Australia’s Scott Houston, development officer of Oceania Table Tennis Federation was on island four days to share the basics of table tennis to the beginners and children.
During the first stop at the Mount Carmel School, 40 junior and senior students showed up at MCS Gym to participate in the ping pong demonstration.
More than 20 students attended at the Grace Christian Academy on Friday.
Scott showed the children how to control the ball and the proper posture of body.
Only a dozen children showed up at the Ada Gym for the pingpong clinic but according to Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association President Steve Lim, it was a good turn out because they witnessed how high the level of interest among the young participants.
The teenagers who showed up had a lot of fun, Lim said and this gave Houston and his group the opportunity to encourage them to play the game more seriously.
Lim it was really their intention to focus on children rather than adults in bringing the said sports into the island.
According to Buddhi Gurung, their main objective of inviting people like Houston is to teach the basic of ping pong to the students on Saipan so that they may represent CNMI in the international table Tennis in the near future.
For his part, Houston said the school visits “proved to be fruitful.”
In his website, Houston said a total of 65 new students were exposed to table tennis. Even though it was their first exposure to the sport the youth demonstrated sound hand-eye coordination and good skills overall.
“In Saipan, training sessions were conducted and there was a focus on bringing new players to the sport, there was newspaper advertising in the lead up to the course and this proved effective with a good spread of new junior and adult players taking part,” he said.
“New skills were presented and a lot of healthy competition was on offer during the numerous matches that were played amongst the players,” added.
