The Manurewa Table Tennis Club hosted the 2016 OTTF Para Camp and Infinity Foundation Para Table Tennis Nationals from 13-18 December.

ITTF published a great article covering the event.

This event was the brainchild of OTTF Para Manager, Christian Holtz, based in Australia, and is part of his hugely successful Smash Down Barriers program.  In conjunction with Manurewa's John Tuki and Geoff Rau, and Christine Young, an exciting week was planned for up to 20 Pacific Island disabled athletes on an AGITOS scholarship.  TTNZ sponsors Stag International kindly provided equipment and some snazzy black shirts. Infinity Foundation provided grant funding to assist organisation of the event.

Sadly there were issues in obtaining visas, meaning that a few players from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands could not make it.  In the end we had 2 visitors from Australia, 1 each from New Caledonia, Tonga, Guam and Samoa, 2 from Tuvalu and 6 from Fiji, as well as Victor Kamizona from Tauranga and James Goulding from Auckland participating in the training camp.

The camp was expertly run by specialist coach, Alois Rosario from Australia, assisted by John Tuki and Christian Holtz. 

There were classification sessions on Thursday and Friday run by Fijian classifier and 2015 IOC Diploma winner, Sharlene Nand, assisted by Henry Redmond. 

On Thursday we had visits for the lunchtime feast from Paralympics NZ High Performance Manager, Melissa Wilson and Community Sport Manager, Kieran Wall, as well as several TTNZ Resource Coaches. 

The group was joined for the weekend tournament by Irimana Kingi from Auckland, Matthew Britz from New Plymouth, and a trio from Parafed Manawatu, Sally McGovern, Wayne Marriott and Oliver Linton. 

The list of medal winners, and results of all matches are shown in the lists at upper right of this page.

The volunteers efforts from the Manurewa Club, including Geoff and Marie Rau, Gregg and Michelle Doyle, Kellie Emery (catering), John Tuki and many others were truly amazing!!! 

Thanks Manurewa,Christian Holtz, Michael Brown, Paul Kyle and Alois Rosario of OTTF, Chris Young and John Tuki for logistics, and Sharlene and Henry, and volunteer umpires and ball-pickers including TTNZ Chairman Gary Williams - and also the players and their coaches and managers.  The camaraderie and sense of fun was something to behold.  Subsequent facebook are testimony to that!!

Keep on Smashing Down Barriers folks!