Huge congratulations to Steve Smith who received the honour of Vice-President at Table Tennis England's Annual General Meeting on Saturday.

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Having started his table tennis playing and administration career in his home city of Birmingham, Steve arrived at Cippenham in 2007 and quickly became a most popular, enthusiastic and hard-working member of our Club. Steve revamped our open tournament programme with his progressive ideas after becoming the Club's Events Officer and then his career really took off as he embarked upon a series of qualifications that have now taken him to the pinnacle as both an International Umpire and International Referee, and a much sought-after official both in this country and abroad.

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Sadly, we "lost" Steve back to Birmingham some years ago but he still comes down south to support what he regards as "his club" once a year to referee our Cippenham Junior 4-Star Open.

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A fitting reward to a very popular and hard working colleague.

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Steve becomes the fourth Cippenham stalwart to been honoured by TTE as Vice-President, the others being Peter Hillier (1993), Graham Trimming (2008) and Ken Phillips (2017).

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This is how the citation for Steve's award read (from the TTE website):

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With his father playing in many local leagues, with roles on various committees and running one of the largest clubs in the Birmingham League, it was inevitable that Steve would join the table tennis family at a young age. Initial experience of tournaments began with local league championships and by age 17 had joined the Birmingham League Committee. In 2006 became a member of Cippenham TTC and immediately got involved in open tournaments, playing
regularly in Grands Prix and helping organise Cippenham’s tournaments; quickly progressing to refereeing and spending four years as Cippenham’s Events Officer. National Referee status attained in 2009, he began refereeing Grand Prix and National Championship events. The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games kicked off Steve's international experience and saw him become an International Umpire in 2014, qualifying as International Referee
in 2022. In addition to his national and international commitments, Steve still enjoys refereeing for the RAF and Inter-Services. He has also served on the  Technical Officials’ and Competition Committees.

Significant International Appointments:
2012 London Olympic Games (Assistant)
2012 London Paralympic Games (Assistant)
2014 Primary School International
2014 Cadet Six Nations International
2015 Jersey Island Games
2019 Gibraltar Island Games
2023 Dusseldorf WTT Feeder
2023 European U13 Championships (Zagreb)
2023 European Para Championships (Sheffield)
2024 Primary School International
2024 Home Nations Senior International

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