Kiishi Adekola, Harry Blackhall and Maja Wojcicka, European Youth Championships 2024, Malmö, Sweden
Article by Donald Pirie
The European Youth Table Tennis Championships took place in Sweden from 12 -21 July, with 4 ASV Academy players selected to represent Scotland in the two events, U15's and U19's for boys & girls.
Kiishi Adekola (Robert Gordons), Maja Wojcicka (Turriff Academy), Jakub Krzyzostaniak (St Machar Academy) and Harry Blackhall (Kemnay) were all selected, however due to personal circumstances Jakub was unable to attend the event, so Harry, Maya & Kiishi were the Aberdeen representatives. and have just returned home after a great experience in Malmo competing against some of the best young players in Europe.
Kiishi and Maja were making their debut at this level and were playing together in the Cadet (U15) Girls Team. A tough opening group in the team event, but both girls managed individual match wins and followed this up in the next group phase with their first team win against Netherlands (3-0). There was a particularly notable performance from 12 year old Kiishi, taking a 3-2 win against a Swiss player ranked No.7 in Europe at U13 level, and No.28 at U15 level.
Maja & Kiishi then had a play-off against Norway where they again won 3-0 to secure 29th place out of 33 teams. Harry was playing in the Junior (U19) Boys Team in what was his second European Youths, after travelling to Poland last year.
The opening phase saw Scotland in the same group as England, Wales and Luxembourg where a 3-1 win against Wales was the single team win. Scotland progressed to the next group phase where they won all 3 matches, and Harry picking up an impressive 2 individual match wins. This led the Scottish boys playing off for positions 29-32, but a tight loss to Estonia denied them a chance of securing a top 30 spot, and finished in 32nd place out of 40 teams.
All three Aberdeen players also took part in the doubles, mixed doubles and singles events, with Kiishi and Harry picking up a match win each in their singles groups and Maja very unlucky not to do the same, going down 2-3 in a very tight match.
Kiishi progressed from her singles group into the main Round of 128 draw, and subsequently progressed to the Round of 64 draw. Unfortunately this match was scheduled for after the Scotland team were due to catch their specific flights home, and disappointingly Kiishi had to forfeit the game.
Both Kiishi and Maja made it onto the official photostream of the event, whilst Harry was lucky to feature on the show court livestream for both of his doubles matches.
A fantastic experience for all three players and a reward for their hard work and national success across this and previous seasons. Hopefully this has given all three, and their AS Academy clubmates, the desire to keep working hard, with Maja and Kiishi in particular having a real possibility to qualify for a few more years at the annual European Youth Championships.
A great end to a long season for the ASV Academy players, with the start of season 2024/2025 just a couple of short months away.
