Lakeland Table Tennis: About our Club

About our Club

THE LAKELAND TABLE TENNIS ASSOCIATION

HISTORY

The Lakeland Table Tennis Association is an affiliated club member of the USATT.Â The club operates out of the Simpson Park Community Center in Lakeland, Florida and the Haines City Community Center Gymnasium in Haines City, Florida.

Table Tennis in the Lakeland area can be traced back several decades, however, the modern era began with a couple of tables at the Kelly Recreation Center in south Lakeland in the early 2000's.Â The club grew in 2002-2003 with the addition of 7 new Stiga tables, obtained through a $5,000.00 grant from the Stiga Club Program.

At the time when the 7 new tables were obtained, we were able to move to another recreation center which had more room for our tables and more time slots for table tennis.Â So we moved to the Simpson Park Community Center in north Lakeland.

We quickly increased the number of tables to 23 and started conducting sanctioned tournaments in 2003-2004.Â Our tournaments have been extremely successful and has allowed us to improve our quality of equipment over a short time period.

In 2003-2004, we were invited to add a satellite location in Haines City, Florida.Â We worked with the Haines City Recreation Department to obtain 10 tournament quality tables and nets and we introduced sanctioned tournaments to Haines City.Â The Heart Of Florida Open tournaments also became extremely popular and filled up quickly at each event.

The Lakeland club continued to improve their equipment and were able to purchase 24 high quality Butterfly Tables and the best net assemblies available. In addition, the club purchased brand new barriers from Newgy for all the tables in the gymnasium during a tournament. The new equipment helped to continue the club to grow.

Lakeland TT altered the format of most of their tournaments to accomodate up to 121 players at each tournament. The prize money was increased to over $2000.00 and the trophies were improved and provided to the top 4 players in each event. A Hardbat Event was added on Friday night of the two day tournaments.

The popularity of the tournaments in Lakeland continued to grow and two additional events were added to the tournament. The USSTTA (United States Sandpaper Table Tennis Association) events were added to the tournaments and also The SBBTTA (Super Big Ball Table Tennis Association) events were added. Both of these new events were fully sanctioned by the national association.

In addition to the regular Lakeland tournaments, the Florida Sports Foundation joined with the Lakeland Table Tennis Association to begin offering the Sunshine State Games in Table Tennis at the Lakeland facility. This quickly became a popular annual event.

The Lakeland TT club also expanded their time slots for weekly play. As of 2017, the club offered play on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Special sessions were introduced exclusively for Seniors. The popularity of Table Tennis in the area grew considerably during this time in our history.

History provided by:
Dr. Raymond D. Spann