Table tennis brother and sister are the best in the country

Toby and Bethany Ellis are currently the best across the nation in their respective age groups after the publication of the latest rankings.

Sixteen-year-old Toby is a pupil at Lancater Royal Grammar School is now ranked No.1 in both the boys’ Under-17s and Under-19s.

This is an amazing achievement and he is extremely grateful to all that have helped him through the years to get to this point.

Starting at Greatwood Primary School, he is now part of the England Squads.

Toby has also recently reached the world ranking of No.53 in the boys’ Under-17s after only two competitions abroad.

Bethany, who is 14-years-old, is now ranked No.1 in the girls’ Under-15s and is also the current cadet national champion.

Along with her brother she has excelled recently and started competing abroad too.

She recently was awarded the TTE Mike Watts achievement award for winning the greatest amount of ranking points during a playing season in the junior girls’ age category.

Bethany is also representing England juniors in the annual home countries international competition, held in Largs, Scotland, this weekend.

Both siblings still give back to their local roots, playing in both the Preston Table Tennis League and Lancaster and Morecambe Table Tennis League, where their involvement in the sport all started for them.

The future looks bright for the local pair and who knows what the future holds for them?

Meanwhile, this week in the Lancaster and Morecambe Table Tennis League, University B welcomed leaders Trimpell Raptors in what turned out to be a largely one sided affair as Raptors won comfortably 29-3.

Ben O’Flynn was man of the match on nine points with Paul Stebbing also on nine and Cyrille Rollet on eight.

For University B, Archie Catnach was the sole contributor on three points.

Raptors' No.3 Rollet sustained an injury at the encounter and could now miss a number of critical games forcing Raptors to look for replacements.

University A hosted Trimpell Bulldogs on the same evening with the former faring better against an understrength Bulldogs side winning 22-15.

Xun Lin ended the evening on five points along with Jasper Choi also on points.

Player of the match was University’s Scott Barker on a full house nine points!

For Bulldogs, Phil Goymer was best of the opposition taking seven points with Graeme Moorby on four and Peter Wood on three.

In a local derby tie St Lukes A beat St Lukes B by 24 points to 13. John Howarth was player of the night for the A team on nine points with Chris Knowles also on nine and Dave Hewitt, carrying a knee injury, on three.

For the B team, Paul Hines was on four with Max Hewitt putting in a good performance on five points and Bob Quick on three. Lancaster University D welcomed Championship leaders

Trimpell City in an encounter with more than a few surprises as Uni player Ernie Lo picked up player of the night spoiling Trimpell’s Graeme Moorby’s unbeaten record.

With only Anson Fong contributing a further three individual points, Uni weren’t able to capitalise on Lo’s gains.

For City, Moorby ended up on eight points along with Bruce Armitage on eight and Massoud Rohani on five.

A 12-10 victory in the fifth end of the doubles for Ernie Lo and Joel Clarke over Rohani and Armitage completed a creditable performance for the Uni D side with the evening ending up 15-23 in Trimpell City’s favour.

Trimpell Dragons made it three wins on the spin with a comfortable 26-9 victory against a spirited University C side.

Geeza Bilton and Dave Lamont made useful contributions collecting seven points each, but it was man-of-the-match Mike White using all his experience that notched up nine points without reply, teaming up with Lamont to secure a 3-1 doubles win.

For the Uni C side Xu Dong Wang had a two pairing wins to register six points and Marcus Sung chipped in with two points.

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