The T&T Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion (TTT­TA), un­der the lead­er­ship of re­cent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, for­mer na­tion­al play­er Dr Shellyanne Wil­son will host its first event of the year when the First Tier Tri­als for na­tion­al teams se­lec­tion takes place at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sport­ing Are­na (ERISA), Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, from 9 am on both days.

For the men's and women's tri­als tour­na­ment, the Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of the TTT­TA was ex­pect­ed to meet and fi­nalise the list of play­ers fol­low­ing a phys­i­cal test on Wednes­day.

From the re­sults of 2022, the 13 play­ers short­list­ed to be con­sid­ered for this week's tri­als are Ken­neth Par­manand, Aaron Wil­son, Franklyn Seechan, An­tho­ny Laquis, Abra­ham Fran­cis, Isa Mo­hammed, Ri­ad Abasali, Nico­las Lee, N’kosi Rouse, Christoff Roberts, Wayne Ou­dit, Javier King, and Rod Singh along with wild­card al­lot­ments, Yu­vraaj Dookram, and Joshua Maxwell.

For the women's tri­als there are eight lo­cal­ly-based women based on last year's re­sults in­clu­sive of top-ranked Imani Ed­wards-Tay­lor, Priyan­ka Khellawan, Can­dace Brew­ster, De­r­ah Ra­moutar, Am­bi­ka Sitram, Yz­abelle Mor­ris, Lyl­lana Bood­han, and Ash­lea Mo­hammed.

How­ev­er, the USA-based pair of Khaleel As­gar­ali and Der­ron Dou­glas and France-based Ma­lik Gop­ual as well as the France-based women's trio of five-time Caribbean Sin­gles cham­pi­ons, Rheann Chung, Chloe Fras­er, and Jor­dan Thong will al­so un­der­go phys­i­cal test­ing be­fore a fi­nal de­ci­sion will be made re­gard­ing their au­to­mat­ic se­lec­tions to the fi­nal men's and women's teams.

The trio of Fras­er, Thong and Ma­lik Gopaul all na­tion­al play­ers in the past at var­i­ous lev­els are cur­rent­ly on a ten-month train­ing stint at the Hen­nebont Ping Cen­ter in north-west­ern France.

The tri­als are be­ing held to se­lect teams to rep­re­sent this coun­try at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games qual­i­fiers which come off at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in George­town, Guyana from March 17-23; the Se­nior Caribbean Re­gion­al Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onship al­so in Guyana from March 20-23, and the Caribbean Re­gion Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion Youth (Un­der-15 & U-19) Cham­pi­onship, from March 27 - April 2 in Guyana as well.

For this year, the Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of the TTT­TA has added two new events to their com­pe­ti­tion cal­en­dar, name­ly the Open Spin Cup Se­ries and Su­per Sun­day Ta­ble Ten­nis tour­na­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the TTT­TA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Patrice Melis­sa Valen­tine, the Open Spin Cup Se­ries which is slat­ed to serve off on Feb­ru­ary 15 was de­signed to pre­pare our se­nior na­tion­al women and na­tion­al youth team play­ers for the up­com­ing CAC Qual­i­fiers and Caribbean Cham­pi­onship, as well as to pro­vide ac­tiv­i­ty for the lo­cal ta­ble ten­nis fra­ter­ni­ty, while the Su­per Sun­days Ta­ble Ten­nis which be­gins on Feb­ru­ary 26 was de­signed to pre­pare our se­nior na­tion­al men's team for the up­com­ing CAC qual­i­fiers and Caribbean Cham­pi­onships, as well as to show­case ta­ble ten­nis tal­ent to lo­cal spec­ta­tors in var­i­ous

In ad­di­tion to the 47-year-old Wil­son, a mem­ber of the 2004 T&T women’s Se­nior Caribbean Ta­ble Team gold medal team along with Ed­wards, Na­tal­ie Montes, and Rheann Chung were the oth­er mem­bers of her slate who were al­so elect­ed un­op­posed were Cur­tis Humphreys (first vice pres­i­dent), Je­lani Bram­ble (sec­ond vice pres­i­dent), Ernest Fras­er (third vice pres­i­dent), Patrice Melis­sa Valen­tine (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), Nigel Mor­gan (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary), Sharon Bra­vo-Phillip (sec­ond as­sis­tant sec­re­tary), Ra­bindra Out­ar (trea­sur­er), and Ever­ton Sorzano (pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer).