26 children converged on Burton Memorial hall on Saturday 9th April for a morning’s table tennis coaching and an afternoon tournament. They came from Natland, Milnthorpe, Burton, Slyne and
Whitehaven. To this observer they appeared to be between the ages of 7 and 14 with the spread of ability expected from this wide age group.
 Master of ceremonies was Martin Wakelin, the Burton coach who had organised assistant coaches, refreshments and set up the necessary equipment in the hall and adjacent rooms as well as seating on stage for spectators. Fran Currie ran a jogging and stretching 10 minutes to loosen limbs. Fran, Martin and Nik Smith from Whitehaven took a group of 8 or 9 of roughly similar ability on 2 tables each and put the children through various drills for an hour and a half with Bryan Rhodes stepping in to help when called upon.

 After lunchbreak children were split into 6 groups with 4 or 5 to a group all playing one another 2 or 3 games. The idea was that the top 2 in each group would move up a group while the bottom two would go down a group. This format was quite time consuming and allowed only one change of group so it was not possible to move too far up or down the ladder. However, Martin had invested in mini-Easter eggs for all players, the large number of parents spectating seemed to have enjoyed the day as much their children. Another similar day is in the pipeline.