After the summer break, the ETTU Europe Youth Series returns to Dimitrovgrad, Serbia with the second of five such tournaments in 2023. The Serbian Open Table Tennis will be held September 20-24 and is aimed at male and female athletes up to 13 and up 15 years old.
It includes the events of team, single and mixed doubles. The importance of the upcoming event lies not only in the fact that it brings back after five months these strong and evaluated competition tests for European athletes of the children’s and all children’s categories, but also that it puts us in the spirit of the corresponding games of Loutraki. The tournament in the town of the prefecture of Corinthia will follow in the period 25-29 October, it will be the third in the Europe Youth Series 2023 and the relevant announcement is being prepared.
In the new ETTU institution the Under 13 athletes must have been born on or after 01/01/2010. Athletes born on or after 01/01/2008 participate in the Under 15 category this year. The matches at the Dimitrovgrad Sports Complex are organized by the Serbian Table Tennis Federation under the auspices of the European Sports Union. 12 competition tables will be used in the hall and, of course, a second large area as a training room.
The main points of the announcement are the following regarding the competitive part:
The team is not held with mixed teams in this tournament (boys and girls together had it in Croatia). The Serbians have separate boys and girls teams in both U15 and U13.
The team starts the program on 20/09. Groups are held and, depending on the ranking, the next day other teams continue to the first level (A finals) and others to the second (B finals).
On 22/09 the team finals are held. On the same day, the singles groups and the mixed doubles draw begin.
The A finals and B finals levels are also foreseen in the singles of the two age categories. Those who advance from the groups go to the first and the rest go to the second. The medals in singles and mixed doubles are judged on the last day, 24/09.
The group draws are scheduled for 06/19. The first draws for the individual competitions are on 09/20.
The maximum number of entries set for individual events is 176 and for team events 88.
Each country (except the host, for which the margin is larger) is guaranteed two entries in each team event, four in each singles event and also four in each mixed doubles event.
We remind you that at the inaugural Europe Youth Open, which took place at the end of April in Osijek, Greece was present with several children and, in fact, achieved great success. Giannis Koutras in the Under 15 boys’ singles and Konstantinos Alexoudis/Yiannis Kioseloglou in the Under 13 boys’ doubles had won the gold medal and even Kioseloglou was third in the U13 singles and Stella Mavromataki/Georgia Spanou third in the Under 15 girls’ doubles.
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