U13 European Championship: Greece premieres with Ukraine, claims qualification to level A

European table tennis is writing a new page from today 14/06 in Zagreb and Greece will not only be present, but will fight for distinctions with its own talent at young ages.

The 1st European Under 13 Championship is held at Dom Sportova Zagreb from 14 to 18/06, gathers around 160 sportsmen and women from 33 countries and follows last year’s precursor event Europe Under 13 Challenge in Pongorica. Three women and the same number of women represent the country, they have been in the Croatian capital since noon on Tuesday 13/06 and with a training session at the competition site, they are completing their preparation tonight. They are Yannis Kioseloglou, Christina Tzenidis, Konstantinos Alexoudis, Anna-Fanouria Mitkas, Dimitris Georgallidis and Despina Dimitriou. responsible coaches Lefteris Tsokano, Takis Tsarsitalidis and Alexoudis’ accompanying coach, Manolis Alaroupi. The Greek colors will participate in all competitions, in the team (which is done with mixed teams), the singles and the mixed doubles and they start as a representative group. They play all the matches of the 1st group stage on Wednesday, they open their 6th group against leaders Ukraine (12:00) and later meet Romania and Estonia.

The European Under 13 Championships are organized by the Croatian Table Tennis Association (CTTA) under the auspices of the European Sports Union (ETTU). In Halls 2 and 3 of the famous gymnasium and 16 tables the matches will take place, a third hall with 12 tables is used for training. 28 countries take part in the group stage and have been divided into 7 groups of 4. In the singles, 83 athletes from 33 countries and 77 athletes from 30 countries are going to compete. Through these participations, the mixed couples also arise. All the great powers of the continent are present (and France, who did not compete in Montenegro last year), a fact that testifies to the significant response to the new ETTU event and the high level of competition.

THE EXECUTION SYSTEM

In the group stage, the first two countries from each group will qualify to the next stage of level A, while the next 2 will continue to level B. That is, others will continue for positions 1-14 and the medals, others for positions 15- 28 in ranking matches. For everyone stage 2 will again have groups and stage 3 only crossover games for the final positions (1-4, 5-8, 9-12 cox).

Two boys and two girls make up each national team. In stages 1 and 2, the team competition system has first the mixed and then 4 individual matches, where there is 1 match for each child. Therefore, each meeting can end 3-2 or 4-1 or 5-0 and there is a different scoring for each score. In the knockouts, on the other hand, matches will be decided when a team comes first in 3 separate wins. Boys’ Singles and Girls’ Singles have groups first and draw afterwards (also with Tier A and Tier B stage 2), double mixed knockout match from the start and all singles matches in the European Championship are played on a best-of-one system of 5 sets.

The schedule of matches of our national team in Greek time (we are one hour ahead of Croatia):

Wednesday 14/06:

At 12:00 Ukraine-Greece Table 2

At 16:00 Greece-Estonia Table 5

At 20:00 Greece-Romania Table 4

Tomorrow begins and ends the 1st stage of the groups in the team. On Thursday 15/06, the 2nd will be held. On Friday 16/06, the singles groups will begin and the group stage will end with the 3rd stage. On Saturday 17/06, the mixed doubles will also be included in the program and on the last day the 3 finals in the individual competitions will take place. The draws for the singles and mixed doubles will be held at noon on Thursday 15/06 and the seedings will be calculated from the latest international evaluation tables for singles and doubles.

* Kioseloglou was also last year, at the age of 12, in the Europe Under 13 Challenge, the pre-event of the European championship, while he already has several performances from international tournaments. Alexoudis has experience in Youth Contender and other international events since 2022, while Georgallidis had competed this year in an open in Austria. Kioseloglou and Alexoudis are rated in the world rankings. The girls, on the other hand, will get the first images from matches abroad, as well as points for the European evaluation table.

* The first group favorites and leaders of the respective groups are, in order, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, France, Ukraine and Turkey.

* In 2022, at the Europe Under 13 Challenge, Romania, an opponent of our national team, won 3rd place. In the same competition, Ukraine, now leading the 6th group, was victorious in level B (13th place). Greece had taken 15th place.

* Those interested can find draws, results and entries on the relevant ETTU page at the link https://www.ettu.org/en/events/european-under-13-championships/draws—results/.

*Unexpectedly, ETTU will also provide live streaming and live scoring, however, until the time of writing, there was no relevant reference on its website.