The annual Table Tennis Intervarsities event was held in the DCU Sports Hall on the Glasnevin Campus recently and was attended by nine universities from across the country.
The event, organised through a collaboration with DCU Table Tennis Club and Table Tennis Ireland (TTI), featured both singles and doubles events and was split into two separate days for each event.
The singles event on Saturday was the generated the major headline from a DCU perspective, as the Women’s Singles Final was won by graduate Sabina Devereux, 15 years after she had won it last back in 2008.
“I was in as good a form as I could be going into this event,” she said after her victory.
“In the last couple of weeks, I had a good run-up of various events in Munster and Wolverhampton, so I felt ready both physically and mentally.”
She went on to explain her determination going into this event, as she had lost in the Quarter Finals last year and the event was held in DCU this year, which she said had doubled her reasons to win, jokingly saying to herself before the event “wouldn’t it be great to win at the home ground?”
Table Tennis Intervarsities – DCU suffer Plate Final heartbreak
The Doubles Event was held on Friday and featured a strong output by DCU’s Men’s team. While the team safely secured a victory against Trinity College at the start of the day, fatigue set in by the end of the day when the two teams faced each other in the Plate Final, which ended in a narrow tiebreaker victory for Trinity.
“I think we performed at a level that was higher than my expectations” DCU Table Tennis Club Captain Orqo Hickey said after the event.
He added that he was “proud” of his team and believes that they will perform even better at next year’s Intervarsities in Limerick.
The overall winners of the Men’s Doubles were UCD, marking their 21st consecutive victory in the event while the Women’s Doubles was won by Trinity in a decisive victory against UCC.
The Men’s Singles winner was UCD’s Alexander Gillen in a 3-0 victory against UCD teammate Joey Nelson.
Event Runner and TTI Head Coach Richard Butler thanked DCU for the smooth operation of the event saying he had high hopes for next year’s event in Limerick.
Adam Byrne