I have been in Paris for over 2 weeks now. The club, the players and the host family are great and treating me really well. Besides table tennis training and practice matches, I would also help the coach to assist with the younger players. I have also started to learn some French too.
I was drafted in the 2nd team and given a starting rating of 1150. It is not a true reflection as I will need to start playing some matches for my rating to become more accurate. I was told by my coach that I am around 1300 to 1400 at the moment. I am aiming to get to 1600-1700-during my 1st year here and that will allow me to promote to our 1st team.
An idea of the rating system is that Sarah Hanffou of Cameroon who has ranked as high as 213 in the world and a London 2012 Olympian has a French rating of 2200. Algeria’s Faiza Laid and Islem Laid is around 1700.
The best female player in our club is rated 1880, a 17 years old, former number 3 French Cadet player.
Yesterday (20 Sep 2013) I played my first official match. The match format consist of 12 singles and 2 doubles and each team consisting of 4 players. We used 2 tables to play those 14 matches.
The league match was against Montesson Tennis de Table and we beat them 13-1. I managed to won all 3 of my singles match and without dropping a set. It was a huge boost for me but we did play against players with a lower rating than us. Despite the fact that the opponents had a lower rating, they did give me a hard time, especially in my first match.
Our next match is on 4th October, so now we are back to training and getting ready for the next match.
Sisipho's Table Tennis World 