Haworth Hawks Table Tennis Club raised more than £1,000 at a sponsored 24-hour table tennis marathon from 6pm Friday to 6pm Saturday.
The money will enable the club to buy scoreboards to develop umpiring at the club and also starts off a Junior Development Fund to allow it to invest in the future of its juniors with subsidised courses for them to become coaches when they reach 16.
The first recipient of monies from the fund for a coaching course will be Nathan Ward who has been part of the club since the age of seven, is a junior committee member for the Keighley & District League, and has already been helping out with some coaching activities at the club, but also with table tennis at Bradford Hawks and at Parkside school.
A total of 36 juniors took part in some way, with the support of adults doing coaching, chaperone duty, donating pizzas, bacon butties, pretzels, doughnuts, buns, other snacks and raffle prizes at crucial points to keep us all going.
Eight juniors got through the night to the halfway point, but only Spencer Hurd managed the whole 24 hours without a cat nap. Altogether the juniors did a total of 300 hours.
Coaches Paul Bryant and Judith Silberberg were the most outwardly lively adults throughout.
There were lots of mass round the worlds, a hard bat tournament, top table, sitting table tennis, beat the robot, obstacle race, trick shots, hula hooping whilst balancing a ball on bat, unusual racquets, but also footwork/reaction tasks with skipping, football and sidestep quick baseball.
Several juniors were still able to successfully complete the Junior Umpire Award questionnaire after being awake all night, and a few passed another level on the Butterfly skills pathway (including a couple of adults that got their Starter Silver & Gold).
There is a beginner session on Fridays from 5.30pm-7pm at Keighley Table Tennis Centre for any new juniors interested in receiving table tennis coaching – see www.haworthhawks.co.uk for further details.