Ogunshakin, Emmanuel Win LSTTA Junior Championships

Teenage sensations Okiki Ogunshakin and Joy Emmanuel were crowned champions at this year’s Lagos State Table Tennis Association (LSTTA) organized Junior Championships tagged Elicris Table Tennis Cup held at the weekend.

According to LSTTA, the Elicris Table Tennis Competition is a developmental program organized to improve junior athletes, discovery of talents, and promote grassroots sports development.
The preliminary round was hosted at the Indoor Sports Hall of the National Table Tennis Federation Hall Surulere, as 84 participants were engaged in a fierce yet healthy competition among the junior and cadet players from various clubs in Lagos State.
The preliminaries commenced on December 14 and it had in attendance 24 junior boys, 16 junior girls, 32 cadet boys, and 12 cadet girls.

At the grand finale, Ogunshakin and Emmanuel dethroned the defending champions Tobi Adebakin and Aishat Rabiu to emerge as the boys’ and girls’ new champions.

Abdulsalam Lateef and Faiza Musbau claimed the cadet titles at the expense of Habeeb Adebayo and Testimony Adegbola respectively.

An elated Ogunshakin described his win as a reward for hard work being his first final in any major competition. “I am so excited that I claimed the title in my first final. I must admit that it was not an easy win because my opponent being the defending champion was not an easy nut to crack but I am happy that my strategy worked well against him and I hope I can maintain the momentum going into 2024,” the youngster said.

A fulfilled Chairman of LSTTA, Tunji Lawal, lauded the sponsors for coming to the aid of the association while appealing to more corporate bodies to support the association in its quest to engage the youngsters meaningfully as well as hone their sports talents in table tennis. “We are very grateful to the management of Elicris for keeping faith with us with the staging of this year’s edition and from the outcome, we could see that we have new faces emerging and this goes to show that we are working hard to unearth new talents and we believe 2024 will be more exciting for the players while we are calling on well-meaning individuals and bodies to come to the aid of the association by sponsoring competitions,” Lawal.

For the sponsor, Babatunde Adejobi, the skills displayed by the players showed that talents abound in the country. He, however, pledged his support to table tennis, particularly grassroots sports development.