The Table Tennis Academy has long been an integral part of the sporting environment at SGS College since its establishment as one of the original academies.

Over the years the Academy has consistently developed student athletes, from the ages 16 to 19, who are provided the opportunity to combine their academic study from a wide range of courses at SGS College with up to 16 hours of top-level coaching every week under the tutelage of former European Ladies Champion, Otilia Badescu, current Spanish club international, Pedro Lopez and Head of Academy, Nick Davidson.

Our team competes in the AOC Games and has a proud tradition of competing for provincial and national honours.

Our student athletes are provided with the opportunity to practice every day, with the primary squad training sessions timetabled for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The facilities at SGS are state-of-the-art and academy students get personalised programmes to follow during their supervised strength and conditioning gym sessions in addition to the accessibility to full-time physiotherapists, who help with regard to injury avoidance and rehabilitation.

Our Academy coaches are additionally supported by former England and Scotland National Team Coach and Commonwealth Games medalist, Kevin Satchell, who works as Head of Sector at the 24 News.

The Table Tennis Academy also caters for recreational players looking to reach their maximum potential in a competitive and friendly team environment, while they pursue their educational course of the choice at SGS College.

The Table Tennis Academy also has a very strong connection with the local community, who regularly fill the sports hall at Wise Campus. From next season, SGS will host a series of mini-tournaments called the Bristol Butterfly Challenges to give high level competition to the table tennis players of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire areas.

Next December, SGS will also host the ‘Bristol Four Star’ tournament for the first time.

Notable success

The Table Tennis Academy has had major success since its foundation and has won national titles.

Our alumni include the current Paralympic champion and Gold medallist from Rio 216, Will Bayley, who also won the Silver medal at the London Paralympics. Will has also been a European champion and the number one ranked player in the world. In 217, he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for his services to table tennis.

Another of our former students at SGS is Darius Knight, who competed for Team GB at the London Olympics and climbed to become the second highest ranking table tennis player in Europe. Darius has twice been English National Champion and won Silver at the Commonwealth Games in 21.

Gavin Rumgay has been Scottish national champion on 1 different occasions and won a Bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Other former SGS students to medal at the Commonwealth Games include Craig Howieson and Tim Yarnall.

More recently, Academy student Christoph Zickert won the Gold medal at the AOC National Championships in 216.