Top lo­cal ju­nior ta­ble-ten­nis play­ers Arun Roop­nar­ine and Aaron Wil­son will de­part to­mor­row for a five-week train­ing stint at the Wern­er Schlager Ta­ble Ten­nis Acad­e­my, in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria.

Fif­teen-year-old Roop­nar­ine, who at­tends Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, and Wil­son, 14, a stu­dent at Bel­mont Boys Sec­ondary, were part of the T&T squad which cap­tured a record 12 medals (one gold, one sil­ver and ten bronze) at the Caribbean Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion Cadet & Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships which con­clud­ed at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo, a week ago.

The duo will be at the Aus­tria camp from Tues­day un­til May 21 at the ex­pense of the In­ter­na­tion­al Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion (IT­TF) which in­cludes train­ing costs, en­try fees, ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals and trans­port with the play­ers cov­er­ing their own trav­el­ling ex­pens­es from T&T.

At the con­clu­sion of the camp, Wil­son and Roop­nar­ine, win­ners of bronze in the Ju­nior Boys Dou­bles at the re­gion­al event in T&T will then com­pete in the Pol­ish Open from May 22 to 26.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty for the lo­cal pair came via the IT­TF "WFIM" (With The Fu­ture In Mind) pro­gramme which tar­gets po­ten­tial par­tic­i­pants for the Ju­nior Olympics in Nan­jing, Chi­na, next year. The qual­i­fy­ing process is tough and the play­ers must have high world-rank­ing points.

The IT­TF al­so rec­om­mend­ed Wil­son and Roop­nar­ine at­tend the Pol­ish Ju­nior Open which is a World Ju­nior Cir­cuit event.

The train­ing for both T&T play­ers with coach­es Richard Prause, Dirk Wag­n­er, Dim­itri Lev­enko, Aya Umemu­ra and will en­tail two ses­sions per day.

Prac­tice is twice a day–from 9.30 am to noon and from 3.30 pm to 6 pm or from 6 pm to 8.30 pm, de­pend­ing on the group they are in and where they will prac­tise, all based on their ta­ble-ten­nis skills. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they have fit­ness at the gym and some­times a ta­ble-ten­nis ses­sion will be re­placed by a fit­ness ses­sion.

At the Caribbean Cadet and Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships, Roop­nar­ine and Wil­son al­so helped the T&T Ju­nior Boys team to a bronze medal along with Sarvesh Mun­gal and An­dreus Pan­tin-Abra­ham.

In the Mixed Cadets Dou­bles, Wil­son paired with se­nior na­tion­al women's cham­pi­on, 14-year-old Brit­tany Joseph for bronze and al­so got bronze in the sin­gles, while Roop­nar­ine and Cather­ine Spicer got T&T's lone gold medal, in Ju­niors Mixed Dou­bles.

?