Welcome to the new Season. As you know, I have taken over from Jeff Pimblett as Chairman. Thanks to Jeff for his excellent efforts over many years. I am pleased to announce that we have new Membership and Match Secretaries in Matt Neal and Martin Wakelin respectively. If you are equipped with suitable technology please feel free to scan and email your match scorecards to Martin (martin.wakelin@btinternet.com). We also have a new Development and Coaching Officer in Bryan Rhodes. If the League is to continue to develop and prosper, we need to be continually trying to gain new players and new teams and to create opportunities for our younger players to compete and improve. With the inevitable retirements, injuries and people moving away from the area, juniors are the life blood of the League and we need to do everything we can to attract them to table tennis in general and our League in particular. With this in mind, we have set up a Development Team consisting of Bryan, Norman, Jeff Pimblett and myself which will meet quarterly to try and move things along so if you have any ideas which might help us achieve any of the above please contact a member of the team.

I am pleased to welcome a new club, Dent, to the League. Dent have entered 2 teams into Division 3 and this has enabled us to maintain the total number of teams in Divisions 1-3 at 31.

As regards the Junior Divisions, Kirkby Stephen have kindly agreed to run Divisions 4 & 5 this year. We will shortly be sending out details and entry forms for the new season. I hope that clubs and parents will feel able to support the new experimental arrangements.

On the playing front, last season there were a number of notable successes. Charles Usher, the co-founder of the Kendal & District Table Tennis League, who has been competing in International Veterans Championships for many years, won a gold medal at the European Veteran Table Tennis Championships in Croatia. He partnered Harry Ross to success in the Mens Doubles Plate event in the 80-84 age group. Clearly, life begins at 80!

In addition, congratulations to the Burton team of Peter Baxendale, Stephen Baxendale and Simon Gregory, who won the National Boys Brigade Championships at the finals in Stirling.

On an administrative note, the 2010/2011 season will see the implementation of Individual Player Registration, which has been desired by the ETTA for some years, as it will bring table tennis in line with most other Olympic sports. It was approved by a big majority at the ETTA’s AGM in June. Currently, ETTA fees are charged at a team rate but from September 2010, we will have to pay the ETTA for every registered player at a proposed rate of £4.48 per senior and £2.24 per junior. We will need to consider the effect of this on our fees for next season and when more information is available we will let you know the outcome.

To finish on a positive note, Norman and I recently visited an impressive new facility at the Milnthorpe section of Dallam School which looks to have the potential to become an excellent new table tennis venue capable of hosting tournaments and/or running an entire division should we ever consider this desirable. We are continuing to investigate.

Have a great season.

Tony March