Table Tennis: Molade Okoya-Thomas tourney kicks-off Dec 18

The 55th edition of the Molade Okoya-Thomas Table Tennis Cup will serve off from December 18 to 20 with players from Lagos competing in the senior and junior divisions for trophies and prize money at the three-day tournament billed to hold at the Teslim Balogun Stadium.

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Deji Okoya-Thomas said this year’s edition marks another milestone celebration of the competition which has continued to churn out players for the country while pledging the commitment of the family to the annual staging of the championship.

“We want to continue to uphold the legacy of our late father, by ensuring that we mark every milestone edition with unique activities for this year and we hope to make it distinct by ensuring that we reward the players and participants with good prizes,” he said.

“We are aware of the economic challenges across the country but in our usual style, we will stage the tournament in a low-key way hoping that it will fulfill the ideal of the founder of the competition.”

With the large turnout of players for a recent tournament in Lagos, we believe that more young players will again come through this tournament just like the likes of Olufunke Oshonaike, Bose Kaffo and a host of others have come through to become stars in Africa and the world.

But we also lay emphasis on the education of the athletes because we want to follow the ideals of our late father. We most times preached education with sports during his lifetime being a former athlete himself. We hope the best players will again emerge this year as we look forward to an exciting tournament.”

Meanwhile, according to the Lagos State Table Tennis Association, this year’s edition will be used to select its team for the 2024 National Sports Festival.

The chairman of LSTTA, Tunji Lawal, commended the family for keeping faith in the consistency of the tournament event after the demise of the initiator.

“We must commend the family for their efforts to sustain the tournament every year and we want to use the tournament to pick our team for the 2024 National Sports Festival after that, we want to start a league where we keep the players in shape for the championships.

“We realize that our players must be active for them to perform at their best in major tournaments and we are hoping that new players will come through this year as usual,” Lawal said.