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WOMEN IN TABLE TENNIS HOME PHONE: 07 5597 1633 Fax: 07 5597 1623 
| On the 4th March, WOMEN'S NIGHT held a special friendship meeting. You can read about it on the International Table Tennis Federation website here. But to make it easier here it is below: Perhaps that should be Women's Might! For there was a considerable display of women at the recent Women's Night (Friday 4th March) in celebration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. International Women's Day (IWD), is marked on 8 March every year. This is a major day of global celebration of women. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements. In many regions, the day has lost its political flavour, and become somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day. 
Friendship Trophy is the name given to this International Women's Day's celebration in
our Table Tennis club. We celebrate the day by games, fun, talk, and bonding as women,
mothers, daughters, sisters, friends.At our Gold Coast club the night was celebrated as one of friendship and togetherness, as many women had come from overseas countries. It has been table tennis that brought the 35 women together. To enhance this feeling of converging, each of the women plotted on a world map their journey from their birth country to the Gold Coast. This was a celebration of the multi-culturalism of table tennis, a game that is played worldwide, bringing together people of different races and cultures. There are two pleasures universally appreciated by all women: chocolate and flowers, these were in abundant supply for the night along with wine, juice, and cheese platters. From that point it was easy for the mothers, aunties, daughters to make new friendships, and talk about women's issues. 
There were some special guests for the night: Sue Stevenson (High Performance & Coaching)
and and Ashleigh Stevenson (Oceania Women's Representative to the ITTF), of course we all
know Ashleigh as the founder of Women in Table Tennis website.As for the games, there were round robin singles to start, before doubles and general play. Friendship and fun were more important that winning or losing. Players were at different levels of skill, which allowed the better players a chance to share their secrets with the beginners. No women's night would be complete without chatting and making new friends across the blue tables, and this special International Women's Day provided lots of opportunities to do just that. 
LADIES' NIGHT
This is a new idea for the Gold Coast TTA to encourage more women to participate in our sport.
Every month on the first Friday night we are offering a free night of table tennis for women/girls so that they will hopefully enjoy it and spread the word among friends/family. In this way we hope to eventually increase the female participation rate. We do have plenty of ladies attending both social and competition fixtures but we would like to see more. Our first Ladies' Night was on the 4th of February 2011 and we saw some new faces and our regular players turned up giving their support. Thanks to Cathy Townsend for her ideas and organization for the night. We had a general hit up, a few singles matches, doubles matches and a demonstration of how to use the ball machine for training. We want to continue this night every month and spread the word about our sport. The positives are many: Fitness: good aerobic/low impact exercise. Indoor sport, unaffected by weather, and no sun exposure. Age is no factor we have players from 7 years to 85+ years. Great fun! Choose your level of commitment: social games or training/competition Div5 to Div1 Every level of play is accommodated to, from beginners to expert. Social: make great friends in a fun-filled atmosphere. So pass the word around about this new incentive for ladies and we’ll see you next month Friday 4th of March at 6.30 pm, remember it’s free! Sue Green |