships has served off at the Sir Molade Okoya-

Thomas Sports Hall of the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos with over 200 players.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the players would feature in 22 events in the five-day tournament.
These are the senior, junior and cadet categories which have five events each.

The senior events are: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and the mixed doubles.
The junior events are the junior boys and girls, boys’ and girls’ doubles and the mixed doubles.

The cadets are: boys and girl’s singles, boys and girls’ doubles and the mixed doubles.

There are the para men’s and women’s singles classes 1-5 and the para men and women’s singles classes 6-10 open.
Others are the coaches’ singles, sport writers’ singles and the veterans’ singles.

Some of the seeded men players are: Ahmed Adeyinka, David Fayele, Wale Olaniyi and Ganiyu Ashimiyu, while in the women’s category are: Sidi Yaya, Taiwo Williams and Alimot Ayinla.

NAN reports that the annual competition which commenced on Nov. 30 with the preliminaries, would end on Dec. 4.

It would be recalled that the competition which used to be called the Asoju Oba was modified this year in honour of its late founder, Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas.

During his funeral in March, his son promised that the competition would continue to hold annually and added that a name change was likely to be effected.

Meanwhile, Oluranti Lajide, an International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)-certified referee, who is the tournament referee, has said that the chart was well programmed, to ensure a hitch-free tournament.

Lajide said that they were working to make sure that this year’s edition was just as successful as its previous editions.

“We want this edition to be just as successful as the past ones, or even better. We are all working in synergy to achieve this,’’ he said.

Lajide, however, appealed to participants to ensure that they were at the competition venue, as and when due.

“We want them to be disciplined and to be of good conduct. We don’t want a situation where walkovers would be awarded.
“ We don’t want to be working behind schedule, all through the competition,’’ Lajide added.