The expansion of TT Leagues for managing both local and national league competitions continues at pace. There are now about 200 current competitions being managed within TT Leagues on more than 150 sites. Recent developments are summarised below.
Local Leagues
Local Leagues continue to join TT Leagues, particularly those that had previously used their own bespoke systems for managing their competitions. Two local leagues that have joined TT Leagues this season – North Norfolk and Sutton – following in the footsteps of the six Local Leagues that joined TT Leagues last season having previously used their own bespoke systems.
Tony Stephens of the Sutton league said: “It was definitely useful to have that expertise from Neil Hurford and also help from another league to set us up in the beginning, and the videos are a great help to show how to set up.
“I used to do it all manually on spreadsheets, which was very time-consuming – we moved to TT Leagues to automate the process. It does make it easier that the results go on there and it updates the table and everything else automatically.”
During the summer, a number of significant enhancements took place including the upgrading of the data downloads that provide the data that League Admins need to manage their competitions. Other developments include improved features for managing reserves, action tracking for postponements and new match formats.
Table Tennis England’s Head of Operations and Governance, Jo Keay-Blyth, said: “Table Tennis England is committed to ongoing development of the TT Leagues system. Enhancements for the 2023/24 season are already being formulated. Current plans are the addition of significant new functionality to enable knockout and handicap competitions to be managed within TT Leagues.”
British League
TT Leagues is again being used to manage all six competitions in British League. A significant development over the summer was the development of an on-line entry system and on-line submission of the player ranking lists. This has considerably streamlined the administration of what was previously a paper-based system.
October was a particularly busy month for British League with all six competitions in action. Players and coaches at the various sessions were using their smart-phones to access the British League website to keep abreast of results. This led to over 10,000 visits to the British League website during the month.
County Championships
TT Leagues is now exclusively used for managing all five county championships competitions. This has led to more detailed information being made available to players – and much more quickly.
Neil Hurford, Administrator for the Over-60s competition says – “It was great to use TT Leagues ‘live’ during the recent Over-60s Premier Weekend. I was able to make the results, divisional tables and player averages available to players in a timely fashion. Once the results from the matches in other divisions had been processed, I was able to use the email system to inform all the players that details of all matches had now been published.”
November and December have been busy months for the county championships. In addition to matches across all sections of the competition, there have been Premier Weekends for the Junior, Senior and Veterans competitions. Weekend organiser Tony Dias has ensured that all results from the weekend matches have been published within 24 hours of the completion of matches.
To see the latest results go to the County Championships website.
National Cadet League & National Junior League
This is the first season TT Leagues has been used to manage the NCL/NJL competitions. This has been a significant development for TT Leagues, perhaps the most challenging so far. It has required a great deal of creativity to deal with the flexible way in which the NCL/NJL competitions run at the different venues. But early feedback is encouraging, with organisers, players, parents and coaches valuing the rapid availability of detailed results.
Mike Atkinson, Administrator of the NCL/NJL competition, said: “Our volunteers haven’t got the expertise, but Neil Hurford has done a brilliant job, including doing one-to-ones with people who couldn’t attend the webinar. He’s easy to work with and has steered everyone through it.
“At the time of speaking, every single one of the NCL results has been uploaded to the website successfully by the volunteers in good time – 100 per cent of matches played in October went through to the November rankings.”
NCL/NJL competitions are taking place at 16 different venues around the country covering more than 20 competitions. You can access the websites of all the competitions by clicking here.
TT Leagues goes from strength to strength Table Tennis England.
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