Tony Becca - FROM THE BOUNDARY THE 43rd ANNUAL Caribbean Table Tennis Championship that ended at the University of Technology's auditorium on Friday night was a mis-match. The Dominican Republic were simply too good for the rest of the field.
In a devastating display, The Dominican Republic won the seven major titles.
Led by two Chinese players, Lin Ju and Wu Xue, The Dominican Republic won the men's team event, the women's team event, the men's singles, the women's singles and all three doubles with Lin and Wu each winning the triple.
Such were the skills of the two Chinese players that it was like taking candy from babies. And it was not that the other players were not good.
Trinidad and Tobago, boasted former men's singles champion Dexter St. Louis and the promising 17-year-old Rheann Chung who contested the women's singles final. Puerto Rico got to the men's team final, parading Abner Colon and 17-year-old Hector Berrios; Venezuela, who got to the men's team semi-finals, featured young players like Jonathan Pino and Maria Mata, who defeated Chung in the final of women's Under 21 singles.
The Barbados men's team included defending champion Trevor Farley and former champion Robert Roberts, so there were some excellent players on show - so much so that there are those who believe that but for the Dominican Republic and their Chinese players, the championships would have been a lovely contest.
And it could have been. Any two from Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto and Barbados would have produced a good men's team final; Trinidad and Tobago versus Venezuela would have been a good women's team final, Chung versus Mata or Olga Villa of the Dominican Republic would have been a good women's singles final, and there is no doubt about it, St. Louis against Farley in the men's singles final would have been an epic.
As far as Jamaica were concerned, however, even if the two Chinese were absent, it would not have mattered.
Once the best in the region, Jamaica, despite calling on England-born Darren Blake and bringing president Stephen Hylton out of retirement, were disappointing. Not only did they finish close to the bottom in both the men's and women's team events, they also failed to get even one player into the quarter-finals of the men's singles and not even one survived the first round of the women's singles.
In the men's team event, Jamaica defeated only Curacao and finished seventh out of ten; and in the women's, they defeated only St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guyana, who played one short, and finished fifth out of seven.
As usual, there were many excuses for Jamaica's performance. The reality of the situation, however, is that Jamaica's table tennis is weak. That is why Jamaica went for Blake, who obviously is now not as good as he was. Why they called out Hylton who last represented Jamaica back in 1996 and why Nigel Webb, who fell easily to young Berrios, is considered at 25, one of the country's brightest prospects.
The biggest embarrassment for Jamaica's table tennis, however, was that Hector Bennett, the national champion and a member of the national squad, could not even win the Masters title contested by players over 40.
