HomeMICK & RACHELS STORY
Lucy Started playing Table Tennis at Primary school when she was just 8 years old. Rachel, Lucy's mother, was a cleaner at the School which meant Lucy attended one of the after school clubs. One was Table Tennis and it didn't take long before the coach was passing her name to the area coach Mr Colin Deaton.
He first came to see her at the school summer fair and she certainly made an impression on him. He talked of natural talent and her hand to eye co-ordination and that was our little Lucy he was talking about. He invited her to his Sunday morning training session's. He also suggested that we put her into a tournament for beginners to see how she went on.
So we put her into a local School tournament and against players older and more experienced than her she came runner up in the under 12s . After that she entered a 1 star tournament ( Table Tennis tournaments are ranked from 1 star beginners to 4 star then Masters and so on). Lucy played exceptional Table Tennis and won the tournament . Every tournament she played in she made her mark not always a win but enough to get her name known. Eventually she was invited to the England training camp at Lilleshal for a weekend . It would mean a night away from home and she was still only 9 . I used to stop with her but would never be allowed to stay in the same room as her. I goes without saying she hated it but she carried on going even though she lived in fear of the post coming with the invite for the next months camp.
She has gone from strength to strength and is now (Sept. 08) ranked 2 in the English Cadets and has moved her training to The English Institute of sport in Sheffield where she works hard 4 nights a week and regularly lives in on for a weeks training session .
Lucy is now a regular member of the England squad and has played in many Country's including Sweden, France and Spain. Lucy always has a smile on her face and never complains about her lack of friends outside school or the amount of training she has to do. She really does it for the love of the game.
Looking back now when she started playing. Colin Deaton once said she would definitely play for England and possibly Great Britain. At the time we took it with a pinch of salt.
How wrong can you be!